Selling More With Mobile Solutions

Selling More with Mobile Solutions Building the right strategy, innovation agenda and sales representative experience

As consumer behaviors and preferences dictate enterprise technology trends in unprecedented fashion, companies of all shapes and sizes are struggling with how to effectively enable their sales teams with mobile solutions. The challenges that must be overcome by sales leaders and CIOs alike are threefold: defining a proactive strategy before it is defined by sales representative behavior, continuously innovating by exploiting the newest capabilities of mobile technology, and committing to developing a distinctive sales representative and customer experience. The key to addressing these challenges lies in taking a disciplined approach to mobility. The upside for capitalizing on this opportunity is significant.

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The explosion of mobile devices, the increasingly improving wireless network capabilities, and the adoption of cloud technologies in the enterprise have resulted in easy-to-provision and easy-to-use mobile sales tools. In organizations everywhere, sales professionals are writing the mobile strategy, by self-selecting sales tools onto their company-owned and personal mobile devices. While well intentioned, these sales representatives are often making decisions based on personal preference, without regard for company security, data rights, process consistency and total cost of ownership. High performing organizations will need to move quickly in defining a strategy that keeps pace with these trends.

Fueling the behavior is the rate at which mobile and cloud-based CRM technologies are evolving. With smart phones getting smarter, tablets becoming ubiquitous and CRM vendors releasing quarterly enhancements, there is an insatiable demand for new and improved capabilities. The ‘shiny object syndrome’ of mobility is here to stay, at least for the foreseeable future. High performing organizations will need to show sales representatives a committed path to mobility improvements to quell the demand— and they will need to keep their promise. At the same time, these organizations will need to create a deliberate and well-planned approach that exploits the newest innovations in mobility to solve pressing business challenges. Perhaps the most important challenge to overcome with mobile sales solutions is the development of a distinctive experience for both the sales representative and the customer that can be proven by

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measurable business value. Simply transitioning standard sales force automation functionality to mobile devices underutilizes the technology and by-passes the real potential of mobility. For every basic sales automation capability—account management, contact management, pipeline management, activity management and forecasting— successful mobile solutions can help improve the workflow of the sales professional. The opportunity for the organizations that effectively capitalize on this growing trend is important. High performing organizations will use mobility to increase deal size, decrease sales cycle timelines and profitably improve sales activity. Additional benefits will include sales representative satisfaction and reduced attrition, improved customer experience, and unprecedented transparency, traceability and predictability for company executives.

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The Mobile-Enabled Sales Professional is the “New Normal” Recognizing employee preference for mobile devices, organizations are exploring initiatives using smart phones, and increasingly tablets, to achieve core objectives such as improving productivity or mobile-enabling sales representatives. The introduction of the Apple iPad in 2010 further spurred this activity, adding to the question about how tablet devices would be used for business transactions. Now the answer is emerging: tablets are quickly becoming the de-facto enablement device for mobile workforces. Gartner corroborates this by predicting that by 2014 as many as 20 percent of sales organizations will consider tablets to be the primary mobile platform for their sales forces.1

As further substantiation, according to the CSO Insights 2012 Sales Performance Optimization Study, which is sponsored by Accenture, 97 percent of firms are actively using or starting to use tablet devices in their sales organization.2 (See Figure 1.) This number has increased significantly since only one year ago, when only 45 percent of survey respondents had provided their sales forces with mobile-enabled sales capabilities.3 However, nearly half of the organizations surveyed in 2012 do not yet have a formal program around tablet usage.4 (See Figure 1.)

Figure 1: Sales forces are using tablets more frequently but without defined policies. What percentage of your sales force is currently using tablet devices to support their sales activities?

Which of the following statements best describes your company’s policy towards tablet device usage in sales?

Do not know 3.1%

51-75% 9.4%

>75% 12.5%

26-50% 12.5%

10-25% 31.3%