The Power Of Mobile Sales Productivity EMPOWERING FIELD SALES TEAMS TO GET A STEP AHEAD, WITHOUT THE EXTRA STEPS

Transcription

1 EMPOWERING FIELD SALES TEAMS TO GET A STEP AHEAD, WITHOUT THE EXTRA STEPS

2 CONTENTS Introduction 3 A day in the life of a field salesperson. 4 The 2 pillars of mobile sales productivity... 5 Improving sales productivity... 6 The rise of mobility Conclusions. 14 About Tact... 15

3 INTRODUCTION Sales is evolving, technology is changing, and customer habits and expectations are not the same as they were a decade ago. In particular, the World is going mobile, and businesses are more competitive than ever before. Meanwhile, most of the legacy sales software most notably CRM systems that teams are forced to use today hasn t evolved much since the 90 s. This software wasn t built with mobility in mind and was not built to maximize salesperson productivity. CRM systems have been and continue to serve primarily as databases that need to be manually updated by the sales team Mobile sales productivity apps are not replacements for a corporate-based SFA system. Most of these apps will integrate information with a sales organization's SFA system Hype Cycle for CRM Sales, Gartner 2015 To address the shortcomings of core CRM systems when it comes to adoption and productivity, a new category of mobile sales productivity apps is emerging. These apps often integrate information with a sales organization's CRM system such as Salesforce rather than acting as a replacement. And they capture relevant information automatically based on a salesperson s behavior instead of forcing them to adapt their behavior to how the software is designed. Mobile sales productivity apps capture information automatically based on salesperson behavior Hype Cycle for CRM Sales, Gartner 2015 According to Gartner, Mobile sales productivity apps help salespeople be more productive in their daily tasks, such as logging s and phone calls, preparing for sales meetings, managing tasks, and following through with prospects for fulfillment. 3

4 THE DAY IN THE LIFE OF A FIELD SALESPERSON Saving 1-2 hours a day by cutting out the extra steps Life with a mobile sales productivity app can be dramatically better than one without. Here s a prime example. When a salesperson is done with a phone call, they re prompted to log the call and, optionally, add a note and/or task. They can do all of these sales activities within a fluid sequence of steps within the same application, and then move onto their next set of activities which means they can get a lot more done. The same salesflow, or sales workflow, could take place for logging s, in-person meetings, conference calls, presentations and other sales activities. The alternative to this would be to close out of your phone app, go to a separate mobile CRM app, find an opportunity, create an activity, and then log the call manually. After all of those steps, the salesperson might then have to create a separate follow-up task then go into the opportunity change any important details about the deal. Finally, if they want to log another activity or go back to their daily salesflow, they have to close the mobile CRM app and open their separate communication app, such as or calendar. All of the abovementioned activities would be done in different applications, separate screens, and completely unguided so a salesperson is forced into a lot of extra steps, taking more time, and requires a lot of self-discipline. Home As with any repetitive workflow, the minutes saved at every step can add up to significant hours saved every day, week, quarter and year. Many salespeople voluntarily seek out and use these apps because they can save them 1-2 hours day. 4

5 THE 2 PILLARS OF MOBILE SALES PRODUCTIVITY A simple framework for thinking about the ideal mobile sales productivity platforms of the future Productivity When people think about sales productivity, CRM often comes to mind first since it s at the core of many sales operations. And while it s an important piece, they are not one in the same. CRM systems are mostly a system of record-keeping for the company and critical to reporting and forecasting. However, they aren t a driver of productivity to a salesperson on a day to day basis. And that's because they spend most of their selling time in communicating with customers in person, over phone calls or on . Traditionally, these tools have been walled off from one another, disconnected from the company's CRM, inefficient workflows between them, lacked adequate contextual data in each application, and required significant data entry to keep them in sync. Yet solutions today are now becoming simple enough for widespread adoption especially in connecting daily sales tools with CRM systems. Mobility Everyone associates "mobile" with being able to work from anywhere. But most don't realize that true mobile apps also work offline: your Mail, Calendar, Photos, Music, and Books apps all work that way. The user experience is not impacted by how spotty the cellular coverage may be. And mobility goes far beyond offline to include all of the device capabilities such as the camera, push notifications, GPS, sensors, and more. While these capabilities may be taken for granted in the consumer World, they ve unfortunately been neglected in many sales applications, requiring salespeople to do more manual data entry, be excessively proactive to stay on top of their work, and relatively blind to the valuable opportunities around them. For a long time, mobile sales teams have worked with outdated or underdeveloped tools to do their jobs even though the mobile capabilities have been readily available. This is quickly changing, and a lot of traditionally web-based cloud solutions will be left in the past. 5

6 IMPROVING SALES PRODUCTIVITY Optimizing a salesperson's day-to-day workflow by focusing on their tasks, not separate applications and data. Businesses are more competitive than ever before. Likewise, sales leaders are demanding more of their sales teams to stay ahead of the competition. The top sales organizations will adopt the best tools they can to get the job done with less resources in less time. Sales productivity platforms especially mobile ones of the future will at least have four critical characteristics. Nearly 60% of high- performing sales teams already use or are planning to use a mobile sales app (2x more than underperformers). Among all sales leaders surveyed, use of mobile apps for salespeople will more than double in the next two years (125% growth) State of Sales, Salesforce Research 1 INTEGRATED PERSONAL APPLICATIONS As a result, these sales productivity solutions are able to capture and share valuable prospect communications across all of these applications automatically. An increasing number of sales solutions are starting to incorporate consumer-oriented applications into core business systems. For example, communication applications such as phone, calendar and applications are being This will eliminate significant manual data entry, in addition more deeply integrated into CRM systems. to creating a better workflow between specific task-related apps. Sales leaders will proactively look for solutions that embrace the blurring line between personal and professional applications to make their team more productive. 6

7 IMPROVING SALES PRODUCTIVITY Optimizing a salesperson's day-to-day workflow by focusing on their tasks, not separate applications and data. 2 CRM ACCESSIBILITY Beyond basic integrations between personal applications with CRM systems, it is increasingly important to embedding CRM data and functionality into every communication and activity within these applications when possible. If most of the work salespeople do day-to-day are in these personal applications, then the cost in productivity of not having CRM data and functionality at a salesperson s fingertips is quite high. Forward-thinking sales leaders will shift their perspective from forcing salespeople into CRM systems and, instead, find solutions that bring CRM to whatever applications salespeople use to do their jobs. Forward-thinking sales leaders will shift their perspective from forcing salespeople into CRM systems and, instead, find solutions that bring CRM to whatever applications salespeople use to do their jobs. The opportunity to connect consumeroriented apps with traditional CRM for a sales system is already being recognized by both CRM vendors, and consumer app vendors. An organization that has salespeople actively seeking out such mobile apps should be delighted. Principles for the Future of CRM for Sales, Gartner

8 IMPROVING SALES PRODUCTIVITY Optimizing a salesperson's day-to-day workflow by focusing on their tasks, not separate applications and data. 3 SIMPLICITY Everything from data entry to executing specific tasks must as simple to do one time as it is to do a thousand times in a day, requiring limited data for input or viewing to reduce complexity. Thanks to innovations such as voice recognition and dictation, for example, this is possible. Mobile sales productivity apps will increase sales adoption and improve data quality by using a less intrusive approach to collecting sales data. The CRM Perspective on Mobile for the Enterprise, Gartner 2014 It s one thing for an application to look nice or to have limited functionality so as not to overwhelm the user. It s another to provide robust enterprise functionality with a habit-forming consumer application feel. It s harder than it sounds for sales productivity solutions, but a growing number of providers are proving that it s possible. Sales leaders have traditionally had to make trade-offs between simplicity and functionality, but the leaders who understand the key of simplicity will continue to search for better solutions to keep their team happy and productive. 8

9 IMPROVING SALES PRODUCTIVITY Optimizing a salesperson's day-to-day workflow by focusing on their tasks, not separate applications and data. 4 SPEED Many providers simply get this wrong. Instead of building products around isolated objects like contacts, accounts, opportunities, tasks, s and so on, they should be built around specific tasks. As with most tasks you do in your personal life planning travels, organizing a group dinner, coordinating your day with a loved one, or staying in touch with old friends most of the tasks you do involve multiple applications in a unique sequence of steps with some level of flexibility in the order of those steps. Since there s oftentimes more variability in your personal workflows, it s more difficult to do them quickly. However, with a more focused set of workflows like that of a salesperson, it is much easier and far more important to build a solution to do them quickly. Sales representatives and sales leaders expend up to 16 hours per week on nonselling tasks. The CRM Perspective on Mobile for the Enterprise, Gartner 2014 The best leaders recognize that, at the end of the day, the sales organization that gets the most done will win, and they ll look for solutions that help them achieve this as best as possible. 9

10 THE RISE OF MOBILITY Get the most out of your mobile workforce and the mobile devices they use The World is going mobile, and technologies are catching up to those who are already there. In fact, the landscape in which businesses operate changed forever in early 2014 when Internet usage on mobile devices exceeded PC usage. Top outside sales leaders have cobbled together solutions Today s top sales organizations are significantly more likely to use mobile sales apps, helping them close business from anywhere State of Sales, Saleforce Research to make their mobile sales teams more effective, while forward-thinking inside sales leaders recognize the value of getting the most out of their workforce while they re out of the office. Leading sales organizations have already developed their By 2016, over 90% of all functions will be mobile-first for business-to-business sales operations and sales personnel. mobile for many, mobile-first strategies to empower their workforce inside and out of the office. And they ll continue to look for better solutions to stay ahead of their organizational needs, and maintain a competitive edge. The CRM Perspective on Mobile for the Enterprise, Gartner 2014 Next-generation mobile sales productivity platforms will at least have critical characterstics: 1 NATIVE DEVELOPMENT Native apps are superior to HTML5 web apps in many ways, including speed, battery life preservation, and access to both software and hardware device capabilities. Simply put, most of the apps you use and love are native, whether for work or personal use. 10

11 THE RISE OF MOBILITY Get the most out of your mobile workforce and the mobile devices they use Using local memory on your phone compared to running your application off of an internet connection can be like night and day the former is naturally faster and smoother. Moreover, when you use a chatty app throughout the day that requires a constant internet connection, it drains your battery. What s more, native applications have deeper access to your phone capabilities to give you more powerful and fluid functionality like your GPS, camera, other sensors, push notifications and more we ll talk about this in further detail later. 55% of salespeople will access sales applications exclusively through smartphones or tablets by Now is the perfect time to start thinking about your mobile strategy to boost productivity of your field sales team The CRM Perspective on Mobile for the Enterprise, Gartner 2014 Offline services provide immense value to application users; being able to use the app absent network connectivity simply scratches the surface. Offline support also ensures outstanding app performance, regardless of network connectivity or speed The Offline Mobile Challenge, Forrester OFFLINE CAPABILITIES Offline capabilities are a core capability of native applications but is increasingly used beyond just reliable application access. Properly leveraging offline magnifies the benefits of native applications by further conserving battery life, and pushing the limits of application speed and smoothness. 11

12 THE RISE OF MOBILITY Get the most out of your mobile workforce and the mobile devices they use We ve all dropped calls, experienced bad connections or been out of service areas from time to time. However, people often overlook that poor mobile performance is often also caused by congestion on cellular towers. Ever notice that your signal lags and you can't even "check-in" on facebook at a sports stadium, concert, or parade? That is because there are simply too many people using their cell phones at once even if you have four cellular bars. The challenge with mobility is not limited to dropped calls and spotty cellular coverage it s also about latency. You may have a full signal, but everything can still be slow. Using offline functionality as a buffer during these peak periods any day provide a much smoother and more reliable experience on mobile applications. This mobile challenge isn t going away anytime soon, either, as cell phone usage continues to eclipse every prior year. 3 SYNCING Syncing will help with this because you can seamlessly flow between offline and online with smart syncing when a connection is made. The apps you use every day, such as itunes, Mail, Contacts, Calendar, Dropbox and Evernote share something in common: they sync data locally on the phone which enables them to work offline even when the data connection is lost or spotty. In addition, when a connection is available, the data can re-synced to keep these mobile apps up-to-date. It s no coincidence many of the best mobile apps have robust offline functionality. 12

13 THE RISE OF MOBILITY Get the most out of your mobile workforce and the mobile devices they use 4 DEEP DEVICE INTEGRATION It s one thing to leverage local capabilities here and there. It s another to build your entire mobile experience around it as these capabilities continue to develop. Today, it s about cameras, GPS, push notifications and some less-used sensors to for key relevant data, configured by the users. For example, salespeople can use their cameras to scan a business card directly into their CRM systems or use GPS and geolocation to find prospects and customers near you. Tomorrow, mobile sales productivity tools will have far more sensors, deeper cross-application user flows, additional hardware integrations, and more to further empower their mobile users. 13

14 CONCLUSIONS Whether or not you ve already begun planning and executing your mobile sales strategy, it s important to think about the detailed we ve covered when choosing the right mobile sales productivity solution. As you think about these choices, there are several key recommendations from Gartner s Mobile Devices Are a Major Disrupter for Sales Applications we d like to reiterate. 1 ADOPT MOBILE-FIRST Adopt mobile first mentality to CRM implementations, and make mobile devices part of the first-phase delivery. 2 DESIGN FOR HIGH-VALUE TASKS Design mobile applications around the high-value tasks that salespeople and managers do throughout a typical day in the life, not the system objects, even if it means developing custom mobile apps. 3 ENSURE CRM INTEGRATION Ensure any mobile sales application and data integrates with your core CRM platform. 4 CONSTRAIN DATA REQUIREMENTS Constrain the amount of data that is required for input or viewed based on time a salesperson will have to interact with the mobile application. 5 LEVERAGE PUSH NOTIFICATIONS Leverage push notifications for key relevant data, which should be configured by the users as to the desired information for notification. 14

15 The Human-Friendly Sales Experience Touch, text & talk to your smart devices works with Demo Tact Today: tactile.com/demo.html 15