The trend is clear: mobile sales teams are more efficient.
Do you want to increase sales productivity throughout the entire team? Do your salespeople use a CRM or CPQ platform? If you said "yes" to these questions, you might want to consider outfitting your sales professionals with tablets.
Mobile solutions enable faster communication between sales staff and their clients, and make a huge difference in meeting the needs of customers. The best example: real-time access to information, increases in productivity and better client experiences created by enabling salespersons to use tablets will certainly lead to more purchases placed in a firm's proposal management software.
Tablets can transform sales teams
According to a recent study conducted by enterprise application provider Seismic, more than 70 percent of Salesforce CRM users said they spend up to 5 hours per day on their tablet, while these gadgets have become the primary device for nearly 25 percent of people. Tablets have the potential to give sales professionals the opportunity to not only improve sales numbers at their business, but also form better relationships with their customer base.
"Our survey findings validate the growing importance of tablets in the enterprise," said Doug Winter, CEO at Seismic. "Salespeople need mobile applications that are easy to use and fit the needs of their job – including facilitating better presentations and providing easier access to existing account and client information. As apps continue to be developed with the enterprise in mind, we'll see more companies using tablets to gain an edge against their competition."
Close more deals thanks to the power of tablets
Tablets (or a new generation laptop with touchscreen) give salespeople the ability to access vital information during meetings with clients. Even on the road, sales reps can prepare customized product offerings for prospects on the way to sales meetings. The possibilities are endless when it comes to these devices. Here are some ideas that sales professionals can use to finish the job when meeting with potential customers:
Supplement presentations with visuals: Salespeople should always be working on ways to engage prospects during their sales pitch. A great way to break up the presentation is to incorporate tablets by showing a graphic that could engage the audience and help them learn about the company's offerings.
Access data in real time: Does a prospect want to know about some of the productivity gains that customers can experience when using the firm's products? This isn't a problem when using tablets because sales teams can access information from any location with an Internet connection.
Higher levels of productivity: When concluding a sales meeting, professionals can use their tablets to update customer information, ensuring that their sales manager and the rest of their team has the most current client information.
Enabling a mobile workforce can lead to more sales. This is why many organizations are embracing mobility as a requirement in their business plan. New IBM research polled more than 600 professionals, and 58 percent reported believing that smartphone and tablets enable employees to respond to their customers more quickly.
Leaders see the value in speed
Investing in solutions that increase sales productivity is a priority for business owners who want to gain a competitive edge over other firms. If this means accommodating a mobile workforce, leaders are certainly ready to take the necessary steps. The study showed that more than three-quarters of leaders are planning to increase their funding for technologies that improve an employee's ability to work outside the office.
Read: "It is far too limiting to define mobility simply as a device or a channel for transactions," said Kevin Custis, social business and mobile practices leader at IBM. "The organizations that come out ahead will be the ones that prioritize mobile and redefine its use to drive a new set of business expectations and user experiences."
Companies increasingly fund the equipment and accommodate a mobile sales staff with not just the hardware, but also the premiere SaaS platforms for sales automation and proposal building. An infographic in a Salesforce blog post showed 90 percent of organizations believe mobile sales enablement is a high priority.
