The growing use of mobile devices in the workforce and the evolution of mobile applications from being just a glorified “task tool” into true enterprise software – deployed as a mobile application- has helped fuel positive disruption in core business functions such as sales. Almost 20 percent of sales organizations now consider tablets as the primary mobile platform for their sales force, and these rates are projected to continue increasing as we enter 2015(1). To keep up with these advances, sales professionals are looking to enterprise mobility solutions to enable their sales force, often times without the proper plan in place to drive adoption.
Without a comprehensive strategy that addresses how business users and the sales process can be enabled by leveraging enterprise mobility, many organizations struggle with driving adoption. To help mitigate this, mobile selling tools need to enable our sales force to do their job without any hindrances. Customers and prospects don’t buy products anymore. They buy results, and solutions to their problems. They want the selling process to feel more experiential. Mobile selling tools need to elevate sales reps from product pushers to compelling storytellers.
I’ve listed three useful tips below on how you can successfully achieve mobile adoption:
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Establish a Feedback System
As mentioned in a previous post, without a system for monitoring user responses, it is difficult to determine what elements of the technology are effective and what improvements need to be made. One of the benefits of having a mobile solution is it allows the owners to track and validate what content is being viewed, clicked and presented. All of this additional intelligence could potentially be very impactful to the whole team’s effectiveness. Over time, culminating all these data points will help enhances the sales team’s understanding of what they are using and strengthen the technology itself. It is unproductive to introduce new features without the proper feedback mechanism in place for sales reps to report issues and feel confident that their concerns will be addressed.
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Enabling Efficiency
Often times, the benefits that new technology can bring are discussed very broadly, focusing on the potential of the tools rather than the real benefits they may have in the short term. As a sales rep myself, I find it very frustrating when the guidance provided is somewhat divorced from the reality that the sales reps are facing. When explaining the value proposition of a mobile solution, it must be made perfectly clear how the tool will bring value directly to the salesperson. Mobility is making it possible for the sales representative to maximize efficiency by delivering answers at the point of need and minimizing follow-up work. I can tell you firsthand that as sales teams become larger and work remote more often, the challenge of keeping up with content changes becomes larger as well. Mobile helps minimize these difficulties by allowing users to collaborate over the cloud and access content even when offline.
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Personalization
A mobile tool should be able to be used in a number of ways that the user finds comfortable. As a salesperson, it’s frustrating when a tool feels restrictive or forces the me to sell using technology in a way I find unnatural. On the contrary, if reps are given too much freedom, they may make decisions based on preference that don’t take into account process consistency, security, data rights or cost management. The key is to find the right balance of personalization and preference. Make sure to listen to your team to ensure that their concerns are being addressed and they feel comfortable with the technology.
With any change initiative, the more resources and tools you throw at the user the overwhelming it has the potential to become. In planning an adoption strategy, it is crucial to focus on ease-of-use, user experience, creating an intuitive solution that fits comfortably as part of their workflow. You can expect some degree of pushback with any new technology, but if salespeople can be properly coached on how to use the tool in a way that makes sense to them, the transition can be made much smoother.
Does your organization have a strategy for mobile adoption?
1. Gartner, “iPads: Customer-Facing Selling Will Drive iPad Use for Sales,” May 20, 2011, by Robert P. Desisto, ID: G00213136.
John Burns is the Director of Sales and Marketing at Mediafly, Inc and the author of Mediafly’s Sales Insight blog. Please have a look at some of the products and solutions John has had a hand in selling: SalesKit and ProReview.
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