IntelligentAutomation forSales MobilityWHITE PAPER

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IMPACT OF MOBILITY IN THE SALES ORGANIZATIONIn November 2010, research Analyst Aberdeen Group surveyed over 200 companies who provided sales mobility support for their sales teams and concluded that sales organizations that it deemed ‘Best-in-Class’ reported 65% quota achievement compared with 54% for average performers and 22% for laggard performers. Year-over-year customer retention rates increased 5.2% for Best-in-Class companies, increased 0.7% for average performers and actually decreased 2.8% for laggards. In addition, year-over-year sales lead conversion rates increased 3.3% for Best-in-Class sales organizations, versus a 0.2% increase for average and a 3.8% decrease for laggard organizations.1

How were the Best-in-Class able to out-perform the other groups and how does this relate to the adoption of sales mobility practices? By taking a more developed approach to sales mobility that extended beyond basic access to the

Intelligent Automation for Sales Mobility

INTRODUCTIONThis White Paper is about sales mobility, mobile devices, and sales effectiveness on the iPad and other tablet computers.

We will profile sales mobility in the sales organization and look at the latest statistics behind the extraordinary growth of tablet sales in late 2011. We will outline the business benefits to intelligently enabling today’s sales managers and reps for sales mobility beyond their smart phone. Finally, we will pull this together by showcasing how Dealmaker®, the sales

performance automation solution from The TAS Group, can make the tablet-equipped sales professional more successful with its iPad-friendly functionality.

As with any of our White Papers, there will be a big variance in the seniority and experience of the readership. This White Paper aims to provide something for the complete range of requirements, but if you want to dig deeper or move wider, we urge you to get in touch with us individually. You can do this via email to: info@thetasgroup.com.

Internet and corporate information from mobile devices, and into the realm of inputting data, updating in real-time and collaboration, these forward-thinking organizations were able to empower their sales teams with the tools, processes and insights to achieve higher levels of performance.

To quote Aberdeen: “Survey results show that the firms enjoying Best-in-Class performance share several common characteristics, including:

• 87%enablesynchronizationofcalendars,contacts,events and/or tasks

• 78%supportremoteviewingandmodificationofkey CRM sales information (accounts, contacts, leads, opportunities, forecast)

• 58%provideinstantmessagingorchatonmobiledevices” 1

1Source: Aberdeen Group, Sales Mobility – Quotas Untethered, November 2010

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At a macro level, the growth of tablets looks set to continue. According to global market research firm The NPD Group, tablet shipments are set to increase from 72.7 million in 2011 to 383.3 million by 2017.3

THE BENEFITS OF INTELLIGENT, MOBILE SALES PERFORMANCE AUTOMATIONWhat is fuelling the upsurge in tablets in business? The benefits of a truly mobile – and truly empowered while mobile – sales force can be grouped into six abstract nouns: productivity, consistency, responsiveness, collaboration, access, and profitability.

1. Productivity. Perhaps the most obvious benefit you would draw, productivity is a function of the leveraging mechanism of modern communications. Connection speeds and bandwidth continue to increase, allowing remote sales people to perform the same processing and computing tasks on the road as they do from their office.

Does business still get done on the golf course? It’s probably the one area where it’s considered inappropriate to remain connected to the grid. The enhanced availability of wireless broadband has made it much easier for people to remain connected to the enterprise and their customers, and made the other traditional hubs of business – coffee shops, hotels, airports and the like – even more attractive meeting areas.

In addition, many sales organizations allow – and in fact prefer – their sales people to be based remotely, closer to their region and working from a home office as well as on the road. It follows, then, that the more time people have to do the work that they would do wired to an office computer, the more productive they are, and the more productive they are, they more success they enjoy.

These results indicate sales performance success across the spectrum of sales mobility adoption, and highlight how Best-in-Class organizations deploy sales mobility to a greater degree. The differences between the Best-in-Class and the 18% of survey respondents who did not deploy any sales mobility initiatives were, as you might imagine, even more pronounced. What is more important to realize is that the report pre-dates the enormous growth of mobile devices enjoyed by their providers throughout 2011. This cross-over of the mobile-social-local triumvirate from consumer to business has been fuelled in part by a rapidly increasing acceptance of mobile business during the course of the year, and has been aided by the evangelizing and championing efforts of businesses such as salesforce.com.

THE TABLET MARKET IN Q4 2011Smart phones, combining voice, data and image functions, continued to increase their penetration in the sales arena in 2011. As a more mature medium, however, their growth rate is dwarfed by the sharp growth curve of the new kid on the block, the tablet, which effectively combines the portability of the smart phone with the computing power and user experience of the laptop computer. Nowhere is this more apparent that in the sales figures of Apple Inc.

The tablet market is moving so quickly that it seems almost pointless to look at market figures for more than a quarter in the past. What is clear is that Apple is no longer merely a computer company. In Q1 of its 2012 financial year, which equates to calendar Q4 2011, 53% of the company’s revenues came from the iPhone. During the same period, Apple sold 15.4m iPad tablets, which was double what it sold in the same quarter a year before. And while the market share of the iPad compared to all tablet sales in Q4 dropped around 10% to 58%, the killer statistic in the context of this White Paper is that according to enterprise mobile vendor Good Technology, it luxuriates in a 96% (sic) market share of the enterprise tablet market.2

2 Source: http://www.bgr.com/2012/01/27/ipad-owns-96-of-enterprise-market-and-iphone-share-climbs-to-53-study-finds/3 Source: http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/30/tablet-shipments-to-reach-383-3-million-by-2017-46-in-emerging-markets/

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The advantage of the mobile context is that sales people can collaborate in real time with their customers and truly maximize the value of ‘face time’ for both parties. The Dealmaker application, for example, contains mapping resources that enable sales organizations to explore, validate, adjust and confirm their research into challenges and possible solutions with the customer at both an individual opportunity and an account strategy level.

5. Access. The screen size and usability limitations of smart phones disappear with the introduction of the tablet computer, with no loss of portability. The tablet replaces the need for the mouse or track pad with a screen that supports a full range of finger gesture-based commands. Furthermore, if you can demonstrate your product or services from your tablet, this sends the right message of professionalism to your customer, but also proves to them that they too can access your product or service using similar devices.

The Aberdeen study into sales mobility found that those organizations that equipped their staff with sales mobility devices, and the sales people that were more empowered for sales mobility, were the most successful.

6. Profitability. Put all of these factors together and it is clear that making it possible for sales people to work in a genuinely 2-way fashion, anytime anywhere, makes companies more successful, more profitable, and quicker to see a return on their investment into their sales organization. While it’s impossible and completely unreasonable to expect the sales force to work 24*7, sales mobility makes it possible for them, if they so wish, to increase their productive time to 16*5, or to whatever suits them.

2. Consistency. From a managerial aspect, seeing a sustained return on the investment in a sales effectiveness initiative, or in the sales organization generally, is all about consistency. Standardizing on terminology, process, methodology, workflow, in fact all the components of selling best practice, is the key to improving sales performance. Making sure that that consistency extends to travel time, and most importantly in customer and prospect interactions, is a major driver for mobilizing the sales force with technology that allows them to do everything they would want to do at the office.

Integrating sales process and methodology into CRM systems is proven to increase the use of CRM systems, and ultimately increase sales effectiveness. Being able to access and interact with hosted CRM systems anytime, anywhere further drives the adoption and use of such systems.

3. Responsiveness. When the mobile and technologically empowered sales person has access to all the answers literally at their fingertips, they can respond so much more quickly to customer issues and questions that arise either while they’re on the road, or directly in the meeting. In the Aberdeen study we cited above, ‘growing expectations or demands of customers’ was the second largest business pressure driving the adoption of sales mobility initiatives.

Being able to respond quickly to a customer in a multi-channel capacity speaks volumes to the customer about how the sales organization conducts itself, and how the customer service organization will conduct itself when the business is won and the project is live.

4. Collaboration. The tablet allows the sales person to fully interact with their device, their opportunity or account plan, their employer, and of course their customer. Organizations that sell smarter work together with their customers on the challenges that are preventing them from achieving their business goals, and on the solutions to uniquely address those challenges.

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The online video learning in the Virtual Learning System is now iPad-friendly and no longer requires Flash®. If the sales person needs refreshing on some key part of the playbook, for example, while they wait in the lobby of their customer’s office, they can view it instantaneously, which gives them the reminder and focus they need to make the meeting more productive.

“When traveling all over the globe, mobility means the world to me…” said Robert Janssen, Manager Professional Services and MDS Sales, Ricoh International. “I never leave home without my iPad. Being fully able to update my TAS plans on the iPad, especially during long hours at airport, will make life easier for me, as well at the hundreds of sales people within our international network, which will lead in an even better adoption of the methodology.”

In additional to empowering the ‘road warrior’, for the mobile sales manager and leader, the full range of Dealmaker management screens is also accessible on the iPad, including Forecast Analysis, and the Performance Coach screens of Predictive Sales Analytics.

DEALMAKER IN THE MOBILE SALES WORKPLACEThe TAS Group helps sales professionals sell smarter and manage better using Dealmaker intelligent software and proven sales methodology. Dealmaker sales performance automation software drives revenue growth for businesses worldwide, including market leaders such as Xerox, International Turnkey Systems and Alcatel Lucent.

Dealmaker delivers real-time opportunity and account management, intelligent deal coaching, accurate sales forecasts, smart playbooks, self-paced learning, and predictive analytics, resulting in measurable sales growth. According to the Aberdeen Group, customers of The TAS Group realize 21 percent greater attainment of sales quotas.

Dealmaker supports greater sales mobility with touch-screen capabilities for use on Apple iPad and other tablets. All interactive selling tools, including Political Map, Strategy Map, and Collaboration Map now support tap, swipe, pinch, and other iPad gestures. This means that sales people can follow their sales playbook, apply the methodology, receive coaching, collaborate with their customers in real time, and progress their opportunities on the move.

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Dealmaker on the iPad

Sales Process

Political Map

Coach Me

Forecast Analysis

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CONCLUSIONThe most successful sales organizations are further down the path to truly enabling their sales forces for mobility than their less adoptive counterparts. 2011 was the year in which the technology to fully empower the mobile sales person gained critical mass, precipitated largely by the continued consolidation of smart phones and extended by the explosion of iPad penetration in the enterprise. The business case and benefits for equipping the sales force center on responsiveness, productivity and real-time

collaboration with customers. Dealmaker intelligent applications enable mobile sales professionals to sell smarter, and sales managers and leaders to manage better, in a genuinely ‘always on’, 24*7*365 environment.

For more information on intelligently guided sales mobility, The TAS Group, Dealmaker, or anything else discussed in this White Paper, please contact us at info@thetasgroup.com.

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Account Planning

Virtual Learning

ABOUT THE TAS GROUPThe TAS Group helps progressive sales organizations increase their sales velocity resulting in higher win rates, bigger deals, shorter sales cycles, and more qualified deals in the pipeline. Our unique value is deep methodology embedded within intelligent Dealmaker software, 100% native in Salesforce. Smart coaching, delivered just-in-time, improves sales performance and accelerates sales results. We have changed the paradigm of improving sales effectiveness from traditional sales training to delivering sales methodology and insights when and where the sales person is working a sales opportunity.

For more information visit www.thetasgroup.com

Copyright © The TAS Group. All rights reserved. This briefing is for customer use only and no usage rights are conveyed. Nothing herein may be reproduced in any form without written permission of The TAS Group.