The Definitive Guide to Mobile Sales Enablement

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Page 1: The Definitive Guide to Mobile Sales Enablement

© 2012 Mutual Mobile, Inc. | (800) 208 3563 | mutualmobile.com 1

THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE TO:MOBILE SALES ENABLEMENTHow tablets are transforming sales

Why Mobile Sales Enablement is important

The rapid adoption of mobile devices has sales and marketing leaders reinventing how they go-to-market. Tablets, in particular, have demonstrated the potential to drive new revenue growth, differentiate the buying experience, and solve some very big sales productivity problems.

Leading sales organizations are starting to use tablets to create engaging mobile experiences that deliver transformational business results. The Sales Management Association found that 70% of sales organizations using tablets are already realizing a positive return on their investment.(8) These early adopters are building customized mobile sales enablement solutions that help sales reps to:

•Win more deals with real-time access to the right sales assets and information at the right place and time to advance the sale;

• Streamline and simplify the sales process, drive productivity, and shrink the sales cycle;

•Differentiate the client experience with consumer grade design and highly customized content;

•Unlock the power of analytics to measure and optimize the sales approach.

More than 90% of sales organizations plan to invest more in tablets in the coming year.(8) In the next four years, businesses will spend an estimated $26 billion on mobile application development and mobile process reinvention.(3)

To help you think about how tablets can transform your sales results, this paper outlines key success factors Mutual Mobile has identified after creating over 400 mobile experiences for leading enterprises. Our goal is to explain how tablets are transforming sales and illustrate ways your organization can use tablets to grow revenues, improve sales effectiveness and differentiate from the competition.

What is Mobile Sales Enablement?

Mobile Sales Enablement solutions are applications that help your field salespeople use tablets and mobile devices to

better engage clients, grow sales, differentiate the client experience, and improve productivity. They ensure that every

seller has the required knowledge, skills, processes and behaviors to optimize every interaction with buyers.

This can include:

• Accessing the right sales and marketing content at the right place and time to move a specific sales opportunity forward;

• Delivering a rich and distinctive buying experience;

• Reinforcing product training and coaching with guides, plays, and decision support tools;

• Sharing selling best practices, guides and plays across the organization.

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© 2012 Mutual Mobile, Inc. | (800) 208 3563 | mutualmobile.com 2

The sales effectiveness challenge

Sales organizations have invested millions of dollars in technology, training, and content assets to drive profitable growth at lower selling costs. To date, the results have been mixed. For example, only slightly more than 15% of Chief Sales Officers say their CRM implementations have resulted in increased revenues.(9)

Despite significant investment and effort to improve sales effectiveness, CRM is ranked as the top priority of CSOs around the globe in 2012.(7)

Most organizations still face some difficult and persistent problems as they strive for profitable growth in an increasingly challenging marketplace:

• Inefficient training. Traditional approaches to training and sharing best practice are very inefficient. And, sales managers have few tools to help them coach effectively. Research indicates that without systemic, ongoing learning and reinforcement 84% of what was initially learned is lost within 90 days. (10)

• Unproductive salespeople. Only 29% of a sales person’s time is spent on customer-facing selling.[12] Researching, preparing for, and following up on sales calls takes a significant amount of time and is still very labor intensive. For example, salespeople spend 30 to 50 hours per month searching for information and re-creating content.(4)

• Inconsistent execution. Most organizations invest in sales processes, guides, plays, and workflows in an effort to share the best practices of “star” performers and improve overall sales performance. But sales organizations across every industry are underutilizing their sales methodology and failing to use documented best practices. As a result, the performance gap between top and middle sales performers persists.

• Differentiation. Sales organizations are struggling to adapt to rapidly changing buyer expectations for insights, fast access to information, and a rich interactive experiences. Increasingly sophisticated and time starved buyers view anyone who does not offer insights, ideas, or a distinctive buying experience as a commodity — or a waste of time.

• High selling costs. Selling costs as a percentage of revenues remain high because expensive sales assets and infrastructure — sales content, CRM systems, and training assets — are not fully utilized by salespeople. For example, salespeople consider up to 90% of the collateral materials created by marketing useless(1) and 46% of CSOs say their CRM tool adoption rate continues to be low.(7)

The reasons these problems are so hard to solve are manifold and well documented. They range from the complexity of technology to the clunkiness of laptops to limitations on training and coaching time. The growing appeal of using tablets as selling tools is that they have unique attributes which have demonstrated the potential

to change the game and solve these selling problems.

The reasons Sales Effectiveness is a top challenge for Chief Sales Officers in 2012

• Salespeople consider up to 90% of materials created by marketing useless [1]

• Over 80% of training efforts are not retained by sales after 90 days [10]

• 71% of sales reps’ time are spent not selling [12]

• 46% of CSOs say their CRM tool adoption rate is low [7]

• 25% of CSOs say their reps use their sales methodology less than half of the time [7]

• 60% of B2B purchasing decision-making is independently completed by the customer before the first sales call [6]

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How tablets are transforming sales

Gartner has predicted that in 2012 alone, 118.9 million tablets will be sold worldwide.[13] The rapid adoption of tablets is redefining sales, because they offer unique capabilities and a growing number of innovations that better meet the needs of salespeople than PC’s. Sales teams are clamoring to adopt tablets because they make it simple, intuitive, and easy to:

•Navigate content quickly with multi-touch tablet interface and advanced search tools;

• Share rich video, 3D animations, graphic images, and visual ordering tools with clients;

• Collaborate with clients in a face-to-face environment since several people can see the same content at once on a tablet laid flat;

• Gather and record more client information during sales interactions using image and voice capture, interactive survey tools, and location based services;

• Communicate with ready, remote access to email, videoconferencing, and social media;

• Execute sales transactions with on-site quotes, digital signatures, expedited order entry, and live tracking.

Combining the unique capabilities of tablets with the power of social, analytics and cloud computing can yield sales productivity improvements not achievable with personal computers.

This powerful combination is driving the rapid adoption of tablets by sales organizations. Over 90% of firms are actively using or starting to use tablet devices in their sales organizations according to a recent survey of 1,500 companies.(7) Currently, 40% of salespeople are equipped with tablets, according to recent research by the Sales Management Association.(8)

Because tablets can hear, see, read, communicate and navigate they have sparked a wave of “first-to-mobile” innovations that offer unprecedented potential to transform the buying experience.

First-to-Mobile Innovations

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© 2012 Mutual Mobile, Inc. | (800) 208 3563 | mutualmobile.com 4

How Mobile Sales Enablement solutions can solve these sales problems

To harness the potential of tablets to solve these pressing sales problems, many sales organizations have developed mobile applications, or mobile sales enablement solutions. Mobile sales enablement solutions are tablet applications that make sure your field salespeople have the knowledge, skills, processes and behaviors to optimize every interaction with buyers.

Armed with mobile sales enablement solutions, sales reps can collaborate better with their team and clients to:

•Win more deals. Deliver a distinctive client experience and real-time access to the right sales assets and information to advance the sale. For example, a study by CSO Insight found that sales organizations that used mobile CRM and social sales tools won 7% more deals than their peer firms who did not use mobile tools.(2) Mobile sales enablement solutions can help you win more deals with:

» Rich, interactive experiences that instantly captivate customers leveraging graphics, video, animations, and 3D assets in a consumer-grade user interface;

» Real-time access to the right sales assets and information — at the right place and time — to advance the sale;

» Improved time to market by making it faster and easier to deploy, update, and adapt sales programs in the field;

» More collaborative client interactions that use the intuitive, multi-touch touchscreen coupled with strategic content to invite engagement and promote a more consultative selling approach.

• Improve productivity. Streamline and simplifying the sales process, to eliminate wasted costs and shrink the sales cycle. In a study by CDW IT Monitor, found that 74% of IT decision-makers indicated that using tablets and smartphones had led to an increase in productivity in their organization.(11) Mobile sales enablement solutions can help you improve sales productivity by:

» Allowing salespeople to complete work any place, any time — with our without an internet connection;

» Providing fast and flexible access to product catalogs, workflow management, and CRM systems from one central “hub;”

» Helping people to spend more time selling by eliminating or automating steps of the sales process and administrative sales follow up tasks;

» Simplifying the capture and input of information during in face-to-face customer interactions — from verbal commentary to needs assessments and project requirements;

» Eliminating the costs of printing, storing, and distributing paper-based sales collateral and pitchbooks;

» Helping sales reps get up-to-speed faster with sales guides, coaching tools, and playbooks that reinforce your training and coaching investment in real selling situations.

• Sell smarter. Unlock the power of analytics to quickly interpret and optimize the sales approach. Mobile sales enablement can help you sell smarter by:

» Quickly gathering and interpreting previously unseen data patterns in performance, customer insights and market trends;

» Capturing, identifying and sharing best practices of top performers;

» Providing data-driven decision support in the field to support better cross selling recommendations, consultative selling, and advice;

» Tracking and understanding sales asset usage, efficacy, and waste.

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The value of customizing an application to your unique go-to-market process

Customizing a sales enablement solution to your go-to-market process allows you to maximize your return on investment and more fully realize the benefits. The better an application aligns with and supports your unique selling approach, the greater the impact it will have on sales performance. Mobile sales enablement solutions can be custom designed to streamline and support every step of your sales process — from planning, to face-to-face meetings, to post call follow-up.

• Planning. In pre-sales planning, mobile applications can provide fast access to relevant industry, product, and customer research and intelligence — any place and any time. They help salespeople collaborate with peers through social learning and best practices sharing. And, they point them to the right sales guides, coaching tools, and playbooks that are right for a specific selling situation.

• Engagement. Because they are mobile, these solutions can support salespeople on the road and in sales meetings. Custom applications offer sales people real-time access to the right sales and marketing assets at the right time to advance the sale. Data-driven decision support and assessment tools make it easier to deliver custom, expert advice in consultative selling situations. They can also be designed to foster user interaction with interactive questionnaires, rich product catalogs and visual configuration interfaces.

• Follow up. They ensure post sales follow-up is simple, fast and consistent. Streamline the capture of the customer interaction — voice, image and text — and automatically deliver it into CRM systems of record. They make follow-up tasks simpler with workflow automation and easy integration to transactional and calendaring systems. And, they allow you to analyze sales opportunities, best practices, asset usage, and efficacy.

CoStar, the leading provider of commercial real estate information, created a mobile application that allows realtors access comprehensive property listings on the go, pulling up information such as regional demographics, property analytics, and tenant information from over 2.8 million properties without ever having to return to the office.

Custom luxury menswear company, J.Hilburn, created an application that helped mobile style advisors to access client profile information, then custom configure and order clothes for them, visually, fast and error-free.

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• Control. The low-cost and intuitive nature of sales and marketing technology has led to a proliferation of “one-off” sales applications and mobile devices across large enterprises. Impatient salespeople experiment with mobile applications and start using personal devices if none are provided by IT. These independent mobile sales experiments create management issues for sales, marketing, and IT. These range from managing brand consistency to single sign-on access, and security concerns.

• Continuous innovation. The mobile environment is very dynamic, with new advances, operating systems, and device options are coming out at a rapid clip. Keeping up with “first-to-mobile” innovation and managing future releases of your solution to accommodate changing buyer needs and opportunities makes ongoing management of mobile sales applications challenging.

• Sales process alignment. Third-party, single point solutions and independent development efforts may not realize end-to-end benefits if they do not support the entire selling process. In general, the return on an investment in a sales enablement application is proportional to how well it aligns with and supports your unique selling approach and buyer needs.

• Lifecycle management. Once an application is deployed, it must be supported, enhanced, and “future-proofed” to ensure it will work with an ever changing array of devices, operating systems, and formats.

• Business impact. Breakthrough results are hard to achieve and measure without an overarching vision and business case agreed to by a cross-functional set of stakeholders — including sales, marketing, and IT leadership.

Why and when a “customized” approach makes sense

There are a variety of ways to approach mobile sales enablement.

Many organizations start by experimenting with third-party, single point solutions — such as sales portals to house sales content or assessment tools that foster collaboration. Others build homegrown software to provide access to internal data and resources. These are inexpensive ways to get started and prove the value of using tablets as a sales aide.

With experience, many business leaders realize a more customized approach will be needed if they want to realize transformational returns on investment and sustainable success. Based on our success creating over 400 mobile applications for leading enterprises, we suggest you consider these success factors as you think through your approach to using tablets to support sales.

Nine Ways Mobile Sales Enablement Can Transform The Sales Process

Planning

• Access to research and sales intelligence

• Social learning and best practices sharing

• Sales guides, coaching tools, and playbooks

Engagement

• Real-time access to sales and marketing assets

• Data-driven decision support, assessment tools, and advice

• User interaction, collaboration, and visual configuration interfaces

Follow-up

• Streamlines field data capture and integration into CRM

•Workflow automation and integration to transactional and calendaring systems

• Analysis of sales opportunities, best practices, asset usage, and efficacy

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• User experience. A well-crafted user experience is ultimately a core driver of return on investment, because it directly impacts adoption by salespeople, revenue lift and differentiation in the eyes of the customer. Creating a proprietary, rich, and immersive user experience is very important to generating the most value from the unique capabilities of a tablet.

• Time to market. Working with an expert in mobile engineering and design can be the fastest way to deploy a solution across the enterprise given the relative scarcity of in-house mobile development resources and the headaches of customizing out-of-the-box solutions. Audi created a mobile application that allows dealers to illustrate and

configure the features, options, and capabilities of the A8 with rich video, interactivity and fully rendered 3D animation.

What to look for in a mobile partner

Developing, deploying, and supporting an enterprise mobile application requires a partner with different capabilities. Mobile devices are not a mere extension of the desktop or CRM, they represent a unique opportunity to completely re-imagine the way software is made and used. Consider these criteria when looking for a partner to work with you on a custom mobile sales enablement solution for your enterprise.

•World class design and engineering. Look for integrated design and engineering teams that deliver a consumer-grade mobile experience. Solutions developed by IT services can fail to deliver well-crafted user experiences that drive adoption and affinity across a sales fleet, while agencies can lack the technical competency to deliver well-architected, reliable, and maintainable software.

• Full service end-to-end support. You need a complete solution from concept and design to development, delivery, and support. It is important to have a developer oversee the solution’s complete lifecycle from consideration to research, design, build, QA, test, launch, and post-launch business case verification. It can also include value-add services like break-replace device service.

• Mobile DNA. An organization that specializes in mobility as its primary line of business will provide you deep domain expertise to stay ahead of industry innovation and mobile best practices. An exclusive focus on mobile will help ensure superior, cutting edge solutions and mobile experiences across Android, iOS, and the mobile web.

• Integration. The demonstrated ability to integrate mobile applications with major legacy systems that support sales including CRM, CMS, ERP, and Order Management is critical. This will mean a developer can build on best practices derived from prior deployment successes and leverage reusable frameworks so less time is needed to address recurring challenges.

• Scale. A company that can work at the scale necessary to support an enterprise deployment will provide expertise and diverse, specialized skill sets that boutique firms can’t provide.

A good way to get started

Deploying a customized mobile sales enablement solution at a large enterprise is a relatively new discipline. Unlike traditional CRM, agency and integration projects, it requires vision, a business case and a clear roadmap for success.

To improve sales effectiveness, the solution must be tailored to your business strategy and sales process. If you want to transform your sales performance you need to rethink how you sell and envision a new value proposition in the eyes of the client.

If you are interested in exploring the potential of customized mobile sales enablement, we recommend;

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Citations

1. Coalition to Leverage and Optimize Sales Effectiveness and CMO

Council survey. (2008). Via: American Marketing Association. (2009,

July 30). Made for Each Other. Marketing News, 16-18. Retrieved

from http://www.marketingpower.com/ResourceLibrary/Publications/

MarketingNews/2009/43/7_30_09%20MN/Made4EachOther.pdf

2. CSO Insights. (2012). Sales Performance Optimization: 2012 Core

CRM Analysis. Retrieved from https://news.citrixonline.com/wp-content/

uploads/2012/02/2012-Sales-Performance-Optimization-Study-.pdf

3. Forrester Research. (2011, Feb). Mobile App Internet Recasts the Software

and Services Landscape Report. Retrieved from http://www.forrester.com/

home#/Mobile+App+Internet+Recasts+The+Software+And+Services+Landsc

ape/quickscan/-/E-RES58179

4. Aberdeen Group. (2002). Bridging the Great Divide: Process, Technology,

and the Marketing/Sales Interface. Retrieved from http://www.

silverbulletgroup.com/resources/research.shtml

5. Sales Management Association. (2012, April). Research Update: The iPad’s

Impact on the Sales Force. Retrieved from http://salesmanagement.org/

blog/sales-management-and-the-ipad

6. Corporate Executive Board. (2011) The Most Important Number in B2B

Marketing. Retrieved from http://mlcwideangle.exbdblogs.com/2011/08/31/

the-most-important-number-in-b2b-marketing/

7. CSO Insights survey (2012). Connecting the Dots on Sales Performance.

8. Sales Management Association. What’s on Your iPad? Retrieved from

http://salesmanagement.org/webcasts/single-article/whats-on-your-ipad

9. CSO Insights survey (2012). Selling More with Mobile Solutions.

10. Sales Performance Optimization study. (2010). Via: Sales Performance

International (2010) The Future of Sales Training: Why Sales Training Often

Fails, 3.

11. CDW. (2012, May 15). IT Monitor Shows Overall Technology Spending

Continues Upward Trajectory, Led by Small Business and Public Sector.

Retrieved from http://www.cdwitmonitor.com/nationalMonitor_may12.php

12. SEC Solutions B2B Sales Index. (2011). Via: Harvard Business Review.

(2011, Feb. 8) Are Your Sales Reps Spending Too Much Time in Front of

Customers? Retrieved from http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/02/are_your_sales_

reps_spending_t.html

13. Gartner (2012). Via: ZDNet (2011, April 11). Tablet sales worldwide to

almost double in 2012. Retrieved from http://www.zdnet.com/tablet-sales-

worldwide-to-almost-double-in-2012-2062304463/

About Mutual MobileMutual Mobile has delivered over 400 mobile experiences across iOS, Android, and mobile web. Our end-to-end solutions have delighted major clients including Google, Audi, Cisco, and Xerox — and have led to major business transformations. We’ve quadrupled the productivity of one client’s mobile fleet and connected a quarter of a million engineers in a massive global support system for another.

We’ve also received numerous awards and accolades, including recognition as a Forbes Most Promising Company, a 2012 Webby Nomination in the Retail/Tablet category, and a 2011 ADDY Award from the AAF. Mutual Mobile is experienced with sales enablement that combines common solutions — from presenting the latest sales collateral to gathering usage analytics to making selling easier and more streamlined than ever before.

• Get educated. Educate your team on best practices in mobile sales enablement by showing “first-to-mobile” innovations and examples of experiences created in your industry.

• Create a prototype. Given the range of potential ways tablets can create value, a good idea is to create a prototype of what a sales enablement solution might look like in your unique selling approach.

• Create your own vision. Conduct a strategy workshop to explore the opportunities to transform your go-to-market process and create a business case and plan for the coming year.

• Define your roadmap. If you are ready to deploy a custom mobile sales enablement application, conduct a discovery exercise to define a design and deployment roadmap to set you on the path for success.