Mobile Sales Apps are essential today for every field sales and retail organization across the domestic and international market. In this mobile world, app store solutions have become an integral part of our lives—both personally and professionally. Google has trained us to rely on information search versus information retention — in 2016, an Accenture report stated that 87% of learning was forgotten within 30 days, a number that likely remains unimproved. Amazon has trained us to buy in-the-moment when a need arises, lessening our need for scheduled shopping trips and lengthy item lists.
We’ve now entered a time where mobile sales applications and sales automation are the only way for businesses with large sales workforces to survive. This makes sense for salespeople given they are increasingly away from their desk but still need access to the tools to manage information and maintain customer relationships, in the moment, on any device, anywhere.
Those that use mobile sales apps have a clear advantage over those that don’t:
"High-performing sales teams are 3.5x more likely than under-performers to rate their mobile sales capabilities as outstanding or very good."
–State of Sales Report, Salesforce
The Good News
Sales teams have a wide range of sales applications available on mobile to help them work from the field or the retail floor more fluidly with greater success and end-user experience. These apps perform many useful functions, such as order and invoice management, sales content support and team collaboration. Addressing the operational process that expends so much of our time allows for deeper customer engagements and dialogue, opening new avenues for product opportunity and partnership.
In my years of experience in this space, and working with thousands of developers over the past decade, I wanted to highlight two solutions on the market that address these major buckets in tandem with Bigtincan. When selected and paired correctly, 2-3 native mobile applications will support the full range of sales activities:
Order Management for a New Age.
The faster a sales rep can process a customer’s order, the better. Less paperwork means more time developing the account and cross-selling into new lines of business. The Ai2 team isn’t new to this challenge and have delivered a suite of mobile-first, native solutions that return the sales rep to consultative and less transactional.
Their white-labeled mobile sales app OrderShark can help B2B eCommerce customers make impulse purchases and aggregate their orders on their own. The application, downloadable by the retail customers on all major app stores, allows for wholesale order by the customer in their own white-labeled app experience — complete with their customer-specific pricing. Think Amazon for their business goods, from your catalog.
On the rep side of house, the mobile sales app supports the sales process by giving reps the ability to search and present products in full color display, while connecting to account specific data and allowing for order adjustment in real-time, backed by your ERP. With Ai2’s ProSel, a rep can browse the product catalogs, capture customer signatures directly from the mobile device, place SKU’d orders with no size limitations and interact with account-specific pricing and data seamlessly from iPad.
These two solutions in tandem streamline the order process, allowing more discussion around execution of merchandising, product placement and diversifying the product portfolio they buy from you. Again, less transactional always leads to more account transformation. And hey, nothing wrong with moving away from the Excel-dependent web order portals that we’ve all relied on for too long.
What to do with found time.
Here’s where Bigtincan really shines. According to Salesforce, 60 percent of sales professionals say that collaborative selling has increased productivity by more than 25 percent. Having in the moment access to your sales content and tools, online or offline, is step one. Remove the confidence gap that finding the right content will take too long, and conversion and account penetration will rise. Sales will increase with your reps’ confidence in their tools.
Meanwhile, the intelligence that Bigtincan’s SalesAI solution offers will recommend content based on what their peers are using to drive sales, based on their role within the organization. This situational and account-based insight is critical to personalizing the sale, offering the right solution to build an account in both size and loyalty. Meanwhile, Bigtincan helps the rep log their account engagements back to their CRM to show their work, helping them move faster without the endless task management that’s become so commonplace in our day to day movements.
Successful teams create a collaborative culture in which sales reps share information and learn from one another. If you give them the right tools, the right avenues to interact and share best practices, and do it in a way that builds on our consumer technology skills, you will see your business rise to new heights.
Rome was built in days, not years.
The best solutions are those that can impact your business in the same fiscal year, while delivering a rich end user and customer experience. Both Bigtincan and Ai2 offer solutions that can be deployed in months, not years. You don’t need thousands of hours of custom development, QA and end-user testing. Take a cue from the big giants like Apple — do what you do best, and let industry experts like Ai2 and Bigtincan propel you into the next stage of growth, as a partner and collaborator.
Ben Row
Strategic Account Executive
Bigtincan
