How Mobile Access to Data Can Make You a Better Salesman

Business Intelligence is being used more than ever in marketing, IT, project management, comms, finance and pretty much everywhere in modern business… with one notable exception: sales. While other departments are finding insights they’d never have otherwise discovered and are taking ground from the competition, sales are lagging behind.

Why might it be that salespeople are missing the boat when it comes to data – both in the office and on the road? While technology (specifically, the CRM) is widely accepted as useful for sales best practice, using data to find insights remains firmly out of reach for many salespeople, putting them at a disadvantage.

There are a couple of possible explanations for this situation. Many salespeople see their jobs as about relationships – you can’t turn that into a load of digits. More practically, most salespeople are extremely busy – they simply don’t have the time to sit down and work out how to use spreadsheets to target customers better. We’d argue that this misses the point however; while data is all about numbers, it’s still describing people and their behavior. Using it to make better choices will actually save you time and work on the prospects that really matter to you.

How would sales data look on mobile?

Deciding exactly how your company represents data for your salespeople depends on the needs and goals of your team. From a smartphone or tablet, data would typically be represented as dashboards, graphs and maps. This helps facilitate real-time decisions and is much easier to interact with than traditional spreadsheets – especially on a touchscreen.

The advantage of having all this on mobile? When you’re on the road, you can access all your company’s latest data, find out everything you need to know about a client and impress them with real-time statistics. Tools like ReportPlus allow you to securely access company data from wherever you are, meaning you’ll never again be in a situation where you can’t provide the required information. Let’s look at these advantages in more detail.

Never be behind

Accessing company data from your mobile is all about real-time knowledge. Rather than waiting around for months to receive sales quotas, budgets and targets, a well configured app should feed that to you instantly.

In a traditional sales environment, targets were written by hand on a whiteboard. Information about targets and goals would be fed in once the number crunchers had done their math based on sales in the previous quarter and decided on forecasts. So far, so slow. However, using cutting-edge, real-time technology, that data can be fed directly into the individual salesperson’s mobile app. You’ll always know where you are, how you’re doing and what you need to achieve.

Calculate discounts

When bargaining the traditional way, a salesperson would have to simply remember their exact budgets and know how low they could go when bargaining with clients. This was fine when everyone played by the rules, but if one colleague shook hands on more discounts than they were supposed to, other salespeople would end up with less flexibility.

Instant, cloud-based access to company data once again gives you real time access to budgets and targets. From a couple of taps on your app, you can discover exactly how low you can go on your bargain, without ever risking a loss.

Know your customers

If there were a ten commandments of sales, this would be number one. To build a trusting relationship, you need to know their pain points and help solve them. But you also need to manage that relationship correctly. In the past, salespeople often had to simply remember what a client had previously invested in and expressed interest about.

However, mobile data driven salespeople have a huge advantage. They can find out all about their relationship with the client. How much have they spent in the past? What areas can you upsell in? Have they downloaded eBooks, Whitepapers, or demos recently? When configured correctly, Business Intelligence on your mobile can be a real boon for customer relationships.

Be flexible

The market is volatile. Customers change their interests. New opportunities emerge unexpectedly. And reacting to all this unpredictability requires flexibility, collaboration and the possibility of changing the script. When you’re on the road, being able to access company data from a mobile app means you can react to opportunities more readily.

Say you meet a prospect for a meeting about sponsoring an event. They tell you that their budget has been cut and so they probably won’t be able to buy the sponsorship they told you they were interested in. However, if data was accessible from your mobile app, you’d be able to instantly present alternative information about cheaper sponsorship opportunities and even discover the lowest prices you can offer. The important thing here is that you transform a dead meeting into an opportunity, ensuring the client doesn’t drop out of the sales cycle and still feels valued.

If you’re interested in learning more about how ReportPlus would work on your iOS or Android device, get in touch today.