A top priority for manufacturers is improving sales efficiency (reducing wasted time, such as on low-value activities like admin) because an efficient sales force increases the number of successful deals made.
However, time inefficiency has been and remains a major roadblock for sales teams.
In fact, studies indicate that salespeople only spend around 34 percent of their time selling and 66 percent on administrative tasks and other non-selling activities.
Fortunately, thanks to the emergence of sales enablement and mobile sales apps, this is changing.
All manner of salespeople can work more efficiently and productively with mobile sales enablement apps. This is especially true for those that are “in the field” and spread over a wide geographic area, as is typical with Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) salespeople: channel sales reps and distributors.
Mobile sales enablement is a type of software that organizes and streamlines sales or digital media assets. Marketing and sales materials such as photos, videos, presentations, PDF documents, interactive product visualizations, and even ROI and finance calculators, provide value to field sales. These digital marketing assets are stored in the cloud and made available to sales reps through the mobile sales app.
Ultimately, the platform functions as a cloud-based storage system that lets your team access critical sales tools from anywhere with an Internet-enabled device. Assets can also be downloaded via a wifi connection and stored for offline retrieval later.
There are several benefits to using mobile selling apps. They provide brand consistency, reduce the overall time it takes for the marketing team to push out digital assets, and assist reps in their customer conversations. Mobile apps keep your sales teams more organized, which means more time can be focused on selling and less on preparation. Admin staff can easily access important sales tools (e.g. templates, PowerPoint slides, etc.) and share them with prospects and customers via the mobile sales application and everyone in the sales channel gets updates at once.
Critically important: make sure you offer your field sales network both a sales app for Android and for iOS.
The result is increased selling time for OEM sales reps, making your channel sales force more productive. No doubt, a sales app can help any workforce or team exceed their sales targets.
A mobile sales app provides a central location for housing and distributing sales materials, which drastically improves sales performance. Also, sales apps typically include other mobile tools that facilitate communication between teams and even customers.
For example, let us assume someone in your sales force needs certain information quickly. They can message the right person and ask him or her to upload it into the sales app, either through the admin back-end or through the user-generated content feature on the app itself. Now everyone in your sales force will have access to that information well into the future once it is uploaded.
All of the above plus other features like analytics, precise reporting, asset library management, customer profiles and more, have been shown to improve sales.
Sticking to your company’s brand image is important. Marketing and sales need to follow your brand guidelines but it is tricky to align it all in larger enterprises.
A mobile sales app helps organizations to adhere to brand guidelines when everything you need for selling and marketing your products is in one place. That means less time is wasted trying to coordinate different teams or individuals.
Maintaining a good reputation is key to the success of any business. Part of that involves communicating authentically with customers. People and other companies (B2B) respond well to businesses that respond promptly, including those they can easily reach.
Selling apps help sales teams stay in touch with customers. Most mobile sales applications include a consumer profile management feature. That means your salespeople can create and maintain customer profiles. Including adding any notes to help them keep track, all within the software. No more looking through a spreadsheet for your notes so you can properly follow up on clients or leads.
Large companies usually divide their sales force into teams to stay organized. Typically the more sales reps involved, the more targets can be divided and conquered.
Still, tracking progress and ensuring your teams are being productive is difficult, including time-consuming in a set up like that. A mobile sales application solves this problem by streamlining most of your sales workflow.
Normally, these tools allow you to create multiple teams, separate company assets, and grant access based on teams. The result is simplicity, better performance, and less distraction for channel sales reps.
Furthermore, team leaders and managers can collaborate with one another more efficiently.
The ability to access sales tools from anywhere on your smartphone, tablet or other device is priceless.
Cloud sharing means sales teams can instantly share documents back and forth with one another. Some apps allow integration with bill processing, making the entire sales process even smoother. Plus, onboarding is easy because visual sales apps are often very easy to use.
In addition, analytics make it easy to track and implement more of what is working, increasing the potential of closing deals. For example, you can easily see which marketing and sales assets are being used the most by your most successful sales teams.
Overall, mobile selling apps improve collaboration between teams and provide quick access to sales assets, which ensure your salespeople are always prepared. This naturally improves your sales numbers.
A lot of OEM sales reps work really long hours. They also deal with a lot of stress involving their day-to-day tasks and meeting sales quotas. OEM sales reps can reduce their stress, meet/exceed sales targets, and work fewer hours doing it all with a mobile app. That is because a great mobile sales app will allow them to work more efficiently.
Imagine the time salespeople spend looking for that one template, a sales video, or the perfectly sized logo and format. All of that time adds up and causes OEM sales reps to spend long hours working. Though with most of their time being spent on admin instead of customers.
Mobile applications improve OEM sales efficiency by reducing the time spent on administrative or mundane tasks. They also facilitate follow-ups or communications with leads and customers.
The right mobile sales app can help a sales force in a lot of areas. Mobile apps increase sales by improving efficiency, which is crucial to any organization’s sales team’s success. Rather than having a sales force that primarily handles admin stuff, you will have a team that is focused on closing deals.
Essentially, the goal is to cut time spent on admin aspects and increase time exhausted on what brings home the bacon.
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