What the heck is a mobile sales tool anyway? The reality is, most people, including Google, seem to have very different opinions. So we set out to fix that.
We asked our design team to spend some time creating an engaging and humorous presentation that demonstrates exactly what a mobile sales tool is.
We’ll also give you an example of what a good mobile sales tool looks like with our solution, Bigtincan. The presentation is fully available for download on SlideShare.
Table of Contents
- Interactive slideshow
- Slideshow text
- Bigtincan’s advantages as a mobile sales tool
Hope you find these sales tips and tricks useful!
Here are my notes from a recent talk I gave using this slide deck. Maybe they'll give you further guidance.
1. What is a mobile sales tool? Heck, maybe you have been tasked with building one. You own a smart phone You’ve heard about mobile sales tools.
2. One big problem:
3. Google can't figure out what a mobile sales tool is!
4. A variety of apps that can be useful to sales people on their smart devices.
5. Google thinks it’s a mobile tool salesman.
6. If Google can’t figure out what a mobile sales tool is, how can a marketer be expected to do any better?
7. Let's fix that!
9. Can we all agree that sales people could use mobile apps to: locate themselves, save key information, look up customer information, present information to prospects?
10. Definition of a Mobile Sales Tool: An application that is used to enable or accelerate the sales process conveniently from a tablet or smartphone wherever or whenever the timing is right.
11. As a marketer or sales manager, you are most likely concerned with generating revenue.
12. Revenue-generating mobile sales tools fall into the “present information to prospects” category.
13. So, what types of mobile apps do that?
14. It depends on how your team sells.
15. They may sell with: presentations, giant catalogs (descriptions, prices, SKUs), visual selling aids (videos, images, charts, animations), forms for custom projects, and services.
16. Or they may use all the above to sell to prospects.
17. So, to define the best mobile sales tool for your team, you need to start with how your team sells first.
18. However, to generate revenue, you need to pick a target. A revenue-generating target.
19. Here are 10 ways Marketers and Sales Managers can hit revenue-generating targets with mobile sales tools:
- Focus on the middle 60%.
- Profitable products first.
- Train new reps faster.
- Reduce your print spend.
- New product training is key.
- Build for your top dealers and distributors.
- Make pricing easy to find.
- Focus on hot new products.
- Get the jump on competitors by cross-referencing data.
- Stop emailing sales collateral.
20. View the PDF.
21. So, now you know how your team sells and you have a target. Let’s dive into the tools to get your app built.
22. Mobile sales tool platforms on the market may be composed of 3 layers:
- File Management Layer: Where marketers organize, upload, and manage product assets.
- Presentation Layer: Where sales reps interact and present product data to prospects.
- Automation Layer: Where prospect information is seamlessly integrated into your CRM.
23. These 3 layers make it easy to:
- Manage and easily find information
- Deliver information (files, product specs, branding)
- Capture information (customer data and usage data)
- Integrate into other systems (CRM, Marketing Automation, ERP).
24. A great File Management Layer makes it easy on the Marketer and engages them to use it!
25. The Presentation Layer is an App on a Smart Device or “System of Engagement.” Presents information to reps and prospects Captures information via rep input Sends sales collateral.
26. The single biggest mistake is to assume that the app is there to engage your customer!
27. The app is the system of engagement for your sales people, not your customers. Sales people use the tool to engage prospects and accelerate their sales cycle.
28. Thus, a mobile sales tool enables your reps to sell more of your products & services via the Presentation Layer.
29. The Automation Layer logs the activity or triggers the appropriate actions within a third-party platform such as a CRM or Marketing Automation system.
30. In conclusion, a revenue-generating mobile sales tool or app can help your reps sell more and close faster if:
- Your mobile sales tool is built the way your team sells.
- Your mobile sales tool has an easy-to-use file management layer.
- Your mobile sales tool is focused on revenue-generation
- Your mobile sales tool is built so your salespeople can use it.
Bigtincan Mobile Sales Tool: Effortless Sales Enablement
Mobile sales enablement is about making sure your salespeople have the information and technology they need to help customers and prospects anytime and anywhere.
Bigtincan was specifically designed to make organizing and accessing content within enterprise companies incredibly easy — no matter where you are or what device you’re using. Because we work with Fortune 500 companies like Anheuser-Busch and Amex Global Travel, we understand that large companies have unique concerns such as:
- Accommodating the workflows of many different departments.
- Keeping your visual brand consistent.
- Monitoring thousands of files.
Here’s how Bigtincan helps enterprise companies solve these concerns and increase sales — all from a mobile device.
Mobile-first designs
The Bigtincan mobile sales app was built specifically for each major mobile platform — Android, iOS, and Windows. This means:
- All functions of the app feel natively designed on mobile devices (i.e. smartphones and tablets).
- Any file type can be clearly displayed without installing additional apps (such as Google Docs or PowerPoint).
Additionally, Bigtincan uses a sophisticated, multi-factored algorithm to determine which files should be made available offline. The algorithm chooses material based on how relevant it is to your organization and your specific role within the organization.
For example, if there are different versions of a document for different locations, and you’re a field sales rep for a specific region, Bigtincan will automatically select the version of the document that matches your sales region.
Then, the most important files are automatically downloaded and old or unused files get moved to cloud storage. This optimizes your limited mobile storage while ensuring you have necessary material available when you have a poor internet connection.
Powerful off-line access
One of the key features that turns an average sales enablement platform into an exceptional mobile sales tool is total offline access.
In addition to having key files available offline, nearly all Bigtincan functionalities are available offline. This includes full text search (more on this in the next section), content sharing, bookmark stacks, content suggestions, and much more. Your sales team will be able to pull up sales presentations or complete sales training no matter their location.
Find content saved on different platforms (such as Google Drive or Dropbox) in just a few seconds
It’s quite common to see multiple cloud storage platforms (such as Google Drive, Dropbox, SharePoint, etc.) being used by one organization. This presents several challenges:
- You have to remember where each piece of information is being stored or waste time searching through each platform until you find the document.
- You have to manage multiple usernames, passwords, and apps.
- You have to search through every platform if you want to make sure you’re using the most up to date version of the document.
- You may have to pull documents from different sources to complete one task (for example, a product document could be in Google Drive while the sales presentation is in Dropbox).
There are many mobile sales enablement software and cloud storage platforms that help mitigate these challenges, however, most of them require that you move all your current content and save any new content on their platform. This is no different than condensing all your files into one of the many cloud storage platforms your organization is already using — so it doesn’t really help the problem. You’ll still run into the problems of:
- Employees not wanting to change their habits and workflows.
- Not knowing if additional copies exist outside of the new platform.
- Having to know the exact file name or the folder it’s stored in to find it.
- Taking the time to move everything over to the new platform (which is often a daunting task).
Instead, a good sales collateral management system should integrate with all these storage platforms and help sales reps find what they are searching for regardless of where it lives.
Your teams can continue using the workflows they’ve always used, and count on Bigtincan AI automation to pull the appropriate documents from any location. This integration of all company repositories into one hub also provides the opportunity for AI-powered search.
Incredibly easy and sophisticated AI-powered search results on mobile
Instead of just searching for a matching file name, Bigtincan’s AI-powered search scans any text inside files to find a relevant match — including text within a PDF.
Additionally, Bigtincan’s AI-powered search offers several other features including:
- Personalized search results. For example, if a sales rep searches “product A” they’re likely looking for a product brochure or sales deck for product A. Whereas, if a product developer searches “product A” they’re more likely looking for a spreadsheet of data.
- Suggestions for updated content. For example, if you’re searching for ‘October Sales 2.0’, the results will suggest ‘October Sales 3.0’ if it exists.
- Smart content suggestions. For example, if you were to search ‘price rejection’, Bigtincan would suggest ‘how to respond when a customer says it’s too expensive’.
All of this is available whether you’re online or offline and on any device — including your cell phone. Our powerful search feature means:
- Your teams won’t have to remember where files are stored or what they were named.
- Everyone will be able to find the newest content in seconds, so they won’t need to store it on their personal hard drive or waste time searching through tons of folders.
- Your teams won’t have to waste time adding metadata such as the file’s author, published date, etc.
- Everyone can access anything right from their mobile device (or any device).
Complete customization and visual branding
Bigtincan comes with a software developer kit (SDK) that lets you customize the entire platform to match your visual brand from the shape of the search bar to the color of the text. Not only can you customize the look of the app down to the pixel, you can also customize the layout and functionality of each piece of the app.
That means:
- If you have a strong visual brand, when customers see the app (if a sales rep is finding product info right in front of them), they'll feel like the app is native and home built.
- You can give your employees and retail partners the exact organization and functionalities they need to sell more within their current workflow.
For example, you could create a specialized ‘assignment’ feature that lets managers assign tasks or training to certain employees and then track the progress of the task or training as it gets completed. You could also customize the home screen to show the product catalog with special promotions along the bottom. The possibilities are nearly endless and every feature is optimized to be used on any device.
Share any size file instantly
Most people share files as email attachments but that often limits the size of the document, takes too much time to upload, and can make it difficult for the recipient to open or download the file. Sharing files through email can be particularly inconvenient for sales professionals because there’s no way to track if or when the recipient views the doc. Additionally, many sales people need the ability to share documents from their mobile device, which is often challenging because many apps aren’t built for mobile devices.
Bigtincan solves these issues by sharing files through a microsite. You simply send the recipient a link which gives them access to a specific document within the microsite. This allows you to share any size document and gather analytics about how the file was used — all from your mobile device (or any device).
To learn more about sales engagement software, read this article.
Analytics optimized to be used offline
Bigtincan offers built-in dashboards that show who is interacting with files in real-time and how the files are being used.
This is helpful because:
- Administrators can see which files are being used. If a new version of a document is released, administrators will be able to see who has adopted the new version and who is still clinging to the old version. Then, they can send a reminder to switch to the new version or see which pages of the old document are still being used to understand why there’s a reluctance to make the switch.
- Customer-facing teams can see how prospects and current customers are interacting with files. If a salesperson notices a client is spending a lot of time looking at a particular product and the pricing page, sending an email with a discounted offer on that particular product may close the deal.
Note: To learn more about conducting sales using Bigtincan, read this article about our digital sales room. - Content creation teams can see which files are being used regularly, or which need updating. If the team notices that most sales reps are skipping certain pages on a sales presentation, they can go into the file and remove or update the page to fit the sales team's presentation style.
Like all of our features, these dashboards are designed to be used on mobile devices (or any device) and offline (new analytics are synced when your device is online).
On-the-go training
While training can help your sales team close more sales, training often interrupts their sales process which can mean fewer sales. If training is only available in a desktop format or only with internet access, sales reps will have to carve out a piece of their day where they can sit at their desk until the training is complete.
Instead of taking time away from sales to complete training, Bigtincan lets salespeople complete or review training while they’re on-the-go or waiting for their next meeting somewhere with a spotty internet connection.
To learn more about mobile LMS, read this article.
If you think Bigtincan could be the right mobile sales tool for your organization, schedule a demo today to see exactly how it can work for you.
