3 Must-Have Tools For Enterprise Sales Teams

by: | Jun 18, 2014

The art of making a sale hasn’t changed much since I started my career. But the tools enterprise sales teams need to compete in today’s mobile selling landscape are totally different. Instead of printing a lead report, sales reps check their smartphones. Instead of spending time scheduling and figuring how to orchestrate demos, they just press a few buttons and do them on the fly. Instead of briefcases, professionals rely on enterprise mobile solutions loaded on their smart phones or tablets.

When was the last time you said to a client, “When I get back to the office…” Today, your office is anywhere, anytime. If you want that mobile office to run efficiently, there are three types of apps that will help make the hard sell a little easier.

1. Collaboration

Knowledge is power, but it is also money. Especially when shared. Sales teams with high levels of collaboration have proven to be more effective than the old model of competition-driven individual silos.

Enter enterprise social platforms such as Chatter by Salesforce. Chatter, part of the Salesforce1 mobile app, helps organizations get aligned: Sales team members can easily share information about important leads in real-time and cross-functional teammates can respond quickly as needed to support the close of a sale.

For example, when a potential customer raises an issue that isn’t covered by the support knowledge base, Chatter makes it easy for the sales lead to ask a question and efficiently get answers from around the organization. It can also help sales reps discover how different members of the target company are connected, valuable insight that can make or break the sale. Meanwhile, product management and marketing can use Chatter to stay on track with project life cycles and alert the sales team with new information that puts them ahead of the competition.

2. Ad Hoc Virtual Demo

Remember the days when you sat in a meeting and the subject of scheduling a follow-up demo would come up?  An action item would be assigned to book the demo. And then someone had to manage calendars to find a time, pick the best technology to do the demo, and cross their fingers and hope it worked.

Times have changed.  With the right apps, demos are as easy as a phone call — sometimes easier. At ArcTouch, we probably do more ad hoc demos than planned ones, whether it’s with partners, potential customers or remote coworkers. Topics come up within a meeting that we might not have expected — we can instantly launch into a demo without any planning, often using our favorite screen-sharing app, join.me.

We’re also big fans of Reflector, which allows you to dipslay your iPad or iPhone screen on your PC or Mac — a perfect complement for your join.me demo. Recently, we were sharing some design work with a remote potential client, and he wanted to see it on a small screen. We were able to show it on an iPhone screen in less than a minute — and less than a week later, he inked a deal with us.

3. Enterprise Sales Enablement Apps

Honeywell Enterprise Mobile App

Sales enablement apps, like this one for Honeywell, allow sales reps to have access to entire catalogs of data sheets and other resources in a single interface.

Sales enablement is a fancy way of saying “pack light.” The best sales people are always prepared with examples of work, rate sheets, slideware — or any kind of physical or digital ammunition they may need to show in the course of a meeting.

At best, finding a file quickly on a PC can be cumbersome or awkward. At worse, lugging around printed data sheets is passé, especially when you work in technology.

Several years ago, Honeywell shared a story with us about their sales reps, who would visit private airports to meet with clients to try and sell high-end instrumentation for jet aircrafts. A rep would walk into a hangar with a pile of data sheets and product presentations bound by shower curtain rings into a makeshift binder. The package had about as much heft as a phone book. When the meeting began, the rep had to credibly talk about advanced aviation tech while flipping through the “catalog.” The analog catalog certainly didn’t align with the quality and cost of the product, the information in it was often out of date, and reps wasted valuable time in the meeting flipping through it to find the right materials.

Honeywell commissioned ArcTouch to help solve this problem. We developed the Honeywell Aerospace sales app to give their sales team instant access to all of their digitized marketing collateral. Product specs, video demos, competitive analysis documents, and other sales content were now available in one unified, Honeywell branded interface on the iPad. The app provided an instant boon for the sales reps, as they not only had every imaginable asset at their fingertips — but a link to their Salesforce CRM. They could instantly capture new business leads, share meeting outcomes, define next steps and set reminders. At a single two-day trade event, the app helped Honeywell capture $24M in new business leads and also won the 2012 Dreamforce Mobile Best in Show.