There’s a reason why 30 percent of American companies are spending upward of $10 million on apps and mobile web this year, according to the Adobe Mobile Marketing Survey. Deals aren’t going down exactly like they used to, and while an effective sales rep still needs to make interpersonal connections to win a prospect’s trust and inspire purchases and contracts, even the most gifted sales team won’t be able to reach KPIs without adopting the new way of closing deals.
The new way, of course, reflects the mobile acceleration that has transformed the business landscape. As consumer use of mobile devices has grown, buyers have transferred their expectations of flexible and contextual experiences to their business dealings.
This is a tall, but not impossible order to fill, and one that’s forcing businesses to overhaul their sales approach. Smart C-suite sales and marketing leaders are stepping up as “change agents” in their organizations and re-engineering their businesses to deliver compelling mobile sales experiences. In fact, Forresterhas predicted a “massive technology and spending arms race” in 2015 related to mobile.
Recent years have changed buyer expectations; the generic campaigns and pitches that worked a decade ago go ignored today. Instead, buyers listen for presentations specifically tailored to their unique challenges. Here are three practices that sales and marketing teams need to ensure that prospect and client interactions are both meaningful and mobile, leading to successful closings in 2015.
Mobile access
It’s not optional anymore: Sales teams need anywhere, anytime mobile access to key decks, videos and marketing content. Mobile access gives sales teams the opportunity for remote success. Gone are the days of flying to another city and staying overnight in a hotel in order to present a new product at a one-hour meeting. Remote collaboration and presentation is the new, lean norm.
In short, mobile access equals sales potency.
In today’s world, deals and decisions can happen fast, sparked by interactions on the go. Teams need to initiate connections and conversations with anyone at any time, wherever they happen to be. The old method of exchanging business cards and offering to follow up at a later time via email is outdated – smart teams share information in the moment and capitalize on that momentum to turn conversations into closes.
Closed-loop sales enablement
Businesses will typically refer to a “content loop,” but most of us know that they really mean a “content waterfall.” Materials move through a controlled ideation and creation phase within a company, but then are distributed to other internal teams and external stakeholders and clients. Each time the content is redistributed through email, social sharing or file exchanges, it loses its original context. Any feedback or analytics against the content tend to fall short of reaching the creators, forcing an insight gap.
In our data-driven landscape, that gap can turn into a serious shortcoming for sales. To ensure that the team is using relevant and persuasive content, businesses must close the loop between sales, marketing and the customer. How? The best way starts by giving the content creator the power to drive the flow of materials. Using data and analytics as signposts, these creators can move beyond simply sharing the content with the next executive in line, to acting as a true content curator by analyzing the insights at every point in the sales loop. Another tip: defining the workflow. Sales teams simply don’t have time to sort through content and figure out which decks to use. The content ecosystem should be streamlined so that the team always has the perfect materials at their fingertips, client-tailored to close the deal by a content curator.
Pre-defined, automated analytics
In recent years, a certain sales paradox has sprung up: teams want automated analytics that offer real-time visibility into content performance so they can refine their approach. Yet these teams often have so many data sets from various technologies that they wind up spending more time trying to make sense of the metrics than actually putting them to use.
In this situation it’s important to step back and focus on the end goal: actionable analytics.
If you’re dealing with a swirl of numbers and data that don’t point to anything but chaos, then it’s time to look for best-in-class capabilities that can standardize data for smarter conclusions. In our tech-heavy world, there will always be multiple places to store content and multiple data sets – so it’s important to simplify your system in a way that ensures everyone knows what the numbers mean.
Look for a mobile technology that provides the Who, What, When and Where, and you’ll understand how to bring greater impact to your efforts.
When it comes to closing deals in 2015, sales and marketing leaders must embrace the new trends in mobile connectivity. By adopting new mobile tools, companies can become more agile in their content sharing and deliver the immediacy and flexibility buyers crave. The art of the deal has always hinged on making the buyer feel heard – and by speaking to the buyer’s specific needs at exactly the right moment, leaders can turn mobile solutions into sales success.
Herb Mitschele is the founder and CEO of Shodogg, a content mobility platform that unifies sales and marketing teams by simplifying and mobilizing the way the access, display and analyze cloud content. Shodogg turns mobile devices into cloud remote controls, able to access and cast content to an unlimited number of computers, tablets, phones or smart TVs, anywhere in the world.
