3 Ways to Get the Best ROI from investing in iPads

May 13th, 2012

By Ashley Furness, Guest Blogger and Market Analyst for Software Advice, a research site.

Dimensional Research recently reported an impressive 78 percent of employers planning to deploy tablets across their organization in the next year (83 percent of which chose the iPad). But oddly more than half have yet to define a clear implementation strategy.

“We talk to companies all the time where they literally purchased iPads for their team with no idea of what they were going to be doing with them,” said Matthew Suggs, vice president of enterprise sales at Mediafly Inc., a company that develops iPad sales tools.

With all the hype around the iPad, it’s easy to imagine the device as some sort of silver bullet for increasing sales. But unfortunately, an iPad alone won’t be a game changer for your team. Like most technology investments, a clear rollout strategy is needed to ensure management gets the most bang for their buck. So this week, I set out to find experts top tips for getting the most from their Apple upgrade.

1. Monitor and Adjust Usage

SAVO Group Senior Marketing Director Dan Schleifer said sales management should articulate clear usage goals for their iPad-equipped team and use the results to measure effectiveness. This “governance plan” should monitor such sales activities as deals closed, training materials opened and competitive analyses viewed. In the case of a new product launch, this information will ensure the team is correctly focusing their outside sales efforts. These events are often company’s biggest revenue growth initiative of the year, but also frequently fail in the field due to low adoption.

2. Go Beyond PowerPoint

The iPad’s vivid display is one of its most powerful assets. But UpSync Sales Vice President Gary Galush said just using the device to run standard PowerPoint presentations is a “missed opportunity.” His company– and solutions from MediaFly and Showpad– provide easy-to-use and deploy apps for making and sharing sales presentations in the field. These can draw on images, videos, PDFs, HTML 5 and other digital assets that are most relevant to client.

“It’s all about delivering the your brand’s message based on that specific customers’ needs,” said Meghan Lopresto, vice president of multichannel marketing and sales force analytics for The Cement Bloc.

3. Invest in a Custom Solution

Ease of use is one of the biggest drivers in ensuring your team will use their iPad for more than reading the newspaper. Many companies make the mistake of launching an app that handles one business problem, while other functions are still performed with varying tools.

“Companies that build a bunch of disparate apps find it’s not sustainable, then have to rebuild one platform and end up spending way more then they should,” Excellis Interactive Marketing Director Molly Maple said.

Posted in Selling Tools, managing user adoption, managment of change, marketing leadership, marketing management, sales leadership, sales management, software user adoption | No Comments »

The Ultimate Predictor of Sales Success

February 1st, 2012

In the movie, “Money Ball,” a young Yale graduate who has never played or managed baseball, comes up with a better measure to predict a team’s success. Rather than the traditional measures of batting average, home runs, hits, etc., he said the objective is to get on base more often. If you get on base more often, you will produce more runs and more runs will produce more wins. So, they managed to “on base percentage” and took the Oakland A’s to the American League playoffs spending much less money than other teams. Two years later, the Red Sox used this approach and won the World Series.

The “Advance” is the analogous measure in sales. An Advance occurs when a potential buyer commits to do something specific in a specific time frame that moves the sale forward. If you earn more Advances and progress through the sales process more readily, you will win more sales. So, the Advance is the key leading indicator of sales success.

It is important to create a clear picture of the stages in the sales process and the key milestones within each stage. Management’s role is to use this to help the sales team navigate from one stage to the next; achieving more Advances more efficiently.

To track progress, you can create reports that show:

  • Account, opportunity
  • Stage in the sales process
  • Most recent Advance
  • Length of time in current stage
  • Revenue produced
  • Revenue potential

By measuring how your team manages the process and where they get stock, you can glean powerful insights. For example:

  • Prospects to target and which to avoid
  • Products that your team is having trouble selling
  • “Stall points” in the sales process
  • Who gets stuck more often and why

With this understanding in place, you can identify what solutions are needed, such as: adopting clear target prospect criteria (i.e. by product line), improving territory and strategic account management/ planning, leveraging best practices, providing coaching, training and/or selling tools.

Take these 5 steps:

  1. Identify the stages and milestones in your sales process.
  2. Train your team on how to most efficiently and effectively progress from step to step.
  3. Measure Advances achieved.
  4. Identify the top issues constraining progress through the sales process.
  5. Provide solutions (see the paragraph directly above).

Use this clear measure of progress (the Advance) to drive sales success!

Posted in Territory management, Uncategorized, sales leadership, sales management, sales process management | No Comments »

Selecting the Right Software; Five Sources

November 20th, 2011

Results are not where you need them to be. You know your approach can be improved. You decide you’ve got to do something about this.

You search the web and discover potential solutions to your problem.

You ask colleagues and post a question on your social media groups.

However, there are so many tools out there; it is hard to know which one will be best for you.

Don’t despair, there is help!

This help comes from five types of sources;

  • Industry analysts
  • Industry and technology sites and newsletters
  • Platform and tool vendor sites
  • Third party reviews
  • User reviews, forums and social platforms

Industry analysts, such as Gartner, Forrester, IDC, etc. have long been helpful in analyzing and positioning product offerings by segment. They provide a very helpful big picture view and help you shape your thinking re what to look for in a tool in a category.

Industry and technology review sites and newsletters provide valuable perspective, including overview and in-depth product reviews. These include Techcrunch, Cnet, PC and software magazine sites and industry newsletters, such as the one from Sandhill.com.

Platform vendors often provide marketplaces of tools that run in on their platform by category. Two examples of this are CRM vendors (i.e. Salesforce.com’s AppExchange) and the Apple Store. This makes it easy to find tools that do what you’re looking for. Most of them also provide user ratings. Tool vendors themselves often provide product positioning and comparisons as well as testimonials and case studies.

Another very helpful resource is third-party reviews. There are sites that review software tools in specific categories and sum up each tool’s strengths and where they best fit. A good example of this is SmartSellingTools.com .

Finally, there are user reviews, forums and user perspectives posted on social sites. Naturally these are very helpful, provided the user’s perspective is representative of your needs. It is often hard to know the person’s perspective and what issues they were trying to resolve.

As you go through this process, these resources help you deepen your understanding of what is out there and what criteria will enable you to make the best selection and produce the results you need. They make it much easier to make a good decision in a world of increasing choices.

Posted in Sales 2.0 Tool selection, Sales 2.0 Tools, Uncategorized | 4 Comments »

Sales & Marketing 2.0 Conference Take-Aways

October 21st, 2011

As I reflect on the conference, I see that organizations need to:

  1. Engage users. That is the final frontier in tool and methodology adoption. The key is making it easy for users to get real value.
  2. Do a better job of identifying and implementing the critical few strategies and measures that drive results and using tools that support effective strategy implementation.
  3. Significantly improve sales and marketing alignment. Given today’s empowered buyer and the overlap of sales and marketing functions, this has never been more important.

In order to stay on top of these trends, I need to:

  1. Use video more (prerecorded and live) because it brings back the person-to-person connection that is getting lost in today’s selling environment.
  2. Build weak ties (those that are easy to generate, i.e. through networking, acquaintances) and expand my reach and impact- by being more active in LinkedIn, twitter… and facebook.
  3. Participate in and help develop the value of online communities by delivering valuable content, asking questions that illuminate and sharing my experience.
  4. Manage the conflicting priorities in a world that is moving at the “speed of thought”… and not drive myself crazy.

Posted in Marketing Automation, Sales and Marketing Alignment, sales 2.0, sales leadership, sales management | No Comments »

Dreamforce 2011 Takeaways

September 7th, 2011

Takeaways

1. The Cloud is here to stay.

“The network is the computer” was Sun’s slogan of the 1980s- as Eric Schmidt, Google Chairman, reminded us. The underlying concept of cloud computing is not new. However, the exponential growth in technology and the fact that it meets real needs is propelling it forward.

2. The need for speed.

Even in the 90’s, Cisco could close its books in 2 days while other corporations of comparable size took weeks. Speed is a competitive necessity. You must use the appropriate technologies to accelerate your internal processes, respond to buyer expectations and delight customers.

3. Geography no longer matters.

We can communicate with anyone, anywhere, any time.

4. Technology is breaking down walls.

Prospects, customers, suppliers, partners and even competitors all participate in forums and social media; making access to information and opinions ubiquitous.

5. “The Web is being built around people” according to Tom Campos, Facebook CIO.

It used to be built around companies and web locations. Facebook has led the way and this has driven their success.

6. Business is becoming “social.”

Actually, man has always been a social animal, however, the technology has made it easier to communicate. The “social enterprise” is happening- as Salesforce’s Benioff asserts. Businesses need a way to collaborate in real time with people inside and outside their organization. Chatter now has group capabilities and can include people (i.e. customers, partners, suppliers) outside the organization. Will it be the “facebook of business?” Obviously, Linked In has the lead, however, will there be a collaboration between Chatter and Linked In?

Challenges

1. As we rush toward “social,” we need to maintain the right balance! For example, we must:

  • Maintain some level of privacy in a world in which everything is becoming public.
  • Preserve the ability and opportunity to connect face-to-face in the “social world.”
  • Balance the need to act instantaneously with the importance of delivering the best work product and making considered decisions.
  • Find a way to stay on top of all this information and not get overwhelmed. We need better filters for all information sources.

2. If we were to truly embrace the “social” mindset (i.e. “we are the world” – really!), could we help the US and the world to get out of our current morass?

Web collaboration certainly helped in the response to hurricane Katrina and has made a huge difference elsewhere in the world (i.e. Egypt, Tunisia, etc.). However, we must recognize it has its challenges; for example, where do you draw the line between enabling this vehicle of free speech and having it enable anti-social behavior- i.e. the riots in London?

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Posted in sales 2.0, sales leadership, sales management | No Comments »

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