Mobile Device Field Enablement: Five Keys to Designing An Effective Strategy and Getting Result

Guest blogger Mark Ippolito from sales and marketing consultancy Lenati contributed this post.

With the powerful capabilities of mobile devices to integrate location data, seller activity, real-time transactions and much more, sales managers in leading organizations are leveraging these capabilities to drive exponential performance gains among their sales teams. Looking to identify best practices in this rapidly emerging field, our firm researched more than 31 mobile device scenarios implemented by sales teams at enterprise, mid-market and small companies. Of particular note is our finding that performance impacts were not limited to any one sector. Rather sales leaders are reporting performance improvements across multiple industry sectors including Aerospace, Engineering, Financial Services, Healthcare, Insurance, Media, Pharmaceuticals, Services and Software.

To provide context and stimulate ideas for your organization, here are just three of the innovative mobile device enablement scenarios our research uncovered:

In evaluating these and other scenarios we distilled five (5) of the most common attributes that predict success when deploying mobile device enablement capabilities for field sellers:

1. Identify Specific KPIs That You Want To Improve: Organizations that realize the largest performance gains are those that target a very specific performance metric for which mobile devices are uniquely able to accelerate. Don’t let your sales strategy get derailed by getting too focused on technology selection and deployment decisions. Rather, stay focused on the key metric(s) you want to change that will ultimately deliver more value to your business. Some examples: Among participants in our research, increased close rates, rep productivity and shorter sales cycle were key objectives that an effective device strategy helped accelerate.

2. Isolate the Sales Stage: While in theory any stage in the sales process can benefit from intelligent deployment of mobile device enablement, best practice is to focus on a single stage and define a capability that can exponentially enhance performance. A good starting point is to ask the question: “Which stage in our sales process has the biggest impact on the sales outcome?” and design a mobile capability that can contribute to accelerating the effectiveness of the objective for that stage in the cycle.

Example: Prior to developing a mobile device enablement application, sales leadership for a large insurance provider determined they were losing sales to competitors at the “quote stage” of the sales cycle. Rather than focusing enablement efforts on increased prospecting activity, they instead focused on influencing “quote stage” conversion rates and developed a mobile solution that delivered to clients real-time price quotes who previously waited 1-3 business days for a quote. The impact: Close ratios increased accordingly and, most importantly, customer retention rates increased – a key industry benchmark.

3. Drive Behavioral Change: Given the ubiquitous “always on” nature of mobile devices, consider strategies that drive desired behavioral change in your field sellers. A medical supplies distributor integrates competitor penetration data into reps daily route plans thereby giving reps clear visibility to prospects within their territory radius that are buying from competitors– and not them. Impact: More than 700 reps increased sales productivity and beat quarterly sales targets.

4. Leverage Relevant, Real Time Data: Mobile devices are uniquely suited to leverage real-time data and analysis as a strategic asset to accelerate results. Pricing, transaction volumes, geographic demand, etc. are just some of the data points that sales leaders are using to inform their mobile sales enablement approach. Example: Seeing an opportunity to increase sales volume while also improving margin, an industrial supplies distributor developed a mobile pricing app that enabled the company to dynamically “push” price changes to field sellers in real-time as market conditions warranted. Impact: Profit margin improved 20% in the first quarter after the app was released.

5. Deliver Greater Value To Your Customer: In addition to providing greater capabilities for your sellers, prioritize investment decisions on whether or not the proposed mobile enablement capability will also deliver greater value to customers. Example: Sales reps for a logistics management firm are equipped with a mobile device application that allows them to not only quickly enter client orders while still on-site with customers, but also output signed contracts before leaving the client premises thereby facilitating customers’ desired procurement process.

Conclusion: Before investing in mobile technology or application development resources, sales leaders that want to execute an effective mobile device enablement strategy should first isolate specific parts of the sales cycle you want to improve, identify measureable results you want to achieve and ensure that customers realize the benefits of innovation as much—or more than– your sellers.

Mark Ippolito is a Sr. Manager with Lenati a sales and marketing consultancy and leads Lenati’s Sales Optimization Practice. Lenati’s solutions for sales strategy and design, segmentation, account planning, field enablement, partner channel development and sales measurement have been deployed at leading technology, software, and telecomm companies including Adobe, Google, T-Mobile, WebTrends and many more.