BYOD and Value Selling:
Increase Sales Adoption with a True Mobile Selling Platform
Broadly elevating a salesforce’s ability to sell based on value (versus cost) hinges on two fundamentals: 1) defining effective messaging, and 2) getting the field to adopt it. As most organizations have capable subject matter experts who can articulate the value of offerings, the latter of these challenges is often the most daunting. As we cross the unfortunate firewall between product marketing and sales, how can we ensure the field will pick up the messaging and run with it?
Establish Relevant Messaging
In my previous blog, “
Getting into the DNA of a Salesforce,” I discussed the importance of establishing a ‘pull’ versus a ‘push’ environment, in which relevant messaging from product marketing is intelligently served to account teams based on current opportunities, versus posted to general sales portals that are accessible to everyone, but accessed by no one.
So let’s assume we have tackled the first challenge and have effectively established a ‘pull’-based engine that gets
the right messaging to the right reps at the right time. As we move further downstream, the next challenge is ensuring dependable, scalable options for the field to receive the messaging, refine it, and effectively present it to the customer.
Field Adoption Through Mobile Platform
Research by TechRepublic shows that seventy-four percent (74%) of companies support a BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) environment. And day-by-day the dividing lines between laptops, tablets, and smartphones are progressively blurred.
Recognizing this reality, and in a continued effort to eliminate all obstacles to sales adoption,
Ecosystems has just released a new mobile platform for value selling, based on the following principles:
- Technology agnostic – Based on responsive, HTML design, the interface scales and adapts to run on PCs, laptops, tablets, and smartphones. Additionally, the platform runs seamlessly in any of the common browsers (Chrome, Internet Explorer, Safari, Firefox) – without any plug-ins required.
- Ease-of-use – Usability was paramount in the software design, with clean, streamlined screens and tap, swipe, zoom navigation.
- Customer collaboration – Ecosystems’ value-selling methodology anchors on customers directly co-shaping the value proposition with the sales representative. Directly from Ecosystems’ platform, account representatives invite customers to access and collaborate on inputs and assumptions. This is only possible if technical and usability barriers are addressed.
- Offline/Online – Even in today’s world, the reality is the Internet is not always accessible. Sales representatives calling on banking and financial services companies, for example, find themselves in offices which blackout any web connectivity. Ecosystems’ platform enables seamless online/offline operation and automatic synchronization upon reconnecting to the Internet.
- Turn-key customer deliverables – Sales representatives can automatically generate customer-ready deliverables (.doc, .ppt, .pdf) and directly email them to the customer.
New Mobile Platform Released
Anyone involved with sales operations knows that fostering sales adoption to new processes and new messaging can seem insurmountable. But through aligning messaging with specific deals, and accommodating the fluidity of a BYOD environment, organizations can address two core components of this challenge. As of this month, the approach is being implemented at several Fortune 500 organizations, with over 5,000 reps enabled to utilize the platform.
