Driving peak performance and transformation in a mobile computing world
Smart phones and other mobile devices are changing the world
With the books now closed on 2010, industry analysts can officially report that 2010 was a good year for sales of smart phones – a very good year. How good, you ask? How about 55.4% growth year over year, which is approximately 10% above analyst predictions at the beginning of 2010? Put another way, 270 million devices shipped in 2010 compared to 174 million shipped in 2009. Preliminary estimates already peg smart phone growth to be at least another 25% for 2011. If you are a sales or marketing executive in any organization – both consumer and B2B – what should your immediate reaction be to this news? You should be trying to figure out how to leverage this new technology to drive new business.
Mobile commerce (or "mCommerce," in case you haven‘t been paying attention) has been quietly building momentum for several years. However, mCommerce is driven by users of mobile devices, and in 2010 consumers finally seemed to resolve their concerns about the added complexities and higher price points for smart phones – hand held computers that make mCommerce possible, and which also happen to make phone calls – because the benefits of owning them are now so clear. The result: mobile and wireless communication technologies are being adopted with unprecedented velocity. The worldwide smart phone market grew 50 percent year over year in the last quarter of 2010, and a study by Juniper Research estimates that nearly half of all mobile phone users worldwide will pay by mobile for digital and physical goods by 2014. When you figure in the number of tablet computers now being sold – a device no one was even sure would be viable 2 years ago – it is now clear that the mCommerce ecosystem is about to explode.
This is having a profound impact on the way businesses use technology
This explosion represents a huge and largely still unrecognized (by many B2B marketing and sales executives) tectonic shift in the way the world is now doing business. No market sector will be unaffected. By 2015, it‘s estimated that shoppers from around the world will spend about $119 billion on goods and services bought via their mobile phones, according to a study by ABI Research. In the United States alone, mobile shopping rose from $396 million in 2008 to $1.2 billion in 2009, and mobile marketing investments also increased by 25 to 30% over the past year, with companies shelling out just under $313 million according to the same study.
What this also means is that the time is now for sales organizations to ignite their performance by taking advantage of expanding mobile technologies which now make it possible to do almost any task in the field that formerly had to be done back at the office.
Salesforce CRM can turn smart phones and tablets into mobile offices
For instance, Salesforce CRM is now customizable and deployable for smart phones. The platform can be configured to reflect a company‘s normal way of doing business with customers, including having the right terms and interaction functions built in. It is also possible to integrate key data from legacy and back office systems so that sales teams can have access to better information, which, in turn, might inspire them to input better information that could be available to everyone. Beyond that, it is also possible to have some custom pages created for the smart phones so that views are aligned and configured to mirror those custom reports and pages.
The ability to access and record data on the go via their mobile phones is a huge advantage for the sales reps, who spend little or no time working from an office. Instead, they can move in and out of customer appointments all day long, meeting prospects and reconnecting with existing customers to keep the business growing.
Instead of walking into a customer‘s office blind and trying to figure out who to talk to, mobile access allows them to log into Salesforce CRM from their BlackBerry or iPhone as they walk into a prospect‘s office and immediately pull up the information on everyone associated with the account. After the appointment is over, the results and new information collected during the call can be updated in real time from their phones throughout the day. This flexibility makes adoption of the Salesforce CRM very easy and attractive, because it eliminates the need to go back to an office somewhere to enter or retrieve data. With mobile deployment, the reps are receiving immediate benefits as they use it, so they definitely use it, which drastically boosts productivity and helps drive new business.
Walter Rogers is the President and CEO of Baker Communications. Baker Communications is a sales training and development company specializing in helping client companies increase their sales and management effectiveness. He can be reached at 713-627-7700.
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