How mobile devices are driving business sales

IFE ADEDAPO writes on how sales can be improved through continuous connection with customers on mobile devices

The ability of mobile phone users to receive messages instantly is one the strong points that facilitate mobile marketing techniques.

Moreover, because users can easily carry these devices around, mobile marketers can use the opportunity to their advantage.

It has been discovered that more people are moving away from conventional desktop and laptop computers to gain access to the Internet on their smartphones and other handheld digital devices.

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As a result, many sales and marketing techniques have been designed to use the Internet, in order to meet customers’ needs in a cost-efficient and faster way.

The enterprise use of mobile solutions is growing rapidly, but most entrepreneurs have only begun to tap the true transformational potential of mobile devices.

Importance of mobility in business growth

Recent insights data by Accenture shows that chief sales officers consider mobile devices as important in growing revenues, with 81 per cent indicating they believe that mobile customer relationship management has at least some impact on sales team performance.

Results from the Accenture Mobility Research Survey indicate that executives recognise the need to have a mobile strategy and execute it to keep pace with the industry.

The survey report also shows that mobility is one of the top five priorities for 77 per cent of chief executives, and 87 per cent of companies have formal mobility strategies.

In addition, mobility’s importance is also recognised at the very top in 35 per cent of companies where the CEO plays a role in mobility strategy development, according to the report.

The report tilted, ‘Transforming sales and service with a mobile-first strategy’ shows that mobility is evolving extensively.

Role of mobile devices in sales

Despite the daily use of mobile devices by half of the population, companies are not fully realising the benefits of mobility solutions in sales and service, primarily because they do not know how to take advantage of the unique mobile capabilities to achieve an agile sales and service model, the report says.

For example, the CSO Insights data shows that although most companies have a mobile agenda, it is not dramatically increasing revenue or contributing to the bottom line. While tablet usage has increased exponentially in the past year, fewer than half of sales representatives are using mobile devices to access selling tools.

It states that many companies rarely get beyond the individual app approach because they mistakenly think purchasing the newest versions of tablets and smart phones for sales representatives, or extending an existing customer relationship management tool to customer service representatives with a mobile app, is sufficient.

According to the report, these approaches rarely achieve desired outcomes because they merely extend existing processes into a mobile environment, adding that they do not look at how an “always on” channel, such as mobile, can transform those processes to drive greater efficiency and effectiveness.

The report reveals that currently, very few companies have agile sales and service capabilities that fully leverage mobility’s transformational potential.

The mobile-first premise, capabilities and use cases are similar across these three selling models; however, the way in which the sales and service organisations achieve targeted outcomes are different.

Business-to-business model

Using a complex sale solution that involves multiple decision makers and several sales support resources, Accenture says sales objectives can be achieved.

It notes that from a mobile-first perspective, having access to timely and relevant information from multiple systems is important to improving customer intimacy through a 360-degree view of the customer, including sales and service interactions.

It adds that enabling mobile processes to uncover and capture the customer’s business problem and needs is critical to developing customer-centric solutions and engaging the right level of sales support resources.

Business-to-business for small and medium-scale businesses

The report explains that this is a typical solution with one or two decision makers where the sales representative can often bring about the solution and close the sale with limited support resources.

It adds that this can be achieved by understanding the customer, uncovering and documenting the customer’s business problems and needs, presenting potential solutions coupled with configuring and quoting solutions.

Delivering this end-to-end solution through an agile, mobile device not only increases representative productivity, but also provides an interactive and efficient sales conversation with the customer-reducing the number of customer interactions needed to close a sale, it states.

Business-to-consumer model

Typically, the report says the consumer can engage with the business through multiple channels, including online, direct and partner sales channels, adding that a mobile-first strategy provides sales representatives with the mobile tools to execute a “one-call” similar to the process for small and medium businesses.

In addition, representatives need aggregated information about all other interactions the consumer has had across various sales channels, including service groups, it states. It adds that when consumers encounter a direct representative, analytics pushed to a mobile device can help guide the customer conversation to capitalise on the most opportunistic selling scenarios.

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