Do you know that 71% of sales representatives feel that the knowledge gap is the reason why they are unable to close the deals? With such a big ratio of sales rep feeling not having the right material at the point of sale, it puts a serious question for sales and marketing teams on how to enable their sales team better. BYOD stats show that more and more mobile devices are being used by employees in offices. The knowledge gap and device usage trends together combine to create a great case for Sales Enablement on Mobile devices aka Mobile Sales Enablement. Even though the term has been in common use for the last few years, but what does it actually mean and why should you embrace it, is a bit cloudier.

Should you invest in a Mobile Sales Enablement platform? We take a look at our top 5 reasons why should you actually invest and implement.

1. Know thy team and train – Ok! So you have got the best sales team for your product, but how well do you know them? Sales representatives can be broadly categorized into two categories – ones with strong selling skills, who compensate their lack of knowledge with their vernacular abilities, others with strong technical skills, who tend to know the nitty gritty of the product and hope to offset their weaker selling skills with them. The amount of time a sales rep spends on the sales and marketing collateral and their overall performance is a great indicator on which side your sales replies. Now that you know your sales team, you’ll need to provide them with adequate relevant training to enhance their missing skills. Nothing is better than a mobile-based sales enablement platform, that allows them not only access collateral but also learn on the go.
2. What they need, when they need – A SirriusDecisions poll found out that 26% of sales rep felt that they couldn’t reach targets due to inability to communicate value messages, while 24% felt it was due information gap and 21% reasoned it because of too many products to know. Only 16% felt it was due to poor sales skills. The data clearly shows there is a clear gap in what the organizations what to showcase and what sales rep know. The way to deal with such scenarios is to equip them with tools that allow them to access relevant data whenever they require it. The increased usage of mobile and tablet devices in organizations surely helps the cause.
3. Deal Specific insights and coaching – According to a CEB Study, 57% of a typical sales decision is done even before a customer talks to a Sales Rep. With such progress into a decision already made, it not only requires cautious selling but maybe a completely different selling methodology. Nothing would be better than insights from previous experience for that specific deal. Varied geographies make this difficult, but with a mobile sales enablement platform, these barriers get blurred and enable a sales rep to make the pitch required to move the deal to the closure.
4. Make your sales reps more productive– According to an Aberdeen research it costs on average $29,000 to replace a business-to-business (B2B) sales rep and takes 7.3 months to ramp new hires. So using technology to give the sales rep a competitive edge and close deals faster is definitely a better deal. It can include consolidating the existing technology solutions and also investing in additional technology that saves sales rep valuable time.
5. Know thy customers – Nothing beats knowing a customer better. And mobile devices just enables the sales rep to know their customers and their requirement in a better fashion. A mobile sales enablement platform that allows your sales rep to distribute your marketing collateral to a prospective customer, allows you to gain insights on customer’s behavior. With technologies like heat map and analytic data such as time spent, pages viewed a sales rep can gauge what interests your customer more.

An effective mobile sales enablement is not only investment in a new platform, but can also be a consolidation of existing tools that are currently being used. But investing alone is not sufficient in increasing the efficiency of the sales team, it always has to be backed by content and analytic that drives the sales enablement within the organization.