Should I Force My Sales Staff To Use a Smartphone?

Smart­phone Growth

I read a report recent­ly that around 1.5 bil­lion peo­ple now have a smart­phone. Accord­ing to the NYDai­ly News, 1.3 mil­lion Android phones are acti­vat­ed each day! Mobile search­es to web­sites are up at least 30% as well. Around 2 – 3 years ago, my Dad’s paint­ing site was get­ting not much more than 5% mobile vis­i­tors. Today it gets around 30%. What does this mean? Smart­phones are just enter­ing our lives, not leav­ing. Tech com­pa­nies are work­ing over­time to cre­ate user friend­ly apps and phones as well. There­fore it is my rec­om­men­da­tion that busi­ness own­ers should encour­age – if not force – their employ­ees to use smart­phones, espe­cial­ly the sales staff.

What’s In It For Me?

How can giv­ing your staff smart­phones ben­e­fit you? There are many ben­e­fits. A cou­ple of the key ben­e­fits I’ve seen are: 

• Increase inter­nal com­mu­ni­ca­tions among staff members
• Get pay­ments faster using a wide vari­ety of mobile pay­ment apps (Pay­Pal, Autho​rize​.net, Quickbooks)
• Tak­ing pho­tos and videos of projects (before, dur­ing and after) and eas­i­ly send­ing them to the right place (online or to your mar­ket­ing folks)
• Respond­ing quick­ly to cus­tomer and prospects while on the go
• If done prop­er­ly, can keep one more orga­nized using apps like Ever­note (note tak­ing, ideas, knowl­edge base)
• Con­tact, Reminders and Cal­en­dars at one’s fin­ger tips. This is the #1 rea­son I use my smart­phone. I don’t for­get things like I used too. I got my first smart device in 2000 and have not looked back. I like using the voice mem­os or reminder apps to not for­get impor­tant events, meet­ings, phone calls or projects. It is so inef­fi­cient to have to look through a day­timer or call the office to get a sin­gle phone num­ber. I know employ­ees who still do this!
• It can help increase sales and cus­tomer engage­ment. How? If you are using a good mobile CRM like Pipeline Deals or Base CRM your staff can stay more on top of their sales pipeline. You as the own­er or man­ag­er can also keep bet­ter tabs on your sales team if they are using a mobile CRM. You can assign tasks to them, know when things are done (or not done) and even see where they are at for their sales goals: week­ly, month­ly or annu­al­ly. This is one of the most impor­tant rea­sons a sales­per­son should have a smart­phone and learn to use it. What if my employ­ee refus­es?!!! If he or she knows how to work their cable TV remote, they can use a smart­phone, which is tech­ni­cal­ly eas­i­er to master.
• GPS: There is a pletho­ra of GPS apps and pro­grams avail­able for busi­ness­es today. You don’t have to be Big Broth­er, but it is nice to know where your employ­ees are when they are on your clock. I have had a few cus­tomers tell me they are able to save mon­ey each pay­day because of the GPS track­ing apps. It also can, in some cas­es, low­er your insur­ance rates.

How To Make The Change

Some of you read­ing this can do a cold turkey change and demand that your staff have a smart­phone in their hands by the end of the week. This could work, but my guess is you’ll have a few dis­grun­tled employ­ees. Some­times it is your top employ­ees that will resist too! Yet, my advice is to pick a cou­ple of employ­ees and grad­u­al­ly win over the rest of the team. Give a few employ­ees a phone and a few key apps that they can use for work: CRM, Cal­en­dar, Con­tacts, Drop­box, Cam­era, etc. After a few weeks or a cou­ple of months, add anoth­er employ­ee or two. After a lit­tle time, you can then make it manda­to­ry for every­one (field and sales peo­ple) to use a smart­phone. I have encour­aged busi­ness own­ers to share the vision and be open with their employ­ees about their goals and rea­sons for requir­ing smart­phones. Just yes­ter­day I met with a sales man­ag­er of a large equip­ment rental com­pa­ny. He said he does not use a CRM or require smart­phones. One of the rea­sons is because his top sales­man refus­es to use one. Yet the sales man­ag­er spends a lot of extra time each week prepar­ing sales goals, mea­sur­ing results and com­mu­ni­cat­ing with his ​“old fash­ioned” sales staff. As I talked to him, he began to see the val­ue of hav­ing smart­phones, once he saw how much time it could save him. Let me know how you’ve imple­ment­ed or resist­ed smart­phones for your employ­ees. How did you do it? Or why are you resisting?