Sales continues to evolve, but one thing will always stay the same: the importance of sales enablement, i.e. the process of giving sales reps the resources they need to close deals.
Think about it, without a quality sales enablement plan in place, your reps won’t be as effective as they could be, which will result in lackluster sales numbers and disappointing revenue.
Nobody wants that, do they? Of course not! But here’s the thing, sales enablement alone isn’t enough for field sales teams whose reps are always on the go. These professionals need something a little more personalized to their daily duties. They need mobile sales enablement.
In this article, we’ll explain what mobile sales enablement is, why it’s important, which mobile sales enablement platforms you should consider buying, and more. Let’s get to it!
What Is Mobile Sales Enablement?
Mobile sales enablement is the process of providing sales reps with the information and technology they need to make sales—no matter where they happen to be selling.
Field sales reps spend the majority of their time away from the office. They might drive around town to meet local prospects one day, fly across the state to meet a high-value prospect the next day, and fly across the country to attend a tradeshow or industry conference the day after that.
Obviously, field sales reps can’t take their desktop computers with them on these trips. And even laptops prove cumbersome in a majority of field sales scenarios.
What these professionals really need is a sales solution they can access on their phones or tablets. In other words, they need a mobile sales enablement platform.
What Are Mobile Sales Enablement Platforms?
A mobile sales enablement platform is a specific kind of technology that enables field sales reps to access sales content, communicate with prospects, distribute contracts, and otherwise stay organized in their day-to-day operations—all from the convenience of a mobile device.
This last bit differentiates these tools from the many others that sales teams use every day.
As mentioned earlier, most field sales reps spend the majority of their time outside of company HQ. They need tools that can travel with them. That way they can maintain peak productivity and close deals at a consistent clip. A mobile sales enablement platform is the answer.
Benefits of Mobile Sales Enablement Platforms
Think about it for five seconds and you’ll start to understand why mobile sales enablement platforms are beneficial. No, beneficial isn’t the right word. Transformative is more apt. Don’t believe us? Here are five benefits your team will enjoy once you invest in this kind of tool:
Improved Sales Content Management
Your prospects have options. How can your reps convince them to purchase from your company instead of your biggest competitor? Effective sales content can help.
White papers, for example, can clearly showcase your product’s unique advantages, while case studies can prove that other people or brands have used your products to achieve success.
A mobile sales enablement platform will allow your sales reps to quickly access these pieces of content and share them with potential customers on the spot. This will help your reps “strike while the iron is hot” as it were, and give them a leg up on pesky competitors.
Increased Communication With Prospects
As you know, most sales take time—especially if you sell expensive products and/or services. While it’s not unheard of, you probably shouldn’t expect to close a prospect on your first visit.
Instead, plan to nurture them for a period of time. The easiest way to do this is via emails and text messages, which the best mobile sales enablement platforms will help you do.
It doesn’t matter where you are—at a gas station, in an airport, or riding the subway home—you can use a mobile sales enablement tool to communicate with prospects and ensure your company is top of mind when they finally decide to pull the trigger and buy your offering.
Enhanced Sales Training and Coaching
Great sellers are great learners. Why? Because your company’s products, your target market, and must-know sales techniques are always changing. If your reps don’t stay on top of their game, they’ll get left in the dust.
The best mobile sales enablement platforms will keep your field sales reps informed and in tip-top selling shape by giving them access to sales training and coaching on the go.
They’ll be able to listen to audio lessons while they drive. Or read sales strategy documentation from their seat on the airplane. Or watch product demo videos when they check into their hotels.
This level of preparation will certainly lead to better results for your field sales team.
Boosted Customer Engagement
At the end of the day, mobile sales enablement platforms will improve customer engagement.
How could it not? When your reps are well-trained, have access to quality content at the drop of a hat, and can communicate with potential customers at any time of day, more sales are almost inevitable.
This is valuable because engaged customers are the bedrock of sales success. Don’t neglect it!
What To Look For In a Mobile Sales Enablement App
There are plenty of mobile sales enablement platforms out there. You need to choose the right app for your team. To help make that happen, look for solutions that include these five features:
User-Friendly Interface
If your mobile sales enablement platform is tough to use your sales reps won’t use it.
This is problematic for multiple reasons. First, your reps won’t have on-the-go access to sales content, training contracts, etc. which means they probably won’t close as many deals. Second, your department will have to pay for tools that collect digital dust. Neither situation is ideal.
Fortunately, there’s a simple fix: invest in a mobile sales enablement app that’s user friendly. This will help ensure your reps use it to its full potential, maximizing their chances of success.
Robust Search Features
Does your company sell a lot of products? Maybe it has a large content library.
Either way, buy a sales enablement platform that includes robust search features. That way your reps can easily find the information they need, exactly when they need it.
Imagine how many more deals your reps will close when they can answer questions like, “So, how does Feature X work?” with a statement like, “Let me show you.” Then they can quickly pull up a video on their phone or tablet that illustrates the exact feature the prospect asked about.
Offline Functionality
We’ll say it one more time: field sales reps don’t hang around the office much. They spend the bulk of their on-the-clock hours in their cars, on planes, and in prospects’ offices.
There’s no guarantee that they’ll have stellar WiFi in any of these places, which is why the mobile sales enablement platform you invest in needs to include offline functionality.
Let’s return to the above scenario: a prospect asks about a certain feature, your rep tries to pull up a video to showcase said feature, and… Well, they happen to be talking in a large warehouse with terrible cell reception so the video won’t play.
If only you’d purchased an app that could be used offline. Your rep might have made an important sale, boosting your company’s bottom line. Don’t miss these chances!
Sales Analytics and Reporting
Modern business runs on analytics. The sales enablement app you choose should track crucial information for you and make it easy to access, study, and even share the data when necessary.
Why is this so important in a sales enablement context? Analytics can help you determine when prospects read your emails and texts, so you can contact them at ideal times. Or which pieces of content to send to prospects. (Hint: the ones that get read the most and lead to more sales.)
While sales analytics and reports might not seem like a big deal, they can totally revolutionize the way your reps’ approach prospects, making analytics a must-have feature.
Integration With Other Sales Tools
Mobile sales enablement platforms are important, but they’re not the only kind of tool your sales department will use. As such, choose an enablement app that plays nice with other tools.
Check your preferred tool’s integration list to make sure it will connect to Salesforce, HubSpot, or whatever other tools your team uses. (Pro tip: if the app in question doesn’t feature a native integration with your other tools, you might be able to get away with a Zapier connection.)
Top 6 Mobile Sales Enablement Platforms
Now it’s time to actually review mobile sales enablement platforms. The six apps below are all top-rated solutions. Choose the one that best suits your needs. Let’s take a look:
1. SPOTIO
G2 rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
Best for: Field sales teams
SPOTIO was specifically created to help field sales teams increase productivity, close more deals, and achieve more success. To that end, SPOTIO is loaded with quality features…
Key features:
- Boost productivity with territory mapping, route-planning, and task automation software
- Store important documents like sales sheets and contracts with e-sign capabilities
- Communicate with potential prospects via automated emails and text messages
- Access detailed analytics to understand which sales enablement activities work best
- Generate reports that only include the data you care about (like open rate of emails)
- Integrate SPOTIO with top tools like Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive, and Zapier
- Use SPOTIO anywhere you happen to be via our highly-rated mobile app.
2. Hubspot Sales Hub
G2 rating: 4.4 out of 5 stars
Best for: Inside sales teams
HubSpot is one of the biggest names in business software. Its Sales Hub offering is particularly robust, enabling users to complete a wide range of sales related tasks. Unfortunately, it’s not the cheapest solution on the market. Expect to pay a hefty sum every month to access this tool.
Key features:
- Store, distribute, and track all of your sales team’s content from one convenient location
- Track your emails to see how they perform, then turn your top broadcasts into templates
- Create and send sales quotes, collect e-signatures, and process customer payments
- Access conversation-related data, generate reports, and easily forecast future sales
- Integrate HubSpot with 1,400+ other tools in the HubSpot App Marketplace
3. Showpad
G2 rating: 4.6 out of 5 stars
Best for: Sales and marketing alignment
Next up, Showpad, a mobile sales enablement solution that’s meant to “Empower sellers. Build trust. Win deals.” The platform includes a few key features that help it live up to this goal…
Key features:
- Use an intuitive interface to quickly find the content you need, when you need it
- Engage buyers with personalized and interactive presentations that increase sales
- Access Showpad Coach to build training programs reps can learn from while traveling
- View detailed metrics to understand how prospects interact with your team’s content
- Login to Showpad on the mobile app, whether you happen to be online or offline
- Integrate Showpad with CRMs, email platforms, marketing automation tools, and more
4. Salesforce Sales Cloud
G2 rating: 4.3 out of 5 stars
Best for: Enterprise organizations
Salesforce is the most popular CRM in the world. In fact, the platform has a whopping 150,000 users! The question is, can this top-rated app fill your mobile sales enablement needs? The answer might be yes—if you have the money to afford its potentially expensive price tag.
Key features:
- Connect with prospects via an email suite that includes data and automation tools
- Templatize your quotes and automate contract approvals to streamline sales processes
- Provide your sellers with relevant guides, videos, scripts, etc. to improve their sales skills
- Access top-of-the line reporting tools that help you visualize your most important metrics
- Salesforce also has a huge list of integration possibilities available to users
5. Seismic
G2 rating: 4.7 out of 5 stars
Best for: Tech-averse sellers
Seismic is all about sales enablement, helping users manage content, engage buyers, build sales training programs, and more. Also of note, the Seismic interface is known to be extremely intuitive, which means users can be up and running with this program in no time flat.
Key features:
- Store, maintain, and distribute your most important pieces of sales content
- Onboard and upskill your sales reps with an in-app training and coaching platform
- Learn about your buyers so that you can provide them with the right content at all times
- Access data to understand which of your sales enablement efforts performs best
- Integrate Seismic with 150+ other sales tools to streamline your department’s workflow
6. Highspot
G2 rating: 4.7 out of 5 stars
Best for: Unified selling experiences
Last but not least, Highspot is an award-winning mobile sales enablement platform that’s both easy to use and powerful. It also includes a few unique features, such as…
Key features:
- Put the right content at your reps’ fingertips with effective content management tools
- Prepare your reps for any and all selling scenarios with built-in sales training modules
- Engage your customers with personalized emails, video content, and digital sales rooms
- Receive AI-powered insights to learn which sales activities actually move the needle
- Connect 100+ apps to Highspot to enable your reps in every phase of the sales process
Master Mobile Sales With SPOTIO
For field sales teams, mobile sales enablement platforms are essential.
Once you invest in one of these tools, your reps will always have access to the sales content, training, and prospect engagement solutions they need to close deals.
So, which enablement tool will you buy for your sales department? We’re biased, but if you manage an outside sales team, you can’t go wrong with SPOTIO. After all, our platform was specifically built to meet your needs.
Sign up for a free demo of SPOTIO today to learn if it’s the right tool for your field sales team!
