6 Ways Salespeople Already Using iPad to Boost Sales

1 Walk around at trade show inviting people to work on iPad. Combine with press release and t-shirts.

“We walk around the show wearing t-shirts that invite people to use the iPad on the spot. People would see our shirts and ask us what we are doing. We just hand them the iPad and invite them to set themselves up a server on the spot. They are hooked immediately. We could get a smaller trade show booth next ti

me, because it’s out in the corridors that the action happens."

Navisite Inc. Irina Jacovleva, Marketing Manager.

2 During product demo, use iPad to manipulate 3-d virtual model of product for demo.

“We have built a 3-d model of our product (a server). With the iPad I can walk around, talk, and make the 3-d model move, open, and display parts. Previously with a laptop it’s impossible to do this. We needed one salesperson to run the demo, and one to walk around and chat with the crowd. Now I can do both, because the iPad is so unobtrusive and easy to use. So, I suppose you could say we just got a 50% productivity boost on our sales process, in terma of our own time, plus the fact that we make a better impression on our clients.”

Torben Kling-Petersen Phd, Technical Director, Oracle Corporation. 3-D tool and iPad controller supplied by: Kaon Inc.

3 Use iPad to pitch investors.

“This makes me look more “on top of it” and prepared in front of investors. I can walk around, talk, in a very relaxed way. That means I’m more in control of the meeting, which means I look better.”

Kevin Dykes CEO, Scaleup Technologies, Inc.

4 Junior salesperson just deliver the iPad to the client, sales manager does every demo via WebEx.

“I used to fly out with every one of my sales reps to deliver the key presentation… I can close twice as many, and that is how we make our numbers. But I was limited by time and health, couldn’t hit all the clients that were coming in the door. Now with the iPad I can handle a huge load because I never leave the office, don’t have to fly. My time commitment is 3 hours instead of 2 days per client."

"In theory we could do this with the laptop but it never quite worked… the customer wasn’t willing to hold the laptop, it didn’t have the same emotional strength. The iPad somehow crosses the threshold, it serves as a viable replacement for a person. This will be the centerpiece of our sales strategy going forward."

James G., VP of Sales and Marketing, Fortune 100 technology firm (name of firm withheld).

5 Use iPad-based sales documentation to allow prospects to instantly email documentation materials to colleagues.

“In pharma and biotech, there are fat stacks of product documentation and technical information. With the iPad instead we just hand the iPad to a user, they read what they are interested in, and then immediately email what they think is most important to their colleagues in a very digestible form. So they almost immediately start making the sale for us.

Red Funnel Consulting -- FatStax Inc website.

6 Use “optimized” presentation on iPad to differentiate from low cost competitors and close large deals.

“We are getting a significantly better close rate since we started using iPad. Don’t know how long it’s going to last, but we’re going to push it all we can. Deals are usually over 5 million dollars and we’re seeing a lot of lowballing competitors. The customers know that the lowballers are not to be trusted, but they have a hard time convincing their peers. Very hard sometimes for them to fight the urge to jump for the lowball price, even when you know you could get burned. The iPad helps them make their case to their colleagues, that quality is the crucial issue. Our iPad presentation gives a higher perception of quality."

Paul S., VP of Sales, Mid-sized technology company (name of firm withheld),

More On iPad CRM

In a prior post we talked about the "Magic Triangle" of iPad, CRM, and Enterprise 2.0 (enterprise social networking).

Here is another article on iPad and CRM.

Why do we care so much about iPad-based marketing? Because all signs point to major productivity gains, and most sales, especially corporate or B2B sales, have stubbornly remained very expensive over the years. If the iPad changes the sales equation, that is huge.

2 Good Posts From B2B iPad Developer

Here is Fatstax -- a developer of some very cool and practical iPad sales tools.

Highly recommended blog posts:

The Coming Flood of Enteprise iPad Sales Tools

Start By Customizing Existing Software

Gartner to CEOs: Seize the iPad Opportunity Now

From Gartner Group:

The Apple iPad and its ecosystem are likely to disrupt existing technology use profiles and business models, and CEOs should ensure that its potential is being seriously evaluated inside their organizations, according to a new report from Gartner Inc.

Note also another issues. CIOs and IT managers who hesitate, hoping for the Android platform to "catch up," are being shortsighted. Any costs invested in the iPad are going to be limited compared to the overall size of the mobile business.

I hear many IT people say "we don't want to choose the wrong platform." But they are missing the point. It's quite inexpensive to get into the iPad and most of those costs will be for "non-platform specific" issues.

The biggest danger to enterprises is failing to move quickly enough.

Purchase the full report here.

How Big is the ERP Elephant? 200 Billion. But How Fast Will it Move?

During a talk at the latest iPhone Business Meetup (highly recommended!) someone asked:

"How big is this ERP/touchscreen tablet opportunity? Best guess?"

OK...according to the statistics available:

• 60 billion per year: current annual sales of ERP industry


• 200 Billion: Residual Value of ERP software -- legacy software that has been purchased in past 2 decades and is still in use.


• 25%: Potential value add by touch tablets and smartphones.

So, if we choose to use these numbers -- admittedly guesswork -- then the market opportunity is $50 Billion of legacy fixes, or $15 Billion/year of annual sales.

Of course total size is not the limiting factor in enterprise sales. The size is huge. It's an elephant.

The question is, how fast can we get this elephant to adopt a good new idea, even when that good idea is really easy to prove?

• Slow: Speed with which ERP market will adopt this great technology.

Elephantine rules are slow rules. The ERP market is difficult to change. But again, it's huge, so that is the tradeoff.

The strategy therefore is to pick the sector of that elephantine market that will be easiest to change, and focus our efforts there. What's the sharp stick we can poke with?

• Sharp Stick: The vertical market or product catagory which will prod the elephant most effectively (and allow us to build a viable business).

iPad 34% Faster Than Workstation or Laptop, For Key ERP Functions

We test the tablet form factor in parts of the enterprise where one might expect it to be faster..and it is!

Up to 40% of corporate users could improve productivity

Used new Enterprise iPad Toolkit from iOptimal

In which parts of the enterprise does the iPad offer the best productivity gains? We set out to find the answer to that question, and the answer is: 20%, 40%, and 34%.

We chose a set of five common data entry screens from a corporate ERP suite – Financials, MRP, CRM, and Human Resources – from vendors such as SAP, Oracle, Lawson, and Salesforce.com. These screens were chosen as a cross-section representing (as best as possible) the thousands upon thousands of legacy database applications used in organizations across the world.

We built “iPad optimized” versions of those screens, which exactly duplicated the data entry functions in the standard Windows/keyboard versions. To build the iPad version we used the new iPad-enterprise prototyping tool just released by our partner firm iOptimal.

We chose these five functions carefully, to represent what we call the “40/20 rule." 40% of corporate users – generally managers, supervisors, and engineers – use only 20% of the ERP functions. By a happy coincidence, those 40% of users – our target audience – are also the ones that most likely to use a tablet, since they are generally people who “move around the office a lot” and have difficulties using laptops and workstations. Also by happy coincidence, the 20% of functions needed by these people are functions which don’t require large amounts of keyboard use, thus are well-suited for mobile tablets.

Converting that 20% subset of of ERP functions to the iPad should create significant time savings and a lot of happy users (and happy IT managers as well, since happy users become enthusiastic supporters for IT departments).

The Results

For our five representative tests, we had people perform the correct functions as fast as possible. We timed them by watching keystrokes and time motion study (using a stopwatch). On average these functions were 34% faster to perform on the iPad, for identical data entered, compared to the laptop or workstation.

Why Faster?

Quite simply, the screens typically used by supervisors and engineer lend themselves well to touchscreen interface. Using iPad user interface standards concepts, we were able to greatly reduce clutter on the screens, use finger gestures to quickly select options (more quiickly and intuitively than the mouse), eliminate almost all keystroke entry, and use location-based optimization to auto-fill and rearrange some fields.

The net result was, faster use.

Easier To Use

In addition, the screens were dramatically more enjoyable to use. Old style ERP is often quite crowded and complex to work with, with multiple layers of menu and complex coding structures; we took the opportunity to clean it up.

Caveats

• Some people might claim that the windows/laptop screens, if they were re-designed and improved, would show a lot of improvement as well. This is likely true. But the fact is, most ERP software isn’t being re-designed. So if the iPad serves as a catalyst to force us to clean up our designs, well, that’s a valid success.


• Note also that this 34% number does not include the fact that users can “carry the iPad everywhere” and would no longer need to walk back to their desks, re-log-in, or deal with charging a laptop. For some users, the iPad is faster simply because it can be carried all day long and eliminates more of the paper forms which still plague many organizations. If this mobility improvement was taken into account, this would add even more to the iPad’s speed advantage for this test. We are working to get an estimate of this number.


• Let’s reiterate that the iPad is unlikely to be faster (and might be slower) for functions that require heavy data entry or typing. For these functions, a keyboard is an advantage, and data-entry users who sit at their desks during the day won’t get much advantage from the mobility of a tablet.


• Finally we should note that these are preliminary results. We'd like to conduct this test again under more rigorous conditions. Nevertheless it does support what many users recognize intuitively: that a touch tablet with a highly tuned interface can increase the efficiency of business users.

Added note (9/14): People say we should do this test again, with a bigger sample set and with more "disinterested observers." Maybe even a media extravaganza! Great idea.

CIO Article Highlights Productivity Advantage

How does the "always-on" touchscreen tablet make people more productive? Read this article in CIO.

Excerpt:

Now decisions at meetings are made quickly thanks to the iPad, he says. In the past, no one fired up laptops at meetings in a conference room because it made the executive look disengaged. When a topic came up that required facts to make a decision, such as the difference in cost for an allocated requisition and an unallocated one, the vice president of HR would have to research it later. Thus, the topic would be tabled for the next meeting.

Today, the vice president of HR can look up the pay grades on the iPad, find the difference, and then ask the president if there's room in the operating budget. The president can look it up on the iPad and respond appropriately. "You can't get closure if you don't have the facts," Rennie says. "With the iPad, it's a very different conversation because everyone is armed with the facts at their fingertips."

This is a illuminating quote. Executives didn't want to use laptops because they would look "disengaged." So in theory laptops give people all the facts at hand, but in reality, human nature what it is, the design and form factor of laptops can make some people uncomfortable.

Is this true for all executives? Of course not. People who work at Google or Yahoo no doubt use laptops in meetings all the time. There are many corporate cultures where every meeting is a laptop meeting, and these organizations already make those faster decisions.

But there are many other organizations where the culture is different, and a touchscreen tablet can be quite a productivity enhancer.