An article titled “The Future of Mobile is Now” caught my eye in a destinationCRM.com newsletter I received today. It was a report from a conference called CRM Evolution 2009 being held in New York this week.
The article describes a session at the event whereby a speaker excitedly described the application of mobile technologies to field sales, to bring greater connectivity to the sales leg of CRM (marketing and service being the others).
Of course he is absolutely correct, but I’d like to suggest he expand on his ideas for mobile applications. He cited these in his talk:
- Voice to text transcription
- Voice queries paired with GPS
- Intelligent hardware (e.g. a phone going into silent mode if it knows you are in a meeting)
I think mobile applications for sales professionals could easily extend into the marketing arena, helping accelerate the sales cycle. I’ve just begun talking about mobile marketing methods facilitating the customer life cycle, from engagement, to acquisition to retention, a process which translates more or less directly to a typical sales cycle.
Virtually all field salespeople enjoy a certain amount of latitude in marketing their products or services to customers directly, and mobile marketing methods present an easy, effective and highly automated approach to what I have called “active direct response” marketing.
For example, using any common sales force automation system, a sales rep could execute an email to all contacts asking them to opt into receiving messages via mobile on any number of topics; new products or services, company news/information, promotions or limited life offers, notification of travel to an area or a conference/event where customers may also congregate, and many others.
It’s this type of thinking which could greatly accelerate adoption of atypical mobile applications for salespeople.
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