Tech Tools And Mobile Hacks For The Small Business Sales Rep

The days of scouring the Yellow Pages for leads, cold-calling prospects and faxing proposals are long gone. In their place are activities made possible by an arsenal of cloud-based, mobile apps. These new tools ferret out leads using predictive analytics; make on-the-spot presentations; transmit contracts for digital signing; and store and synchronize sales-related notes, Web clips, files, lists and images. And, with each passing day, ingenious minds in this app-happy world create more digital alternatives to yesterday’s sales tools and practices, ones for small and large companies alike.

Cloud-based mobile apps have become indispensable, and a salesperson’s insistence on using analog tools may suggest technological inadequacy, turning off customers.

No longer is the small size of a company an excuse for sales inefficiency, according to Kevin Plohr, lead product manager of cloud applications at CenturyLink, certainly not when hosted solutions in the cloud are so inexpensive and easily available.

“One could understand small and midsize companies not having the latest and greatest sales tools in an on-premise environment, given the expense of investing in servers and the IT resources needed to maintain them,” he said. “But with the availability of hosted exchanges and solutions, where low-priced apps can be purchased on a per-user basis, this is not much of an excuse anymore.”

Pocketful Of Miracles

The variety of sales apps available for small businesses is astonishing. Take, for example, a real estate agent at a small brokerage, signing up a house seller. The agent taps CustomShow to pitch the prospective client in the seller’s own home. MagicPlan tabulates the square footage of the seller’s house or building. The Zillow app searches for comps in the neighborhood to help determine the asking price. And to close the deal, an electronic contract is produced, signed using DocuSign in the person’s living room and then sent to the realty office.

The parade of digital gadgetry continues, as Open Home Pro helps the agent set up and schedule an open house; Dragon NaturallySpeaking turns comments of the seller and, later, notes from conversations with open house visitors into editable text. Notes, contracts, images and lists are then synchronized using Evernote.