Sales Executive Council of the Corporate Executive Board, 35% of respondents said they already use tablet technology, and another 40% said they plan to roll out tablets within twelve months.
Drug and medical device firms appear to be leading the charge when it comes to using tablets to support sales efforts. In early 2011, made news in late 2010 when it purchased 4,500 iPads for its sales and marketing team.
Tablets are proving to be highly effective selling tools. They enable sales reps to deliver interactive presentations, and with the right applications, they allow salespeople to access live information and internal sales resources on a real-time basis. The size, weight, and design of tablets make them easy to use for one-on-one presentations, and many tablets can be connected to projectors or large-screen televisions, so group presentations are also easy to make. Sales reps also love tablets because they make life easier. For example, before iPads, Medtronic salespeople routinely carried 25 pounds of printed product literature. Their iPads, which weigh less than two pounds, make most of the printed collateral unnecessary.
Tablets can also provide significant benefits for the companies that deploy them. For example, Novartis CEO Joe Jimenez wrote a memo to employees describing the benefits of having iPads in the hands of salespeople. He wrote that the tablets would enable sales reps to save up to 250 hours of work over the course of a year, and he also noted that iPads made updating product literature dramatically faster and less expensive.
The benefits of using tablets to support sales efforts are obvious, but it’s also important to realize that they create new challenges for enterprise marketers. As with any method of distribution, it’s critical to ensure that prospects and customers view/receive current and brand compliant marketing materials. So, marketers must make sure that they have marketing assets and materials that are optimized for tablet use, and they must provide sales reps real-time access to those assets and materials. There’s now little doubt that tablets can enable more compelling sales presentations. The right technologies will allow you to take full advantage of this powerful sales tool. Are your marketing assets and materials tablet ready?
This post was previously published on the Adam Software blog.
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