10X more productive series WHAT BYOD REALLY MEANS FOR YOUR SALES FORCE
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Introduction The world of work is changing. Across industries employees have become more mobile, employers more agile, and age-old assumptions about where and how work happens have been shattered. The average person skips around to new careers a staggering seven times over the course of their working life. The look inside offices has altered as traditional suits and ties have been replaced by innovative thinkers in hoodies and jeans. The times, they have changed to reflect an increasingly mobile, agile and individual attitude toward how we work. Not least among those changes is the switch in who provides the best tech tools for your business. Chances are it is not you. In fact, many of your employees aren t issued company-owned tech devices at all. Instead they come to work with their personal laptops, tablets, smartphones, software, hardware and memory sticks in tow. A new era is upon us. We are living the bring your own device, or BYOD, movement. It s a movement defined by a shift in who determines what the best tool is to get the job done. Specifically, BYOD is a workplace policy that allows, encourages or requires employees to use their own mobile devices to complete their work and access privileged company information or applications.
BYOD grew out of the realisation that institutions often don t keep pace with trends in tech while individual consumers do. The investment required to keep an entire workforce outfitted with the flavour of the week in gadgets is beyond the means of most businesses. Pioneering employees who brought their own devices into the workplace introduced features and efficiencies to their jobs that they never would have seen had they waited for the bosses to roll them out. Employers took notice of the trend, saw the benefits, and a whole new way of doing business emerged. For many whose work is cantered on computers, BYOD is the only way to roll. A BYOD team lets the Mac aficionados keep themselves outfitted with the latest device, translating their enthusiasm for intuitive use and zippy processing speeds into increased productivity and innovation. BYOD also allows Linux users maintain their open-source ethos and pursue different solutions to their work challenges. And most importantly, BYOD enables a team to take their work with them wherever they go. The benefit list goes on and on but there are a few key questions decision makers need to ask before making the switch. This ebook answers those questions and explains how you can leverage BYOD for your business most important function: sales.
1 People-driven business Your sales team is the revenue-generating arm of your entire business. Their importance cannot be overstated. Members of sales teams are out in the field signing up new clients, others are courting existing accounts by traveling to corporate headquarters and maintaining relationships. Both functions are essential and require smart technologies to maximize a team s time. And all of the information they are gathering must be managed by your customer relationship management system, or CRM. As we run through the process of adopting a BYOD policy we ll also talk about setting yourself up with the software the support it. For some, adopting a BYOD policy is a reactionary step. A response to employees quietly tapping the network with their personal technology for months or years before the business formally green-lighted it. For others it could be a proactive step. Maybe you ve heard allowing staff to bring their own devices increases employee satisfaction and is a boon to your company s bottom line. But there are some less obvious assets to a BYOD policy. One awesome benefit of a BYOD plan is, interestingly enough, increased adoption of enterprise software. Here s why: two primary reasons many users prefer their own devices is mobility and processing speed. Setting your staff up on the devices of their choice w i t h tools the company 4
approved and paid for strikes the right balance of autonomy and provisioning. It creates a climate of collaboration. The increased sense of ownership over the software that is now on their machine actually prompts salespeople to engage with it at higher levels than if it was imposed on them on a device they don t think of as their o w n. The CRM your team will actually want to use. Available on web, Android, ios and Windows devices Base is the only CRM built for people and the first post- PC CRM where your mobile CRM experience is just as important as your web CRM experience. Base is used by tens of thousands of businesses to manage sales and customer relationships. Our mission is to make you and your team 10x more productive. Try Base CRM 14-day
2 Key considerations when adopting BYOD Before you implement any new company-wide policy, a smart business will make sure it answers the important questions. Here are some ideas to consider among your company leaders to determine if a BYOD approach is right for your sales team. Does mobile matter to me? In a word: yes. A dedicated sales rep wants all her data at her fingertips whenever she goes. Clunky laptops and desktops have been the standard work machines for years, but remember that your reps are frequently on the go. Whether they are in an airport, in a meeting across town, or in their home office, they won t want to lug around heavy equipment. Expect that when given a choice, busy sales reps will favour a mobile device. It keeps them nimble enough to build good customer relationships and close deals faster than ever before. When your sales rep has access to internal email on her phone while she s waiting for the train to arrive in the morning, she ll open it, read it and shoot off a reply. Mobile business eradicates lag times and boosts response rates. 6
What s better: servers or the cloud? You know about your server room right? It s that cold, loud room next to the storage closet with those big black boxes inside that look kind of like the mainframe computers of the 1970s. Your business can invest in maintaining those unwieldy data storehouses, or your employees can connect to the cloud and let your software services do the work of scaling, servicing and securing. In-house servers have served us well, but as your workforce becomes increasingly remote and mobile, shouldn t your network do the same? BYOD and the cloud go hand in hand. Opting for software that is hosted in the cloud frees your team of the complex and costly work of infrastructure maintenance. Cloud-hosted software makes your data more accessible to members of your team in more places. This is an asset for nearly every business, but is particularly appealing to those with a mobile sales force. And think about it nearly every company has a mobile sales force. Even if your sales team isn t out knocking on doors, they are scheduling client meetings, attending trade shows and representing your company at conferences. You want those people to be able to pull out their ipad and sign your new customer up right then and there. The cloud allows you to do exactly that - seamlessly. Which devices should we prepare for? Speaking of the ipad, it s not the only tablet on the market. And it s highly unlikely that it s the one tablet all the members of your team are using. Some of them may have a Nexus, others a Kindle Fire. BYOD allows your team to work with the operating system they find easiest. This is nothing 7
to be afraid of. This is part of why you got into the BYOD game in the first place. You want your staff using the technology they prefer and are most comfortable with. Pick support software that caters to this trend. Look for the CRM that offers apps for ios, Android and Windows. Outside of work use, people on your team will purchase the technology they love to use at the price point that best suits them. This is true for any type of device. Some people upgrade their smartphone whenever the next best thing comes along. Others cling to their technology until it is finally, officially dead. We live in world where we can access all of our most important information from our phones, so why wouldn t we? You have a choice when you shop for software. You can purchase a product that only works on a computer or only works on a smartphone. Or you can buy the product that works on any type of device. The choice is clear. Give preference to the software that gives you and your team maximum flexibility for maximum productivity. If your top performing sales rep wants to check a few items off his to-do list during halftime at the game, who are you to stop him? What does this mean for the security of company data? Once upon a time, all one did to secure company data is lock a filing cabinet. Now data security is much more complex. It s a process, not a feature. The best strategies for keeping your data safe are always evolving. And one thing we can tell you for sure is that pretending your team isn t using their personal devices to access privileged information is not a viable security strategy. Planning for them to do so is. 8
Adopt a few succinct security policies such as password protections and regular system updates. Keeping these policies strong but simple encourages better compliance among your team. Anything too confusing or detailed may diminish the likelihood that your security protocol will actually be followed and make you more vulnerable to b r e a c h e s. Encryption is the key to safe data transfer. By choosing the software that encrypts as it syncs, you are protecting your information from malicious interception. It is the modern day locked file cabinet, only better. Do our reps have applications that work? Nothing frustrates your team and stymies progress quite like a technology that can t keep pace with the people who use it. We are all too accustomed to efficiency to tolerate slow load times, bad design and faulty functionality. Your team wants to be successful. Don t stand in their way by buying a product that isn t road-tested and a sure thing. Your team may be open to innovation, but they want to embrace something that improves upon whatever they had before. Make sure you aren t just renewing your license to the same old systems because it s easy. Help your team make the most of their ambition by giving them the tools to succeed. 9
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3 Finding a CRM that supports BYOD We ve shown that a BYOD philosophy can make your sales team more productive and more successful because it matches the way they do business. The key to making sure that all of your reps can work together like cogs in a Swiss watch across a range of devices is to give them tools that will be equally powerful on any platform. A great CRM system will help your salespeople to manage their contacts and deals in progress. It should be an omnipresent tool in all of their daily activities. Most importantly, it should be equally useful and usable on any type of device. Even if all of your staff currently uses the same operating system, a BYODfriendly CRM will be able to grow and change as your business does. Your standout new hire may favour Android even though the rest of the team uses Mac computers. That shouldn t hold anyone b a c k. To best serve your current and future employees, seek out a CRM that will adapt to how different people want to work. 11
4 Base: For today's BYOD salespeople A smart CRM goes everywhere with your sales team no matter what mobile device each person uses. Base is the next-generation customer management tool specifically designed to keep your team on track and productive with any operating system they choose to use. Base was created and optimised to make the customer management process easy, insightful and relevant for the new generation of s a l e s. Base CRM is an intuitive, easy-to-use tool that takes just minutes to set up. You ll get powerful features such as: FREE native mobile apps for Android, ios and Windows devices Unlimited contacts Customisable pipelines Sales goal setting Social media Contact Clipper Dynamic reports Automated tasks Integrations with other tools you use, like Outlook or Gmail Inspired? Sign up for a FREE trial.