We think there are a lot of good reasons for you to become an influencer with your ERP clients for mobile sales app solutions. Sage now offers a 5 user mobile sales app at no additional cost to Sage 100cloud subscribers. With Sage X3 (Enterprise Management) virtually any process, including sales, can be optimized for mobile access. From what we’ve seen, most traditional ERP consultants and sales people have not become very involved in mobile sales technology. But you may be pleasantly surprised at how quickly you can become a valuable resource to your clients – and get compensated for your effort.
A brief Q&A with your wholesale distributor, manufacturing, construction and field service based customers will quickly help you identify likely companies who can benefit. And with not much more effort, you will be well on your way to helping your client in important new ways, while earning some nice software commissions and consulting dollars too.
Why should you care about mobile sales with Sage?
The #1 reason you should be proactive with your clients about mobile sales involves your standing with them as a key technology provider and influencer. Historically the needs of the outside salesperson have not been well served by ERP. Consequently, by getting involved in the mobile sales conversation you will be gaining new contacts and deepening your relationships with your client. This will be helpful for you, especially if any current unmet needs of the sales team drives a discussion about possibly replacing the ERP. You want to be in those discussions.
Reason #2 – new revenue streams for you. Even if it turns out that the free mobile sales app meets the needs of your client, there can still be consulting work around the business processes impacted by this new activity that’s interacting with Sage 100. Form design, custom reports, and alerts are just some of the common needs you could expect them to have. For some clients, especially those in the industries reliant on DSD (Direct Store Delivery) to sell and deliver their products to customers on a route, the business processes for mobile sales automation are significant and the opportunity for business process consulting can be extensive.
Talk with the right people
Maybe this is not a new flash to you, but it’s worth calling out here. Your traditional contacts for Sage 100 support and ongoing consulting are not likely the people who you should be talking with. Controllers, bookkeepers, AP and AR clerks – people in these roles rarely participate in the decision making around mobile sales automation.
So who should you talk to? The decision makers for mobile sales are owners, presidents, operations managers, sales executives, sales managers, IT, even the sales reps themselves. Keep in mind, millennials now make up over 40% of our workforce and those people don’t want paper or manual processes for anything.
Have some understanding of the businesses value
These are the main drivers pushing businesses to new mobile sales technology:
- Grow sales revenue
- Take an order or complete a sale when the customer is ready
- Reduce or eliminate cost of manual processes like re-keying transactions in Sage 100 after the fact
- Improved customer service. Mobile apps give sales reps access to key information like customer and promotional pricing, inventory availability, product sales restrictions and so on. The better informed sales rep creates a happier customer
Here is something important to consider. For businesses relying on Direct Store Delivery, that system may be consider more important to them than the ERP or accounting software system. If you’d like to learn more about Direct Store Delivery and why it’s so important you can read more here.
(If you have clients in need of a mobile sales ROI calculator please let us know!)
Recognize that not every client is a prospect for ERP-based mobile sales apps
You can pretty quickly and easily survey your customers to find out who the best candidates are for mobile sales. Doing so will save you a lot of time.
Focusing on wholesalers, manufacturers and field service based companies, start by asking if they have these types of roles and sales situations:
- Outside sales reps
- Route sale drivers
- Delivery drivers
- Pre-sale reps
- Field service reps
- Sell at Trade Shows
- Have a Showroom Floor
- Have a Parts Counter
- Sell at Special Events
Those are the companies you can help most.
When your client says “Yes, we have a need”!
That’s what it sound like when opportunity knocks. At xkzero, we can help you from there. Whether you wish to be involved in all the specifics or not, we (or another expert you trust) can help you dig deeper into the needs in order to make recommendations, provide product demos and so on.
Learn more
You’ll find a lot of information on our website at www.xkzero.com. There you can learn about xkzero solutions by industry and by use case, for mobile sales, route sales, direct store delivery and more. You can also access a free download of our iSales 100 mobile sales app.
Are you interested in partnering with xkzero? Learn more about that here.
Plus, we’d love to hear from you at 847-416-2009 or email info@xkzero.com.