Is your sales organization properly equipped? In today's environment of mergers, acquisitions, and layoffs many companies do not have a comprehensive approach to the toolkit that their mobile and remote workers carry with them every day.
Your sales team most likely has a cell phone and/or smartphone (Blackberry, iPhone, etc.), a laptop, modem card, and a varying degree of home office expensed services. It's critical that these services are all managed by your organization to ensure sales force effectiveness and efficient spending.
There are four high level steps that your organization should follow to define or re-evaluate your sales force toolkit:
Evaluate your current situation
Define your toolkit
Select vendors and negotiate rates
Implement
Evaluating Current State
Before you can begin converting your entire sales team to iPhone's and iPad's, you need to understand what your team is using, and what you're spending. It's easiest to start with the services that are currently managed by your organization. You'll need to take an inventory of all corporate provided services while digging for the expensed services. Does your sales force expense home office broadband, landline, and fax service? Do they expense cell phone service, hotel wi-fi? These charges take a whole to unearth.
To begin your current state evaluation you will need to:
Audit corporate provided services (cell phones, hardware, software, etc.)
Audit expense reports for communication spending (landline, internet, fax, etc.)
Conduct a survey to understand usage patterns, spend, and needs
A survey is an excellent tool to gather data to both support your audit findings and get requirements from your sales team. Incentive-ize your sales force by making sure they understand that the survey directly relates to the tools they will be using in the near future. I suggest making the survey anonymous to get honest responses. One organization I worked with had over an 80% response rate, which is outstanding.
Define Your Toolkit
After you understand the tools your sales team is carrying and what your organization is spending, you're ready to begin defining your toolkit. Remember, this is not a pure cost-cutting exercise. The goal is define the best solution possible for your sales team. You very well will save money, but depending on your current services, you may spend more money. However, the increased productivity and selling power your should easily justify your investment.
Don't just focus on your wireless services, be sure to include expensed services, landline services, hardware and software applications.
Potential Toolkit Includes:
Corporate Liable smartphone (Blackberry, Android, iPhone, etc.)
Wireless Modem Card
Femtocell
Mobile apps and mobile formatted intranet page
Fixed Mobile Convergence
Broadband internet
eFax or similar
multi-function home office printer
An iPad?
As you can see this potential toolkit covers all the needs of a remote workforce. Your organization my not need all of these solutions, but with a comprehensive toolkit such as this, you can guarantee your team will be the most equipped.
Select Vendors and Negotiation Rates
After you have audited your current state and defined your solution, you're now ready to select your vendors and negotiate your rates. Depending on the status of your current contracts, you may need to conduct a full RFP or just begin negotiating with your current supplier pool.
A few things to keep in mind.
Focus on the spend that matters. Fight for reduction in service fees, not just a percentage discount.
Ignore the small spend, or spend that doesn't matter. Don't press the carriers for a cheaper text messaging rate if your sales team doesn't use (or need) text messaging.
Start with your second and third tier providers, use their hunger to leverage your primary carrier.
When negotiating hardware, don't forget the big box stores. Staples, Office Depot, CDW, etc., all provide corporate programs that may rival dealing with the manufacturer directly.
Selecting vendors and negotiation rates is unique to each solution. There isn't a one-size fits all approach, but as long as you follow the guidelines above you should be in good shape.
Implement
Implementation is the final step in deploying your new sales force toolkit. There are many moving parts, so make sure you have complete plan that includes all stakeholders. You'll need to make sure you consider the following:
Understand who is getting what equipment
Updating your user database
Ensuring your support model is up to date
Updating your wireless policy for potential changes
Determining the delivery and activation model
The communication plan
This is only a partial list of all the tasks that need to be completed before you send the first new device out the door. Don't let a poor implementation plan spoil your new sales force toolkit.
Defining a sales force toolkit should be a priority for all organizations with a large remote workforce. A sales force toolkit should be one part of your entire wireless management program.
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