6 Reasons Sales Reps Need a Sales App!

Sales App

Your sales reps do a lot more than just selling stuff. They have meetings to attend, reports to write, customer queries to resolve, leads to convince, rude and angry customers to pacify, and a myriad of non-revenue generating tasks that are imperative for smooth business operations.

Since sales reps wear multiple hats, it only makes sense to lend them a hand. Offering sales apps is how you do it.

What is a sales app?

In simple terms, apps that help reps save time, simplify their day-to-day tasks, give on-the-go visibility, and offer collaboration is known as a sales app. With more time and energy available to your sales team – they can focus better on one thing – making sales.

Is a sales app and a lead generation app the same?

No. A lead gen app is used to generate leads through various marketing activities while a sales app is used to convert these leads to customers and take care of them post-sales. 

6 Benefits of Using a Sales App

The major benefits of using a sales app are: 

1. Improved communication 

Empowering your employees to connect with each other via communication technology boosts their productivity by 20 to 25 percent. — McKinsey

Whether it be on-field persons or remote teams, communication is the key. When your team is always on-the-go, or even placed remotely, reaching out to their offices or desks isn’t an option. 

When everyone has access to reach out to each other – making decisions and relaying information between agents and departments become smooth. This means nothing falls through the cracks as your customers move along the sales funnel.

2. Better workflow 

Sales apps provide assistance with time management, scheduling, payment, invoicing, and other administrative tasks and make them more efficient and less time-consuming to enable a better workflow.

Moreover, they mitigate the cons of manual sales processes. It digitally collects and stores data along with other required information for everyone’s perusal. For instance, they enable agents in the workforce to collaborate and multitask. Generally, these apps have an easy-to-use user interface and a unified dashboard that offers a unified experience to your agents.

3. Mobility

Leading mobile sales apps are cloud-native therefore they enable your sales team members with mobility and collaboration from wherever they are, across multiple channels. 

The best mobile sales apps are designed to connect your team on a single, easily integrated platform to offer maximum visibility to the entire team, even remotely stationed. 

4. Faster and more efficient customer service 

Do you know that the first salespeople to respond to leads win 35-50% of sales?

Businesses regardless of their size and type need to keep their customers happy. Happy customers are created by offering proactive sales, after-sales, and customer service – all of which a mobile sales app can enable you with. A sales app allows your reps to collect all customer data in one safe place, log and record all interactions, and also share valuable customer insights with your marketers and customer service departments.

When multiple departments have access to personal preferences, purchasing history, and birthdays, you’re better positioned to offer fast customer service and create a lasting good impression.

5. Gain deeper insights into sales data 

Even though a simple sales app offers multiple charts and reports to companies, it isn’t of absolute use, as manually analyzing this data can be difficult. However, the best sales apps leverage artificial intelligence to offer actionable insights to salespeople on potential problems, existing loopholes, and solutions.

They can also allow you to optimize your sales process by helping you track the productivity of internal teams based on KPIs like duration of calls, call volumes, etc. 

6. More accuracy

One of the biggest pros of deploying tools is that they increase accuracy. For instance, taking manual orders and then inserting that data into your sales system is prone to manual errors. However, with a sales app, you mitigate such errors and give the team visibility to up-to-date sales data and reports in real-time. You no more need to wait for paperwork to be processed before generating accurate sales reports.

Some essential features to have in sales app software

Here are some of the must-have features to have in a sales app software: 

  • Data Visibility – Access important data like customer information, specific price levels, and inventory availability easily.
  • Wireless and Mobile – Access data in real-time from anywhere, any time including the ability to work in batch mode with features like data/customer lookup and validation when WiFi or service isn’t available.
  • Reminders –  Get automatic notifications of meetings, follow-ups, and more.
  • Mobile Device and OS Agnostic – Cross-device and Multiple OS functionality. Use the app on a smartphone, tablet, or ruggedized mobile computer, and on any OS like iOS, Android, or Windows.
  • Quoting and Invoicing Control – Accurately create invoices, quotes, sales orders, and credit memos. Have the ability to view inventory, customer contact info, and purchase history.
  • Scalability – Pay only for what you need. Pick and choose features depending on your needs, so you’re not forced to purchase packages that include functions you have no use for. Scale up and down as per your need. 
  • Proof of Delivery – Capture signature to electronically verify and record delivered and received products.
  • Third-Party Integrations – Integrate into tax automation, CRM software, and many others with ease. 

To sum up  

Now, you know what you’ve been missing out on. If you don’t have a sales rep app yet, now’s the right time to get one! We hope this article will have inspired you to empower your sales team with sales app software. Sales apps 10x the productivity of your reps will save them time and energy. 

Sales app article and permission to publish here provided by Alexis Fraser. Originally written for Supply Chain Game Changer and published on July 6, 2022.