Planning Your App

iPad Sales Apps

Pocketworks

By Tobin Harris
Managing Director, Pocketworks
January 15, 2020
Updated April 7, 2021

iPad Sales Apps
Plant Motif Leaf

iPad Sales Apps

Using iPads to streamline your face to face sales

This article explores the benefits, processes, and possibilities when introducing iPad sales apps to your sales and marketing teams

Pocketworks have been delivering mobile iPad sales apps for over 8 years. We've worked with sales teams worldwide to help them sell more effectively using these great technologies.

Sell Without Paper

Use bespoke iPad apps to replace paper content and forms in your sales process

iPads and other mobile tablets can replace paper and laptops in your sales and marketing teams. We can develop apps that are used in face-to-face meetings. Sales reps use a single iPad app to present interactive, engaging sales materials. They can also use that same app to capture meeting notes and update your CRM.

Ideas to consider

Here are some of the benefits our customers have experienced when using iPad and smartphones to assist with face to face selling:

  • Update your sales materials on a daily or weekly basis, faster than traditional paper print
  • Distribute new materials to your sales team over the air at any time
  • Reduce expensive brochure printing costs
  • Engage customers with interactive content, video and animations
  • Protect your materials by controlling who can access them
  • Capture data directly into your CRM, such as SalesForce or Highrise
  • Collect analytics to understand which materials are most successful

Right for you?

You may be interested to see some of the situations where mobile sales tools can be useful. Here are some examples:

Healthcare, Education, Finance and Retail
  • You have a national sales team conducting regular face-to-face meetings with customers.
  • Your marketing department can use the iPad to push the latest product information and fact sheets to the mobile sales team.
  • Each salesperson can only see the information you want them to.
  • The sales team benefits from content that is always up to date.
  • They can also work without WiFi for sales situations such as hospitals or schools.
  • You have an enterprise CRM for measuring your sales pipeline.
  • Sales personnel can update the CRM through an app whilst on the move.
  • You can equip a sales team with iPads quite cheaply. Or consider Android for a lower cost.
Airlines and Transport
  • Your cabin crew will be promoting and selling products in-flight.
  • Your marketing department can use mobile apps to push daily promotions to the cabin crew before take-off.
  • This allows cabin crew to sell more effectively in flight because they have more up-to-date materials.
  • They will also be focusing on selling the items that you want to promote.
  • This is much faster and cheaper than using monthly or quarterly printed flyers.
  • You can also consider a Bring Your Own Device strategy to keep technology purchasing costs down.

Share Content

Share brochures, instructions, and fact sheets with customers instantly

Your sales reps will already share brochures and fact sheets with customers. An iPad app allows you to do this share electronically by email.

Ideas to consider

  • Impress customers by instantly sharing the information they expressed an interest in
  • Reduce print costs by eliminating expensive “leave-behinds.”
  • Protect your sensitive materials by only allowing certain documents to be shared
  • Track the content different sales reps are sharing
  • See if customers are reading the documents you share with them

Present Interactively

Present engaging, interactive content that goes beyond paper and Powerpoint

Sales reps can present a new kind of content to prospects. The iPad allows them to show more interactive and engaging content than is possible with paper. This content can include animations, videos, text, images and more.

Ideas to consider

  • Allow reps to give a non-linear, decision-led face to face presentations that match their selling style.
  • Include videos, animations, text, and more during face to face sales meetings
  • Zoom and pan for images to show the greatest details
  • Present 3D models of your products that reps can explore interactively
  • Show engaging infographics and data drill-downs
  • Work with new standards that go beyond the capabilities of PDF
  • View analytics to understand which content is most effective

Capture Notes to CRM

Connect your iPad sales app directly to your CRM allowing teams to update information on site

Staff will usually use a laptop for entering information into the enterprise CRM long after the meeting has finished. This leads to inaccurate or dumbed-down notes. An iPad solution can allow your sales team to record notes directly into the CRM during the meeting or immediately after.

Ideas to consider

  • Record notes directly to your enterprise CRM
  • Access customer information directly from the sales app
  • View customer history and objectives before the meeting
  • Avoid carrying a heavy laptop; the iPad has everything needed for the sales meeting

Push Latest Content

Keep sales teams up to date with the latest materials without incurring print costs.

Using the iPad for presenting sales materials means your marketing team can push out new content to the sales team at any time. You can react quickly to changes in the law that affect your products. Or changes in the market that means you need to push content quickly. You won’t have to wait for long print cycles, and you’ll never end up tossing old paper brochures in the bin.

Ideas to consider

  • Push latest promotions and sales materials to the sales team at any time
  • Sales teams are always working with up to date content
  • Quickly respond to legal or market changes
  • Reduce printing costs drastically

Learn From Analytics

Identify the best content by seeing where reps spend their time in your sales materials.

A printed brochure can’t tell you how long each customer has spent looking at each page.

Ideas to consider

  • See how your sales staff make use of sales collateral during meetings
  • Find hot spots in your brochures that capture customer attention
  • Understand how often reps are sharing materials by email
  • Use your knowledge to refine or remove content that is of little interest to customers
  • View analytics in graphs, infographics or tabular data
  • See how your sales content is improving over time

Work Without WiFi

Not all sales environments have WiFi, so consider a solution that can work completely offline.

Sales reps may struggle to get online in meeting places such as hospitals, schools, and building sites. Your solution can be designed to work well in these situations. You can have it upload any data once a WiFi or 3G connection is available.

Ideas to consider

  • Necessary CRM data is downloaded to the iPad before the meeting
  • Changes to presentations and brochures are also downloaded
  • Sales reps carry out meetings, working completely offline because no connection is available
  • When WiFi becomes available at home or office, you can send any meeting notes to the CRM

Try PocketMEDIA, an iPad app for sales teams.

PocketMEDIA is designed to enable organisations to share consistent content with sales reps working in the field.

View pocketmedia sales app

About Pocketworks

Pocketworks design, develop and scale mobile apps for sustainable brands. We help them create organic customer growth and maximise top-line revenue. Tap into our education, consultancy and app development services.

Subscribe to the newsletter

Be the first to read our articles and get fortnightly tips on app research, development and growth.

Arrow

You can unsubscribe at anytime and we do not sell your data to anyone.