One way is to push content to mobile devices so that infield reps – from support staff to sales team leaders – can use drive time and other down time to keep up to date with what is going on in their industry, within the company… and within their prospect’s industry, too.
Real time QuickCasts (my word and I have decided to coin) can be used to deliver relevant breaking news and industry best practices and other relevant tips to your mobile teams to help give them a competitive advantage.
This, of course, requires the hiring of either qualified staff or external writers to create appropriate content. Although PowerPoint with voiceover tends to work best, just about kind of content can be adapted for mobile use quite easily these days.
Chalk, which is a now a wholly-owned subsidiary of RIM, is one of many companies offering the technology to make this work. The same tools can also be used to deliver mandatory training modules to infield reps and support staff.
- Keep text concise and separate presentation into 5 minute idea segments. In other words, a rep should be able to receive a complete concept or key idea within five minutes. That alone will increase the rep’s likelihood of using the PushCasts by at least fivefold.
Why? Because if he or she knows that “it will only take a moment”, a rep is more likely to listen in line, while waiting to go into an appointment, etc. Also, when on the road it is hard for reps to actually assimilate many details while simultaneously preparing mentally to go into another meeting – and as an employer you probably don’t want them to go more than get one key idea and then concentrate on the next call.
- Create content relevant to the key industries in which your company does business and suggest additional ways in which your reps can use your products and services to help their prospective clients. If these sections are updated regularly, and if the content is solid, reps will be more likely to use the resource, resulting in enhanced team performance and close ratios.
- Push content to mobile devices rather than requiring reps to pull it from a server. This ensures higher rates of listening compliance.
- Create folders for online content and name files in a way that enables reps to properly “file” the new messages when they appear for easy retrieval. Some systems are designed so that the documents are automatically deposited into the right spot with an alert appearing to let the rep know that new content has arrived.
Until next time, remember to go out on the limb and seek out that fruit!
Jane-Michèle Clark
Great post, training these days is getting harder and harder to make time. It seems professionals are developing a smaller attention and this will help fill the gap
ReplyDelete