Sprucing Up Sales through Mobile Learning

Current Market Scenario:

Today, the marketplace is teeming with enthusiasm for acquiring smart phones, tablets and other hand-held devices. Employees use mobiles to collaborate with others, de-stress by playing games as well as to increase personal and professional productivity. This has caught the attention of management and training departments of organizations. In the case of mobile workers such as sales personnel, the focus has shifted towards delivering learning content via mobile devices, to learn on-the-go.

Quick Fact: Currently, the number of mobile workers worldwide is 1.3 billion, contributing to 35% of the total workforce.

In any organization, sales teams are directly responsible for generating sales and driving company growth. Hence, their performance is constantly measured and monitored.

Sales Representatives require up-to-date information, on a daily basis about these four aspects, as part of their job role:

Mobile Learning to the Rescue!

Mobile learning puts key resources and tools directly into the hands of the sales team, exactly in their point of need. With product information at their fingertips, they can focus on sealing the deal, instead of being overburdened with memorizing sales pitches and ever-changing product and market facts.

For instance, medical sales representatives require up-to-date information about medicines they are selling, on-the-go, as they explain the medicine’s features and benefits, and side-effects to doctors. Attractive product animations and brochures on a sales rep’s I-Phone or Android phone can directly be shown to the customer, rather than speaking about the medicine’s features and benefits.

Some more examples where Sales Reps use mobiles for productivity boosts include:

·         Taking compliance training via mobile or tablet, while travelling to customer locations

·         Collaborating with colleagues on how to share information with clients

·         Searching for information on how to overcome the customer’s objections and make a sale

Creating Mobile Learning Modules and Implementing Them at the Workplace:

The key to creating mobile learning in any organization is to recognize the balance between the learner, the learning content and the device.

Some key pointers to keep in mind while creating M-Learning modules, to achieve this balance are:

Clear Goals	Establish a clear goal and determine what the sales team really needs.
Quick Info Bytes	Make learning materials that are short bite-sized segments, taking a few minutes to consume and can be quickly accessed to make a sale.
Performance Tools	Provide performance-enhancing, 'quick-apply' tools, and not just theories.
Cross-Platform, Seamless and Simple UI	Use simple functionality and don't clutter the display. Too many choices make navigation and execution cumbersome. Use common mobile user interface controls, so that users won’t have to learn a new ways of navigation, if another device is used.

Some key pointers to keep in mind while implementing mobile learning at the workplace are:

Need Assessment	Examine the organizations business needs to determine how learning delivery through mobile devices can improve learning. Be agile to keep content relevant.
Support	Provide performance enhancing support to sales teams, during their day-to-day workflow through content administration and help desk support.
Measurement	Arrive at the ROI by factoring in the successes and failures in implementation. Implement a measurement strategy that is mapped to strategic objectives such as improved performance and financial objectives such as growing revenue, while reducing costs.

Organizations can begin their Mobile Learning initiative by performing these steps:

To sum up, in this current technology growth wave, there will continue to be new form factors and innovations. Organizations that can recognize the proliferation of mobile usage and adapt their strategies to include mobile learning solutions will have competitive advantages over others. These advantages could be more engaged learners, increased sales productivity, better customer interactions and sales closures.