The questions a product manager should always ask his or her sales reps

By François Dumont

In Sales Optimization

Between urgent and unfounded requests, and those that are fundamental, and yet put aside, the marketing job is under constant pressure. The product manager must coordinate his marketing strategy, work on the creation or improvement of a new offer, be constantly on the lookout for what the competition is doing, study emerging trends and anticipate consumer expectations. This is the work of an orchestra conductor, requiring a sophisticated organization, adapted tools and a fluid relationship with the sales teams in the field. To successfully carry out the various aspects of his activity, here are the questions that a product manager should always ask his sales teams.

What helps you reach and exceed your goals sales reps ?

Providing tools to sell is one thing. Using them well is another.

This is why the product manager needs to be fully involved in the sales strategy, so as to work across the board, from design to use. He must take advantage of feedback from the field (qualitative aspect) and compare it with the use made of it thanks to Big Data (quantitative aspect) to improve the tools offered to sales reps.

In this sense, reaching and exceeding sales targets can be achieved through several key levers.

Some examples:

• The construction of new content, whether on a product, an existing feature, within the logical path or the tree structure to facilitate and fluidify the presentation.
• Analysis of the sales path in the application to determine the steps that are avoided or passed too quickly and those that seem to be essential for closing a sale.
• The design of new products or features integrated within the application, such as 3D content, a video to be updated, a sales simulator, new multimedia elements or customer testimonials.
• A thorough analysis of the use of the sales application to determine when, where and how it is used. This is essential to bring the theoretical design closer to the practical use.

Once integrated and well documented, this process will feed marketing and will allow to work better by identifying the potential brakes and levers of a sales application. This approach will make the difference between a simple digital sales support and a performance-based sales application.

What information is essential to close your sales?

There is a multitude of content available to customers. The traditional PowerPoint presentation, the PDF, the paper catalog, the promotional leaflet... If the tablet and an adapted sales application have, fortunately, modernized and transformed the sales act, the diversity of available content is still very present with videos, texts, images, visual carousels, 3D, online presentations, rich media, infographics, etc.

But too much content can sometimes be problematic.

Not only do sales reps not always have the time to explore everything, and may be content to use the same things over and over again, but it's also difficult to maintain too great a variety of content at a high level of quality. The product manager must therefore appropriate what works well to learn from it, and develop existing content so that it is better used and put to good use. Even if this means sidelining some content temporarily or permanently.

This is why a Mobile Sales Enablement application must above all be flexible, personalized and scalable to adapt to the needs of the users. On the one hand, because the logical path, the product pitch, the document base and the sales pitch must be flexible so that the salesperson can adapt his or her speech at any time according to the customer's reactions or the imponderables linked to the business. On the other hand, because what works well with a sales person in a given area will not necessarily work with another in another area. Hence the need for an adaptable, flexible and customizable logic in the way sales content is presented and used on a tablet.

What obstacles do you encounter during a sale?

Understanding existing processes and what works well is one thing. But in order to move forward, you also need to be aware of what's going wrong in order to optimize the sales relationship. Thanks to the numerous statistical tools present in a Mobile Sales Enablement application, it is easier to understand and measure the most used media, the presented products, the effectiveness of cross-selling or the logical path followed in the application.

But this quantitative approach must also be complemented by a qualitative approach focusing on the use of the application.

Some examples:

• What content are you missing that you would need?
• What content is present that does not provide value or is problematic?
• How do you judge the ergonomics of the application ? Is it easy to use ?
• How do customers react to the tablet? Do they manage to make it their own?

Marketing has a central role to play in managing a product range, defining a coherent strategy in line with sales needs, and deploying all the appropriate tools. A good understanding of the field is a key success factor for better product design, better offers and, ultimately, better sales. Mobile Sales Enablement makes it possible to consolidate customer, sales reps and market information into a single, secure channel, shared by all, for more effective collaboration. A winning practice to boost your sales!

If you liked this article, I invite you to download our white paper: "All about Mobile Sales Enablement" and to contact us.