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10 iPhone Apps For Sales People That Travel
I just got back from a 9 day, many state road trip for work and it started to dawn on me on this trip that, of the apps on my iPhone, there are a good set of them that I just can't live without. I'm sure that this isn't a complete list and I'd love to hear your thoughts, but here is a list of 10 iPhone apps that I rely on pretty heavily.
10.) Bank of America - I'm a cheap bastard. There is nothing I hate more than pulling out $100 from some ATM machine to know that I'm incurring a 5% penalty because of all of the fees that they stick me with. This app is nothing more than a simple way to show me where the closest BofA ATM is, but
this little puppy points you in the right direction. The app also lets you log in, check balances, transfer money around whatever. If you own an iPhone, but also are such a financial misfit that you have to regularly check your balance on your phone, you shouldn't have an iPhone. If you like to save $5 on fees and don't mind walking an extra block down the street, this app is for you.
9.) FourSquare - Okay, yes, the whole FourSquare thing is uber-dorky, yet I'm hooked on it. I don't go out enough to be the mayor of too many places, but it is a nice perk. What I loved about it when I was traveling was getting the tips. When I checked in at my hotel in Chicago, I got some great tips on places to eat. When I checked in at restaurants that I'd never been to, I got tips on what to order and even the opportunity to look around a bit and see if other FourSquare'ers were there. It would have been a cool way to meet people in a strange town.
8.) RunKeeper -
I went for an awesome run along Lake Shore Drive in Chicago. It was maybe the last night of the year where it was really warm. It was dark out, but the path was packed. Perfect night for running. I loved it and can't wait to do it again when I'm back in Chicago. The odds of me staying at the same hotel and finding that route again would be pretty slim if I didn't have a map that I could easily access and get back to. Next time I'm in Chicago and the weather is nice, I just pull up RunKeeper, look where I was and do that route again. Plus, I kind of feel obligate to run more when I know that I can't let RunKeeper down.
7 & 6.) Amazon's Kindle & Stanza Book Reader - When I get a few minutes of down time, I love to read. I have both of these applications on my phone and use them kind of interchangeably. I prefer Stanza of Kindle, but the selection for Kindle seems like it is better. Both apps are great and I had
a tough time picking between the two. The nice part is that they are both free apps. Stanza is pretty great though, plus, they have a huge collection of of old, public domain books that are free. Think of this as a chance to go back and read the classics that you know you should be familiar with, but never read because you don't want to shell out $10 for Hamlet.
5.) Yelp - Quick, you have been asked to line up a dinner for you, your boss and a major client. What do you do? You go to Yelp, of course. Why would you do anything else? You find a cool boutique restaurant that your client has never been to, you've read the reviews so you know it is solid and you know what to order. You make a great showing and everyone loves you. In another city, Yelp is worth it's weight in gold (yes, I realize that bytes don't weigh that much, but you know what I mean). Plus, do you really want to eat shitty hotel food for the fourth night in a row? Seriously, go out and find something good.
4.) WebEx (warning: super loud, annoying auto-start audio / video) - I was a walking commercial for WebEx a few weeks ago. I had just gotten off a plane, was in a cab and got a voice mail from the customer that I was going to go see. "Hey Scott, one of our key guys isn't able to make it today. We need to WebEx him in, can you set that up?" No problem. Open up the WebEx app, login and set up the meeting. It went off without a hitch. You can even watch meetings over your phone. WebEx advertises having meetings on the golf course. If anyone in my foursome did that, I'd probably beat them with a 3-iron. Anywhere else, the app is pretty cool.
3.) Salesforce - This application has a single flaw, a very annoying, easy to forget 5 digit pin number. 5-digits, not 4 like everything else on the planet. 5. That is my only complaint though. The application has access to your entire database of contacts, deals, leads and anything else you'd want to work on in that environment. It is fast, clean and really pretty well laid out. Personally, I think that Salesforce has some pretty major UI issues (no next button when going through leads?), but I can get over them in the mobile app. It is pretty sweet.
2.) Motion X GPS -
Right about the time that Jeff Nolan put out his post about the death of $2,000 GPS systems, my friend Paul sent me a note letting me know that he took a new job as VP of Business Development for Motion X, a Phillippe Kahn venture. I knew that I was going to be traveling soon and I was excited about trying out the Motion X system. I get lost a lot. Especially in Washington, DC where traffic is a mess and the idea of giving any kind of directional sign is foreign to them. Motion X was a huge time saver. The directions were really solid. I didn't upgrade to get the speaking turn by turn directions, but was able to find my way around very easily using the system. One word of warning, this app is a huge power suck. Keep in mind that you've got the GPS, 3G & full screen going. Don't forget your car power adapter.
1.) MyStarbucks - What did you think that it would be something serious to get work done? This is the fuel to get work done. My breakfast when I travel is always pretty consistent. I wake up and walk to the closest Starbucks and get a Venti non-fat latte and a yogurt parfait. It is way healthier and much less expensive than anything that the hotel would serve. I know it is heresy to say to real coffee lovers, but I love Starbucks coffee. It works for me. This application tells me where the closest store is. Gives me a map and, using Motion X, get's me there on fast. It is like a digital line to a big cup of frothy brown joy.
BONUS!!!
While these aren't native iPhone apps, I have found 2 additional sites that I rely on pretty heavily.
Southwest.com Mobile - I actually booked a flight on Southwest while on a Southwest flight. As they were asking people to shut down their phones and laptops, I showed the flight attendant my phone and that I was just about to finish booking my flight and she let me keep going. I really love Southwest, especially for the little jaunts around California. The mobile app is really nice. Just drop in your RapidRewards number and tell it where you want to go and when and it does the rest for you. If you have to make a lot of flights last minute or need to change your flights a lot, this one is great.
Socialtext Mobile - I'd be remiss if I didn't plug my own company's technology. Socialtext Mobile really is my lifeline back to the company when I'm on the road. Most importantly, I can look at Signals, our micro-blogging platform to keep track of what is going on in our virtual office. This is *our* water cooler. I can look up peoples contact information. No more calling that one person you know and asking them to transfer you. I can see any activity that is happening around the projects that I'm working on and even edit the information as appropriate.
Like I said, I'm certain that this isn't the full list. In fact, I've just started playing around with Shoeboxed and that looks pretty cool.
So I ask, what applications (or websites) on your phone can you not live without when you're on the road? Leave a comment and let me know what I'm missing.
Interview with Umberto Milletti, CEO of InsideView
Like my last post with David Thompson, this video was done for my sales blog, Beyond Snake Oil.
Friday, after Web 2.0 Expo, I had the opportunity to sit down with Umberto Milletti, the CEO of InsideView.
During the meeting, we talked about the history of InsideView and the driving forces behind the founding of the company, his upcoming Sales 2.0 Executive Series & selling in the current economic climate.
It was a lot of fun meeting Umberto and you can see his fun personality come out in this video.
If you've got a cool Sales 2.0 product and would like to be interviewed, drop me a note or give me a call.
Interview with David Thompson, CEO of Genius.com
Yesterday I spent some time with David Thompson, CEO of Genius.com. This is cross posted from my other site, Beyond Snake Oil.
In the meeting, which starts with me fumbling my camera during the introduction, David & discuss Genius, Sales 2.0 & the current economic crisis and how sales people can still thrive in this environment.
Unfortunately, I got a few tweets too late to ask in the meeting, but I've asked David to respond via email. When he does, I'll post here.
Got a suggestion (and an intro) for who I should talk to next? Want to be met with? Drop me a note.
6 Selling Rules for a Recession - Sales 2.0...2.0
Here is the second part of an on going series from my notes at Sales 2.0, hence the goofy title.
Gerhard continued his opening keynote by sharing some really stellar recession facts. Prior to listing the actual facts, he shared an anecdote about George Schultz, who was the CEO of Ritz Carlton. George had a great outlook during recessions simply stating that people are going to continue to travel. They may not travel as much, but it is important to figure out ways to get them to stay at our hotel. This requires a huge change in looking at the world.
Six Selling Rules for a Recession
1.) It takes 15 - 20% more prospects to make the same number. I was really happy to see this as it aligns with my post from last week about making it in a recession. I suspect that this number will hit 25% very soon. Get your lead generation house in order ASAP.
2.) Companies that reduce their sales and marketing effort in 2009 will be gone in 2010. As has been said before, now is not the time to stick your head in the shell and wait for this to blow over.
3.) 22% of deals in your pipeline will be lost to the status quo. This is one of those things that I think that all sales people know, but most are too optimistic to admit. There are two types of trucks out there, garbage trucks and money trucks.
or
Which do you want? Don't spend time with the garbage trucks, look for the money trucks. Score your leads more carefully and focus on companies / industries that are doing well in this market. Here is a good list to start with. Who is going to do the best with the Obama stimulus money? Start moving your marketing and sales dollars there now.
4.) Companies lose 10% of their sales due to lack of insight into the sales process. In Six Sigma, one thing is wrong in a thousand. In sales, it isn't on common to have 30 things wrong in 100.
Learn from your losses, record & reduce failures. Focus on a Six Sigma style of sales where you're always adjusting your process towards perfection. Does your average deal close in 45 days and you're still chasing something that is 200 days old? It may be time to give that up and focus on newer, fresher opportunities.
5.) Relationship quality and deal quality suffer during a recession. Avoid it. Sales people will get knocked down a lot more this year than they've been knocked down in recent years. Now is the time to get rhino skin. Stay positive, recognize the adjustments that there will be more failures before success, play the point not the game.
6.) Today, it takes 20 - 30% longer to close a sale. Focus your time on how do you close deals faster. I used to work with a guy that said 'Time kills deals'. Never was this truer than today's climate. What can you do to accelerate your close time?
Next up, notes from my meeting with Ken Rudin, the co-founder of LucidEra.
Sales 2.0 - Opening Key Note w/David & Gerhard
D'oh, I realized halfway to San Francisco that I forgot my camera. Double d'oh.
So early this morning, I embarked on San Francisco to come to the Sales 2.0 conference. This is my second S2.0 and I was really honored to be asked by David Thompson and Gerhard Gschwandtner to come up on a media pass to blog the show. I'm not a live blogger because my spelling is horrendous and my attitude is snarky until I think about things, but I'll be putting together a series of posts about the conference and the seminars I attended. I had a bunch of real work pop up, so some posts may be longer than others. I'll finish the series with just a series of random notes throughout the day. If you weren't here, it probably won't make sense. Some are snarky.
The opening key note was great and David always does a wonderful job engaging the audience. The theme was momentum and exciting. he quickly turned over the podium to Gerhard who asked everyone to point north. It was funny to see everyone point in different directions. I went off of where I thought 101 was, which is usually my barometer when I'm anywhere. The point was that we needed to get pointed towards true north. Tools can help, but there is a limit on to what technology can do and it is important that sales people leverage these tools appropriately to move things forward.
In fact, he stirred the pot a bit by saying that sales people are 2 steps behind their customers. Often times, customers are more informed about products than sales people are. He used the analogy that we are like early animals coming out of the water but being stuck in the mud. There is too much information and we can't get a good footing. The trick is to more quickly weed out the bad information.
Entering the Conversation Economy
- Knowledge of what we know can hurt us. Gerhard went on to explain that when a group gets together, reason sometimes goes out the window. It is the Achilles heel of Web 2.0. We are now entering a conversation economy in which sales people need to 'ditch the pitch', develop a conversation with their customers and truly help them.
- Transactional sales are going to die in the next 3 years. If you aren't selling in a consultative manner, you are going to starve.
- You have to live in a world of co-creation. Don't sell, co-create with your customers. Help them build what they want.
- More science is coming to sales. A big them is around Total Quality Management (TQM). Companies need to take a Six Sigma approach to sales leveraging metrics to drive productivity in the right way
- In the old days, companies created customers. Today, customers can make or break a company.
Selling Web 2.0
Another good article from Selling Power. The long and short is if you are selling Web 2.0 style technology, there are some good things to look out for.
Before they get deeply involved in Web 2.0 technology, many companies will busily assess the social culture and processes in the current workplace, before using social software, and redirecting IT to give priority to openness, usability, people-centricity, and flexibility. Therefore, if you’re involved in selling software that falls under the Web 2.0 bailiwick, your specific challenge will be to identify companies ready to make this transition and help them through the culture knotholes.But there is good news.
For software vendors that successfully manage this feat, the rewards are likely to be substantial. Gartner estimates that the enterprise social software revenue market will reach $226.9 million in 2007 and will increase to more than $707.7 million by 2011, reaching a 41.1 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) from 2006 to 2011. Gartner further predicts that by 2012, the primary role of business networks will be to support social interactions rather than routine business transactions.
On Joining Socialtext
Web 2.0 Sales Tools - RSS
This is the 3rd in a series that I've been doing on web 2.0 tools that can be used for sales professionals. The other 2 are available here (blogs) and here (Instant Messaging). This will be a 2 part post two with the second part being more detailed on how to use Yahoo! Pipes to create a really nice front end for your feed.
I know that you've seen this little button on just about every website you've ever been to, but you may not know exactly what it means. This means that you can subscribe to the content and have it delivered to your inbox (if your email client supports RSS) or directly to your RSS feeder. Sweet, huh? How does that help you? Simple, it provides you with the most up to date information about your clients. Knowledge is power.
But first, let's go back a bit - Subscribe?
You can have content pushed to you. For example, let's say that you go to the same website several times a day. You go to that site once an hour and find that sometimes that content is updated and sometimes it isn't. Sometimes, when you go to the site, you get great information and sometimes you don't. But still you go. Wouldn't it be great if the latest headlines get sent to you? That is what RSS does.
RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. It is a stupid name. I'm actually pretty surprised that with all the great minds publishing via RSS, that no one has come up with a better term. I'll leave that to someone with better ideas than I have. That little orange box above allows you to subscribe to that content and have it delivered directly to your RSS reader.
How do I get an RSS Reader?
Getting an RSS reader couldn't be easier. If you haven't already navigated away from this page, you probably already have an RSS reader and don't know how to use it. It's cool. There are a bunch of them out there. I use MyYahoo and Google Reader.
One of my biggest complaints about MyYahoo was that it doesn't tell you what you have read and what you haven't. It is sort of a half done RSS reader. Thankfully, I've seen the next rev of the service and it looks great, so I'm going to be migrating back as soon as I can get my hands on that one. So really, all you need to do is to sign up for one of those services and you are off and running. There are a number of other good hosted RSS readers out there, I just don't use them so I'm not really qualified to speak to them.
If you are more into having the reader already baked into your browser, both IE & Firefox have RSS readers in them. If you don't subscribe to a service, you can use this and by clicking on the orange box, the browser will prompt you to get it. It isn't a great experience on either account. I can't figure out how to default the RSS reader in IE to something that isn't IE. In Firefox, simply go to Tools | Options | Feeds.
Okay, I got my reader how do I use it to sell
Go crazy and subscribe to everything related to your clients and prospects. A couple of hints:
Build a list of clients in Yahoo! Finance and subscribe to the news feed for all of them. For example, if I have eBay, Intel, Chevron & Intuit as clients, I'll go to Yahoo! Finance and do a search like this:Look in the address bar and you will see that little orange box (it's a wide image and I didn't want to mess with my formatting). You can subscribe to this feed. Press that little orange button. Now assuming you signed up for an RSS reader properly (Google Reader), you will get a window that looks like this:
Press the 'Add to Google Reader' button on the right side. And now you are subscribing to content about your clients. Nicely nicely, thank you. Now, Go Accumulate Feeds Where? First, I'd make two lists. The first of paying customers. The second for prospects. Not for any reason other than I tend to be more compartmentalized when I work. The first place that I would start is with the above example. I'd take all of my publicly traded companies and make two lists. Then I'd go to Technorati and build the same type of list. After that, I'd start looking at all of my clients and subscribing to all of their blogs. Knowledge is power. The more you know about your customers, the better you will do. All of the information that pertains to their business is at your fingertips. eBay having undervalued assets in PayPal funds, how will it affect your Q4 deal? Dell maybe not making their number? It's going to impact Intel next quarter. $100 oil might impact shipments of goods, what does it do to your deal at Chevron? Etcetera, etcetera. You can see how this would get addicting. In my world right now, I have about 200 feeds that I subscribe to. Once you get used to it, though, you can skim through a few hundred headlines in just a few minutes. You learn to pick out what is important and what isn't. It is still a lot, though. My next post will be on Yahoo! Pipes, which is an amazing tool that does more than I would ever be able to write about. One thing that it does really well is consolidate a lot of RSS feeds into one pipe. It makes management a whole lot easier. Until then, good selling. Speaking of RSS feeds, if you liked this post and want to be kept abreast of my other ongoings, take a few seconds to subscribe to this blog. You can click on the orange buttons or just click here.
