With What Kind of Cell Phones Should You Provide Your Sales Team?
Guest post by Andrew Lisa
When the sales and marketing training ends, it’s time for your team to actually head out into the field. When they do, communication is everything. Once just novelty toys for the rich, and then an amenity offered by a handful of companies, a cell phone is an absolute necessity for today’s corporate world. Without one, you’re setting your team up for failure, no matter how strong their sales techniques. Likewise, the same is true for the entrepreneur and job-seeker.
Smartphones are more expensive, but their power pays off in the long run.
Smartphones
An old-school flip phone is a good start – and certainly a cheaper option – but your team isn’t only using their phone to make calls. By providing them with smartphones, you’re giving them the ability to log sales, keep centralized records, make adjustments to existing orders and even to log miles or hours. Enormous competition has lowered the price of smartphones where it no longer makes sense to save money on lesser technology.
iPhones
In 2007, Apple did to the world of cell phones what it had already done to music and computers – revolutionized it completely. The Apple iPhone 5 16GB is just the latest incarnation of that revolution. Although Apple has released later versions (iPhone 5 C and S), they don’t bring enough to the table to warrant the expense. What their release has done, however, is stick Apple with a whole bunch of iPhone 5s that are harder to move. That equals savings for you.
Android
The phones that aren’t made by Apple run on the Android platform. There are a million manufacturers trying to compete with Apple through innovations on phones that run Android. There is little room for argument, however, that Samsung is the best of the bunch. If it could be said that any phone is better than the iPhone, it’s the Galaxy S5.
With a single line of phones in the office, you only need to provide one round of training materials.
Pick one Phone for Everyone
As discussed in “Staying Connected Globally,” staying connected within a business is just as important as sales techniques. When you buy several of the same phone, you can provide a single, unified sales and marketing training program for the use of that one phone. This way, your team can collaborate with each other from the field.
Although you don’t need the latest top-of-the line model, the company phone is not the place where you want to pinch pennies. Your team members need a good smartphone to keep up in today’s world. You have a ton of options that break down into essentially two categories. Once you decide if you’re an Apple guy or not, the choice should be easy from there.
Andrew Lisa is a freelance tech writer. He covers business technology and digital media.
Using Lisa’s suggestions will have you and your team working toward the Smooth Sale!
Read Addtional Strategies and Techniques:
Nice Girls DO Get the Sale: Relationship Building That Gets Results, Sourcebooks
HIRED! How to Use Sales Techniques to Sell Yourself On Interviews, Career Press
