Sales enablement. It’s the process of providing your sales team with the tools they need to successfully engage with the buyer and sell more effectively. But the value in sales enablement tools seems to get lost when sellers have multiple data sources at their disposal and none of them work cohesively. This is the challenge that global asset management firm AllianceBernstein (AB) had before partnering with our MicroStrategy business intelligence experts (formerly of Southport) to create a customized mobile sales enablement application.
Disconnected Sales Enablement
AB has always been known for its strong background in analysis and research when it comes to investment expertise, but realized it wasn’t applying its own strengths to its sales efforts.
The sales organization at AB had several challenges. They had multiple data sources, inconsistent user adoption of their CRM tool, various documents that were being shared via email, and a large volume of data that provided marginal value.
The team needed a sales enablement solution that could:
- Connect their various data sources and CRM
- Integrate multi-media content and business documents
- Be easily customized to their needs
So AB and Perficient co-developed a MicroStrategy-based mobile application called SIMON (Sales Intelligence Mobile Optimized Network).
Mobile Sales Enablement
The award-winning SIMON app allows sales professionals to access and share data easily across the board in one place on a mobile platform. There are two key elements that played a role in the success of this application: software integration and information consumption.
Software Integration
SIMON integrates numerous disparate technologies and data sources into one convenient place. For example, data automatically flows into the app using Outlook and Salesforce. This access to real-time data helps make better decisions. Data source integration also supports the sales life cycle, because it blends real time CRM data with historical and current period-to-date information.
Information Consumption
The application re-engineered how the sales organization consumes information. Wholesalers no longer need to spend time getting report print outs and raw data exports. Instead, they have access to the most up-to-date information on-demand using their mobile device. SIMON also transforms the way users interact with their clients by making it easier to distribute and share portfolio analysis, marketing content, product fact sheets, and performance figures.
10 Key Features of SIMON
- Sales Territory Analytics
The app can display trends by client relationship, firm, branch, and advisor. - Sales Transaction Data
Users can compare current sales trends vs. prior sales trends. - Client and Office Profiles
SIMON shows geographical map and content specific to client interaction and relationship. - Market Opportunity Data
The incorporation of alternative uses of paid for data to generate sales opportunities. - Product Data
Users can view product performance and trends. - Marketing Content
The app can conveniently store marketing content in one place, eliminating the need to share documents outside the app. - Third Party Client Analytics
SIMON gives users on-demand access to customer analytics within the mobile app. - CRM Meeting and Task Creation
Salesforce integration for real-time reading and writing. This integration replaces emails and phone calls with tasks that automatically flow into AB’s internal support staff queues for work flow completion. - Prospect and Campaign List Generation
Sales professionals have access to lead generation information. - Connection Mapping
This allows systematic association of time zone information during the writeback process.
Empowered Sellers
AB’s investment in SIMON has allowed the company to better understand how its salesforce is doing; make correlations between sales activities and results; identify stronger opportunities within the sales cycle; and so much more.
The adoption of a mobile sales enablement tool is critical to any sales organization looking to fully utilize its data and business intelligence as well as streamline sales efforts.
Watch the video at the top of the page to learn more about how AllianceBernstein empowered its sales organization using the MicroStrategy platform with the user-friendly application SIMON.
