What TELUS Can Teach SMBs About Selling With Business Apps

Canadian small and medium-sized businesses might not always pay much attention to the latest mobile innovations, and sometimes with good reason. It could take months for new smartphones, tablets and other products to hit the Canadian market, and SMBs need to focus on the tools that they can use today.

The good news is they don’t necessarily need to wait for the latest gadget to use technology that can boost revenues, increase productivity and satisfy your customers. The apps for that are already here.

In our latest customer spotlight, TELUS explains how it worked with the Salesforce1 Platform and Sales Cloud to build its Door to Door app, which has dramatically changed the way it signs up new customers and gets services up and running. Although TELUS is one of Canada’s largest telecommunications companies, there are lots of takeaways from its success story that SMBs can easily apply:

1. Spot the process bottleneck: For TELUS, having to get customers to sign paper contracts was awkward and time-consuming, particularly in an age where almost everyone carries a mobile device of some kind. SMBs should take a few minutes to step back from their day-to-day work and think through all the steps they need to make a sale. Is there a place where apps could eliminate one of those steps, or make it a more fluid process? Figuring this out up front will help you calculate your return on investment before app development even begins.

2. Aim to be organized anywhere: Some SMBs may still keep most of their customer records in filing cabinets or on their desktop computers, but that’s only useful if you’re spending most of your time in the office. A company the size of TELUS probably has more customers than most SMBs, but their sales agents can easily access what they need on the road with its app, offering one-tap access to information that can help them identify who might be interested in its service and who’s already been served.

3. Take the team spirit with you: Consumers love using messaging apps to stay in touch with friends and family throughout the day. Businesses are now realizing they can provide a similar advantage to their staff with social networking apps designed for professional use. Like TELUS, SMBs should think about the kinds of conversations that might only happen when everyone’s in the same room, and use apps to bring that same level of collaboration and support to their smartphones and tablets.

There is a lot more detail about how TELUS uses Salesforce and its Door to Door App to target its best prospects and convert more leads into sales in the complete customer story. Check it out and start thinking about apps as less of a consumer trend and more of an opportunity to change your business for the better.

Learn more about how mobile CRM can revolutionize your business in How a Mobile CRM Makes You Successful.