With hundreds of millions of people online using social media, social media sites have quickly become a convenient resource for reaching out to potential customers quicker and easier than ever before. While there is potential for great return from social media interactions, social media marketing strategies require planning and proper execution in order to be effective. While the basic concepts remain the same whether you are reaching out to a crowd through social media or through more traditional means, there are certain practices that are especially crucial to having success marketing your business through social media.

• Have a Goal. Before creating a plan of attack for your social media marketing campaign, it is important to identify clear objectives you hope to accomplish through your online presence. Is it to improve visibility for your company or brand, are you trying to improve search engine optimizatio...

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After many requests from our customers, we decided to open our office doors to you and give you full insight into all our development efforts! Salespod's "Development roadmap" will now be permanently available via Trello.com pages. Here you will be able to suggest your new ideas to us, leave your votes and comments and see in which status the cards are - whether they are in consideration, in progress, in test or already released. Cards with the most votes will be pushed up on the list and you can even subscribe to the list to receive a notification when some status changes.

Ever since the foundation of Salespod, we were focused to provide our customers with the most professional service for field team management they have ever experienced. With an average of one mayor update every two weeks (for Salespod Express app) and one mayor update of iOS and ...

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"Road Warriors" are always at the leading edge of technology, looking for ways to get things done with smaller, lighter, faster mobile solutions. They were the first Palm Pilot users, the first to stick Blue Tooth Headsets in their ears, and the only ones who were willing to pay $30/night for hotel WiFi! The past few years have been like a Fantastic Voyage for these early adopters, with massive improvements in mobile productivity coming in quantum leaps.

Touch Enabled Tablets

April 3, 2010 was a date that changed everything for field sales, merchandising and service teams. After years… no… decades of promise, a viable tablet computer was finally available! Smartphones and special purpose mobile devices had come a long way to extend back-office computer systems to the field, but they all had short-comings: too slow… too small… too hard to use… too expensive… The iPad, and now the scores of other touch enabled tablet computers ru...

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By nature, great sales reps are independent thinkers that are driven by an almost instinctive need to compete and win. These natural sales leaders make selling part of their life, and make much of their life about selling.

Experienced sales managers know that getting the rest of the team to focus with as much enthusiasm as the top performers is one of the most challenging parts of their jobs. For the rep that is not inherently and frankly unnaturally focused on spending every minute hyper-efficiently executing the right sales activities, there is always temptation to rationalize taking shortcuts, sidestepping process and postponing the more difficult tasks in favor of those that are less tedious or challenging to execute.

It isn't cost effective to team a top performer with every average field rep in hopes of having good habits rub-off, nor is it efficient for managers to ride in...

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"Workforce tracker" app available at the App Store

March 25th, Salespod Inc. has released its second application on the App Store - "Workforce tracker!" After multiple requests from customers who wanted to track their workforce continously throughout the work day, Salespod has developed the "Workforce tracker" app, which works as an Add-on app for Salespod. Workforce tracker is a "check in machine" for mobile workers, sending GPS information about reps locations every 200 meters. After the application is installed on the reps iPhone, the representative can log in with his Salespod credentials and the Salespod app connects the two accounts. When the rep presses the "Start" button, Workforce tracker will track his movements and send his position to the back-office application. The rep may stop GEO tracking by pressing the "Stop" button.

Download "Workforce tracker" at: Read more

With a gap in the understanding of what makes successful sales forces tick, researchers have begun to focus on quantifying the factors that go into turning a motivated sales team into a task force capable of making an effective impact in their market. By outlining a few fundamental processes that will have an impact on the efficacy of sales teams, we hope to identify the controllable forces field marketing managers can utilize to cultivate a successful sales strategy.

As it is difficult for any new business to hit the ground running, having success in sales is dependent on continual improvement. Conducting honest program evaluations, targeting specific strategy areas to augment, developing specific improvement programs, and tracking progress in following through with these programs will create a cycle that, if followed, will lead to a constantly improving sales team capable of finding success in today's dynamic market.

In order to launch a camp...

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Driving your sales team to perform at its peak requires strong field management.  One mistake a lot of entrepreneurs make is underestimating the complexity of driving and closing business.  If you have never been in the sales trenches, it might appear to be as simple as paying for a few lunches and squeezing in a round or two of golf.  While the adage that 'people buy from people they like' is for the most part true, successful sales organizations do much more to bring in business than simply approve expense reports!  Seasoned sales force managers give their reps a process to follow that will lead them to more sales, then coach  them through the process to make sure they can execute well. Great managers then measure their field team's performance so they can focus on developing parts of the process and team that need to be adjusted and reward those that exemplif...

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Are you running online marketing and sales? If so, you are likely thinking about SEO. Since, we are in the business of 'optimizing' (OK, optimizing mobile workforce productivity) we figured we would create a simple checklist- as getting to the top of Google means more sales!

We work to optimize your mobile workforce, but without sales there is no workforce. What search engine optimization does is help to push you to the top and related results for online users. Now, we are also only speculators as we are not Google, but what we can do is give you some honest suggestions for building an optimized website for Google's search engine results (SERPs).

• URL- Is your keyword in your url? Is your url directly related to your content? If not, fix it!
• meta-tagging- Do you have a description? Have you u...

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The "bring your own device" or BYOD trend has really heated up in 2013. With
more businesses looking to create a mobile workforce, it is almost come to be expected that employees use their own laptops, tablets and smart phones to get the job done, whenever and wherever. On the positive side employers have been able to attract and retain employees promoting flexibility and convenience. Likewise, employees have more choice to freely utilize the gadgets they know and are comfortable with, with mobile tools like Salespod.

BYOD saves the company money and employees generally care for their devices more as it is their personal property. On the negative side employers are dealing with an IT headache of security models and corporate risk, as well as issues pertaining to mobile workforce management (something we can help you with!).

S...

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Salespod's Billboard empowers your mobile team with a superb control over all events happening inside of the company or at any customer's location. All changes made on product groups, products, prices and actions can be announced to field workers via company Billboard.

Salespod Billboard is an great tool which can also be integrated with your CRM and ERP system to close the loop. It is the ultimate notification tool for update the entire team when combined. Sales team members can check in throughout the day for team announcements, product changes, changes in supply (or stock) and much much more.

As a manager, you can publish your announcement through the web client by clicking on Billboard, entering and saving. The tool allows managers to quickly disseminate information to the entire team in just 3 clicks.

T...

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Salespod is the ultimate retail merchandising Swiss army knife. Providing you fresh and accurate insight into all your market parameters, as well as giving you full control of your retail merchandising team from the palm of your hand. Salespod is a technology solution which will provide you with all information needed to make the right business decisions on one platform for management and collaboration.

Salespod tools and features give you insights into

• market movements  - see overall reports from your team in the field to give you actionable insights
• customer habits - Gain insights from your customer data
• sales results - Check 'Daily Reports' in Salespod to get an overall snapshot from your team
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At Salespod, we believe in the constant quest for improvement. Here are some sales books that have helped us craft our product, strategy and helped us build our knowledge. We wanted to give you this list, next time you are looking to pick up a sales or business book, that may change the way you work!

• The Art of the Sale: Life's a Pitch - While pursuing a Harvard M.B.A., Philip Delves Broughton found himself obsessed by the process and difficulty of selling; a topic that was conspicuously absent from his coursework. Broughton decided to put his research skills to use (Broughton is a former journalist for The Daily Telegraph) and create his own "course" in selling. In his quest to find out what makes a great sales person, he analysed historical sales icons and met with current sales superstars, all of whom had plenty of insight to...

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Getting ready to make an In-store visual merchandising change?

Part one of two from Salespod on the enhancement of visuals in your retail merchandising.

Perhaps you've caught that 80's movie Mannequin, in which a department store that's going out of business is saved by a creative window dresser and his mannequin girlfriend. Silly mannequin-human romance aside, the emphasis on great visual merchandising shouldn't be dismissed. As image-based internet giant Pinterest has shown us, people like things that look good, are freshly (yet logically) displayed, and allow the viewer to connect to it in some way. I would go even one step further and say that today's consumers not only like a beautiful visual, they demand it.

In the current economy, it's easy to dismiss visuals as frivolous extras, but tread carefully. With increasing retail options, b...

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AppDirect, Salespod's app marketplace partner from San Francisco, proudly announces that the latest milestone in their mission to enable small business success is accomplished: the launch of the Staples App Center!

Powered by AppDirect and seamlessly integrated with Staples.com, the Staples App Center is a fantastic resource for small business owners who are looking for leading software solutions from providers like Google, McAfee, Symantec, Carbonite, and more. The Staples App Center will be the first time many small business owners use the cloud, and Appdirect is proud to deliver a first-class user experience that will empower them to achieve more.

Partnership with Staples - the largest seller of office products and the sec...

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Technology has trained us so well in instant gratification that we sometimes forget that good things take time (even when using Salespod!). This can be especially true when hiring a sales team. You may know the scenario: You've taken so much care in developing an exciting product or service, and all you want to do is get it out into the world as quickly as possible. You put the call out for salespeople, sift through the resumes, and hold interviews. Logically, you probably hire based on those candidates' who are great-on-paper--excellent sales records and awe-inspriring numbers. After all, you're swamped and don't have time to hold a salesperson's hand. Trouble is, those great-on-paper candidates may not be the right personality fit for your products, services, or company. So what's a company to do?

Choose those candidates who have the traits of a great salesperson (more on this later) and are a great fit for your company and culture. Invest tim...

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Let's talk about Steve. Steve is a star salesmen who works at a large high tech corporation selling data storage and management for enterprise. Steve worked at a startup that was acquired by the corporation and decided to turn down the job of sales team manager, as he knew he would miss the role of predominantly selling in the field. Presenting, negotiating, and working face-to-face with companies to solve their big data problems is the kind of work that makes him tick. As a manager, he feared the time spent tracking, inputting, and organizing an international sales team in a business with very long lead times. Today, Steve is one of the top sales managers in enterprise big data, this is how he got there.

Challenge

Steve feared a management role in sales due to the administration and documentation. He wanted to spend the majority of his time in the field with customers. At the same time, Steve knew he would enjoy the enhanced responsibility of...

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The Direct Store Delivery business process is a dynamic and challenging work environment where sales reps and back office managers must strongly rely on each other and collaborate all the way. With the right solution capable of streamlining sales and delivery processes, companies can devote more time to spend with their customers.

With Salespod, teams can collaborate in real-time, more accurately, and have access to information at their fingertips while on the move. Managers are able to keep in constant contact with team members, without having to spend their days on phones and in email. Text messaging, photo sharing, and forms are Salespod features that allow for ultimate collaboration while on the move. Receive orders, update status, communicate with your team, arrange visits, and record time and mileage, all within the Salespod web and mobile platform.

Salespod also focuses on direct store delivery optimization. Salespod GEO tagging allows f...

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Cloud computing has become the buzzword of today's business world. It is the 'technology' we have all been talking about. Although, when it comes to our world of sales and merchandising, what does the cloud really mean? When you ask Wikipedia, the term becomes quite broad:

"Cloud computing is the use of computing resources (hardware and software) that are delivered as a service over a network (typically the Internet). The name comes from the use of a cloud-shaped symbol as an abstraction for the complex infrastructure it contains in system diagrams. Cloud computing entrusts remote services with a user's data, software and computation."

Although, as a business manag...

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Salespod's collaboration tools considerably reduce time-consuming phone calls while increasing the quality of communication between your mobile team and field work managers, especially when it comes to gathering information from customers. With customer surveying in Salespod, managers can be two places at once. Meaning, they can see the information being gathered from customers, as well as manage from afar. Salespod allows managers to cut down on calls to specific reps to gather customer data, yet increase the amount of information coming in.

Custom Forms for Customer Surveying

Custom forms is a great feature in Salespod for gathering customer information and feedback. With custom forms, additional and specific pieces of information relevant for your own business can be added and tracked. (These fields are defined by your own company's Salespod administrator via Salespod web app, they are auto-synced to teams in the field and they can be edit ...

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Salespod is a multifaceted tool for daily field reporting. Meaning, it allows you to manage all aspects of your field activities in one place while looking back at past events. Time tracking, data input, inventory and merchandising, purchase tracking, custom forms, and mobile crm for all your clients are all in one place for easy access. Importantly, all daily events can be seen through reporting and queried as needed.

Diary & Daily Reports

The Diary screen in Salespod allows reps and managers to see previous visits to clients and see events created in each visit under "Daily Reports". It also allows reps and managers to see "Working Hours" which incorporates start of day, end of day, hour totals, and milage.

Field Data

All events (documents, photos, messages, visit notifications, time, mileage, notes, etc.) can be seen for reporting. Salespod allows for filtering based on:

• Type of activit...

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You are already conducting market research, just by having a field sales team. Think about it. Your sales representatives are your eyes and ears in your market. Talking to customers, listening, and recording information about your customers is exactly the job of your team. Sure, their main function is sales, but most of sales is listening to your customers and reacting accordingly.

Thinking smart and strategic is using the information your sales team gathers for other company functions. This is in fact, the very definition of business intelligence: the ability for an organization to collect, maintain, and organize data.

In Salespod, sales representatives in the field can track using dynamic forms built for this very purpose. Frequent data collection allows field work managers and sales managers to not only monitor field activities, but to further understand market movements.

While there's a lot that can be said for training an in-house sales force, a team of independent sales representatives may also be a good fit for your company. Why?

Perhaps you're looking to reduce costs. Since independent sales reps work on commission, the incentive to sell your product - and a lot of it - is high. Additionally, your company only pays the reps on sales made,  without the added worry about the overhead of base salaries and benefits.

Another benefit of hiring an independent sales force is added reach, both in geography and in influence. Remember, you're contracting a sales professional - most likely someone who has expertise and insight to sales markets, as well as excellent existing network connections. Your sales rep will know which calls to make and when to make them. And, because many sales reps have sold across several industries, they offer the added benefit of on-the-spot f...

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Sales Managers, "It's like a professional sports coach. What do they do? They design the best plays and then coach each athlete to use the best techniques and skill sets on every play. That's why they study and break down game film so much," explains Mike Brooks of Eye on Sales.

Let's look at the 'play' of monitoring your sales team and the most important aspects for success:

1. Make sure sales goals are clear

Depending on your sales model, sales team can be time or commissioned based. Although, whichever model you use, clear goals are the key to success.

Salespod Tools: Text messaging & billboard

2. Coach

We have been preaching this since the start (just like Mike Brooks). Sales managers don't need to micromanage, they need to coach. Employ...

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To this day we still see punch cards. You remember them! Arrive at work, clock in with your punch card in the employee entrance, and clock out with a punch at the end of the day. A requirement of physical presence, not applicable to the mobile revolution we are seeing in business, thanks to smart phones, iPads, and laptops.

For sales teams, clocking in and out has always been a problem. Field management and workforce management has always been a game of trust and small inefficiencies that add up over time. Workers were required to clock in at locations or track their own time. Constant contact and communication seemed the only solution.

With Salespod, accountability and efficiency are built into the product through field expense tracking (like milage), work time management, and optimized routing. Our goal, is to have sales teams spending more time in the field selling then doing administrative tasks ...

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Nancy Nardin of Smart Selling Tools recounts the technological changes that have revolutionized how we sell and business as we know it in The Evolution of Sales Tools and the Efficiency Paradox. She talks of technology introductions that slowed us at first, but shortly after led to increased efficiency and productivity.

"We are at the beginning of yet another sales tool revolution: one that will be even bigger and more 'evolutionary' than the first. It will change the way we collect, record, and share information. It will change the way we communicate and collaborate. It will free us even further from our modern day drudgery  allowing us to gain greater efficiencies, and therefore generate even more revenue. However, like other technological advancements of the past and present, the advancements of the future will introd...

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Corporations can make more money if they know what their customers like and what products they buy often. To obtain this information, your company can hire an analyst to pour over reports and data, but it would be much more convenient if the data could be compiled easily by employees and shared among one network without having to hire an analyst. You're in luck then, because Salespod can do all of that and more. Easy-to-fill data forms can be shared through Salespod and the collected data filled out by employees can be automatically sent to the field marketing manager or the retail manager.

Sales tracking can help your company figure out how to best serve your customers, but sometimes getting the information from the sales can be tricky or hard for everyday employees to track. Often the forms require coding or have a complex system for filing and sharing the data. Salespod makes the process much easier by allowing a com...

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Many of us have texted on the job and gotten away with it, but what about texting because your business requires it for fast communication and increasing the speed of sales? The text messaging from Salespod could be exactly what your company needs to keep communication from breaking down, impeding production, and slowing business to a crawl. Related to this idea of quick communication between employees and customers is mobile CRM applications, which can make logging and accessing customer information a cinch. If you have the ability to log customer information from just one phone call and then are also able to recall that information with just a few clicks on your smart phone or tablet, your company's salespeople can regain hours of lost time.

Texting and being able to access customer information with mobile CRM apps can also really help out your field force teams, especially if they need to have communicatio...

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Can you picture those crowds lining up at retail stores in preparation for Black Friday and the other juicy holiday sales that come with this time of the year? Anyone who has ever worked in retail knows just how awful Black Friday can be for employees, especially when the store is jam packed with customers and they're all trying to grab the best sales and run out the door. Something as simple as a change in price or quantity suddenly becomes an emergency that can quickly escalate into a riot. To avoid confusion and rampant trampling of innocent bystanders, employees need to be able to access information about the store's merchandise without having to ask a manager or run to the storeroom.

Retail merchandising can be a nightmare on a regular day, but on days like Black Friday or the week before Christmas, workforce management has to run seamlessly, or else. Salespod has just the thing to make your business more organized and i...

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Staples App Center in beta features mobile workforce, CRM, and field tracking application, Salespod

Salespod announces application availability through Staples.com Staples App Center. Salespod's sales force automation software for managing your mobile field and sales force is available after November 30th, 2012 in Staples beta tech solutions through the Staples App Center.

Staples is the World's leading office products company with millions of companies of all sizes relying on their products daily. The transition into technical offers and solutions of varying sizes is an important step for the company.

"At Staples, we see enormous opportunities in these changing customer needs," says Staples Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Ronald L. Sargent in the Q3 Sales Management ...

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Large businesses and corporations often have the same problems as mobile businesses. There just isn't time to sit everyone in the company down and go over daily, weekly, or monthly goals and plans. It's especially difficult to keep every employee up-to-date and informed when there is paperwork or memos involved. We all know how much paperwork is involved in retail merchandising, so how are you going to make sure every employee gets their assignments and a copy of the daily memo without using an entire forest of trees? With Google Apps, of course. Google Apps can be integrated with Salespod's plans, so that you can make sure everyone in your company is on the same page, literally.

Merchandising companies can hire hundreds of employees depending on how large the business is, and it's not realistic to think that phones calls and meetings can happen every day. T...

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Before the laptop, we were bound to our desks. Before the cloud, we were always caught sending, saving, and exchanging. Before the smartphone, we carried all of our laptops, our externals, thumb drives, and disks for the utility of inputting, saving and sharing. This was once the life of sales force and field management.

But the role of a sales manager has gone from location meetings back to their desktop, to mobile workforce management with the help of Salespod. Armed with a smartphone, Salespod and cloud integration, sales managers can now input data anywhere, anytime, save in real-time and share. Wow, that is a mouthful.

For sales representatives, the 'Sales Rep Data Sheet' in the Office tab, allows you to input pricing, inventory, and other valuable pieces of information into fields, store and share.  Salespod also allows you to design your own forms and collect valuable data according to yo...

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I recently found myself with a new room mate in Mountain View, California, an Android engineer from Portugal, that packed up and relocated here to work his dream job at a local startup. Upon arriving at our house, his first question was to ask where the nearest Starbucks was? I couldn't believe it. After traveling thousands of miles, he just wanted to go to a place that he could go in Portugal! Why?

Consistency and comfort. As consumers we openly gravitate towards familiarity and comfort. As companies, it is the very reason we are able to build brand equity. If people like the way a brand, place or product makes them feel, then they are more likely to purchase again or return. As a sales merchandiser, this fact is your bread and butter. Your job is to create consistency and familiarity within your retailers. 

As a field sales manager, think of your retailers as your customers (it is not to say that the customers are not th...

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Any retail employee will tell you that working with difficult customers, cleaning up spilled and broken product, and even working an extra shift is nothing compared to setting up new shelving or displays. One of the reasons why the task is so difficult is because there is generally only one copy of the instructions, and a whole team of people have to complete the project. However, there is hope to be found in the sales force automation tools offered by Salespod. You might think of spreadsheets and timesheets when you think of business or retail automation software, but did you know that Salespod also includes the ability to share shelving diagrams and photographs as well?

It might bring tears of joy to your eyes knowing that an entire crew might have access to the shelving diagrams, all at the same time. Not only will you and your employees be able to access the diagrams simultaneously, but you can also take pictures of the diagram to send to the b...

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Have you ever worked for a company or business where you stand around for at least a half an hour each day - if not more - wondering what you're supposed to be doing or who is supposed to tell you what to do next? It can be really frustrating and confusing when information and organization is a little chaotic and slow to reach the employees. That's why companies like Salespod are so effective. They give businesses the tools they need for superb communication and transfer of information. With Salespod, sales force management can transform confused, wandering employees into a dynamic, connected team that has access to real time updates for merchandise quantities, price information, and merchandise descriptions. 

Via smartphone or tablet, employees can access memos, data, and instructions through Salespod so that productivity stays up, employees stay busy, and customers stay happy. All of t...

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Businesses that are constantly on the go need to have some sort of organizing force that keeps that pack together and allows them to collaborate even at a distance. Whether you have several different food carts that move around your city or you command a fleet of delivery trucks, you need to have some sort of field management to prevent miscommunication from bringing down productivity. By using a Salespod plan, you can wirelessly link all of your mobile employees together in a web of real time mobile communication using smartphones and tablet devices.

Salespod can track sales data to inform you of the daily earnings from your mobile business, and you can keep track of what locations sell the most products. Owning and operating a mobile business may be less expensive in some ways, but keeping track of employees that could be miles and miles away from each other and ...

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Field Marketing Agencies perform some of the most vital services to anyone looking to expand their products or ideas to a wider audience. A product needs to work and be attractive, to sell, but its success is not dependent solely on its quality and how it is presented. In order to be successful with your business idea, you need to have the right kind of analysis done and the right type of presentation to the target audience. This is what the best field marketing agencies do to help those looking to sell their products. By doing the research and using their expertise, they help you help others with your product.

The field marketing agency business is a busy and competitive one, with plenty of agencies competing for the services of customers. The agencies who can work efficiently, quickly, and productively have the best chance of landing customers. In order to do this, agencies must have the best technology to assist them.

Salespod is t...

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For many employees and employers, alike, there is nothing more dreaded than a company meeting, or conference phone calls.  While necessary and productive, at times, too many meetings and calls take away from the substance of your work and can be counterproductive to your goals. Employees want managers and bosses who spend their time leading by example and conduct in the field, and employers want to do the same.  Nonetheless, there are times where instructions and plan alterations must be communicated to everyone. When this happens, it is inefficient to waste time and money arranging a conference call or calling a meeting.  If you have the right technology in place, you can instantly communicate urgent messages to your staff.

Salespod provides the perfect technological solution to communications with your mobile workforce. Salespod's billboard and text messaging tools make enterprise collaboration easy and efficient. Mobile wo...

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Salespod is all about efficiency. Hot, proven, above-all speed.

Salespod is a swiss army knife for your mobile workforce. We are a unique, comprehensive, field sales & services automation solution available for smart phones and tablets. We recently spent a little time optimizing the app in terms of pricing and product, allowing users to more efficiently manage this data while on the move. To do this, within the app in the 'Billboard' section, 'Products' has been added to allow users to compile lists, pricing, and other documentation.

We believe managing product, pricing, and inventory should be the easy part. The current industry solution of office hours for data input is costly, time consuming, and inefficient. Salespod wants to change the way sales representatives operate, adding more tools to the palm of their hand. On iOS and Android, Salespod makes your teams truly mobile.

We believe tracking...

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If you've worked at all, you've likely had to deal with or currently deal with a time sheet. Clocking in and clocking out can be a pain, and the system can be abused by employees with the wrong type of mindset. It is very difficult to keep track of your employees with such a mechanical process, where the sheets and the time stamps are kept in a physical location. This is particularly true when dealing with a mobile workforce. Keeping track of time worked and miles driven can be very difficult and frustrating to deal with. Fortunately, new technological advances have made it so much easier for business managers to keep on top of the activities and work days of their employees.

Salespod is the best technological tool for people who engage in mobile workforce management. With Salespod, you can take control of the vehicle mileage and work time reports coming from your employees and make sure th...

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As a mobile software toolkit for field sales representatives, we think sales techniques and skills are pretty darn important. That being said, we think the skills of great salesman can also be applied to many different areas of business. Here are some tips for closing a sale-for more than just sales!

Adapted from Grant Cordon's "12 Commandments for Closing a Sale" at Entrepeneur and Lloyd's TSB " Always be Closing" at Small Business Network.

As any college student writing their final paper for the semester will tell you, closing isn't easy. Perhaps you feel you've made everything self-evident. Perhaps you haven't properly paced yourself. Perhaps you've become overconfident. Cruelly, the close is everything. It's what your clients will remember; it's what will make ...

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Salespod commends the sales managers of the world that act as coaches. We think it is about time sales managers have the opportunity to give their team the tools and cheer them on, rather than act as bureaucrats!

Here is a post for sales managers on how to master sales team management (as a coach), as well as how Salespod can help.

In managing your sales team:

1. Know Strengths & Weaknesses

In order to leverage your team to their full potential, it is important to understand every team member's strengths and weaknesses. Having a team with strengths that complement weaknesses for each member can give you a competitive advantage.

Salespod allows you to track each sales team member to better understand them and see where they each excel. This way you can optimize your team based on their strong areas.

2. Maximize Customer Interaction

Free your sales team o...

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The concept of upselling and cross-selling is as old as the industry of selling. Yet, they are tactics we often dismiss as 'sleezy'. The connotation of 'trickery' has cast a shadow, as it is as widely joked about as used car salesmen! Yet, upselling and cross-selling are tactics that are actually quite honest, and in many ways, used to help bring more value to the customer.

Upselling: The Traditional Definition

"Upselling (sometimes "up-selling") is a sales technique whereby a seller induces the customer to purchase more expensive items, upgrades, or other add-ons in an attempt to make a more profitable sale. Upselling usually involves marketing more profitable services or products but can also be simply exposing the customer to other options that were perhaps not considered previously." - Wikipedia

The Salespod Definition

Upselling is a sales technique whereby a seller presents added value of a highe...

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If you find yourself on Wiki Answers for the question: What is the importance of Strategic Communication in a counter-insurgency operation? You will find the answer to be: "It is central to operations".

Okay, no one is arranging a counter-insurgency operation, or is this part of the question even relevant. What is relevant is communication in relation to operations. The two words are absolutely synonymous.

The point is: communication is key. It can make or break a business operationally. Across industries, operations, and organizations, communication is the glue that keeps things together. That is why we built communication tools as an essential piece of the Salespod software - messages and billboards.

We believe that field sales teams and retail merchandisers need to be able to communicate as efficiently as possible while on the move. For this we built-in messaging, photos,...

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Jenny is a wine sales representative who works for a California wine distribution company. Her sales region consists of the Northern part of Portland, Oregon, but she is the sales manager for the entire city with 5 other reps under her. Jenny is a warm brunette with a vast knowledge of both new world and old world wines. She is well known by the retail owners she works with and they enjoy her visits and appreciate all her hard work. She has worked for her company for almost 12 years now. Jenny's largest pain points throughout her day are in tracking the other representatives that she manages (communication), information management by retail location, and keeping track of sales in order to reach quotas by employee and location.

Before Salespod, Jenny and her team were trying to solve all problems through multiple software programs and traditional communication. Jenny was tracking sales in Excel, in which she spent many hours inputting information. She w...

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In the last week, most of us have probably heard a statement prefaced with, "In this economy..." If you're in retail, that probably holds doubly true. True, retail sales have been increasing in tiny increments, but that's progress that isn't being widely felt across the board.

So, what is a retailer to do in this economy? Genesis Davis over at Docstoc has some recommendations (please see the article for a complete list)

• If you haven't already, establish an online presence - Although e-commerce is estimated to comprise only about 5% of total retail sales, that's still a tidy $44.3 billion in revenue. As more and more people look to the internet for deals and convenience, it's bad business not to be online. If you're not tech savvy or don...

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Despite many still-sluggish economies around the world, there are certainly emerging markets in which retailers can make a splash, and possibly a fortune. CNBC reported the top 10 hottest retail markets as (in descending order): Peru, Mongolia, Oman, United Arab Emirates, Georgia, India, Uruguay, China, Chile, Brazil.

Retailers continue to hope and bet big by expanding into these global markets, and smart companies acknowledge what a balancing act it can be to make that move. Prime considerations such as real estate and market penetration can pose challenges; however, for those companies who welcome flexibility and innovation, these are certainly surmountable, particularly with a little market knowledge and planning. For example, as Gina Lovett points out in Retail Week, if a retailer is thinking about...

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While some salespeople may thrive on the challenge of turning a cold lead into a warm one, many would probably admit that this isn't their favorite part of the job. Cold calling, as many of you know, can be daunting and dispiriting. Luckily, there are several great ways to turn those cold leads into warm ones, thereby increasing the chances of a successful sale.

First, learn how to utilize social media to your advantage. True, most savvy businesses have Twitter and Facebook accounts up and running, but are they using them to their utmost advantage? Smart Business Marketing offers the following tips for getting the most out of social media:

• Think long-term - Generating initial interest through a clever Tweet or a Facebook giveaway may bring new business your way, but if you don't have a plan on how ...

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"Organized by 500 Startups, Geeks on a Plane (#GOAP ) is an invite-only tour for startups, investors, and executives to learn about burgeoning technology markets worldwide. We travel by planes, trains, and automobiles to the most exciting international startup scenes with the sole mission of uniting geeks and exploring cross-border opportunities. The result: a lifelong bond with fellow travelers, a wealth of new friends and business contacts in exploding technology markets, and a stronger appreciation for the cultural and economic ties that bind us globally." - Geeks on a Plane

Salespod will be presenting at the event in Croatia September 25th & 26th. Organized and featuring Dave McClure, Read more

Business watchers' hearts are all aflutter over Nordstrom's sales showings in the past couple of years. They've shown outstanding growth despite the recession by developing a multi-pronged online sales strategy that appeals to a young, deal-minded demographic. By integrating their warehouse and store inventories, offering quick order turnaround as well as free shipping and returns, Nordstrom has distinguished itself from its department store brethren as simultaneously more hip and less expensive, while simultaneously retaining its higher-end cache.

Granted, most retailers don't have the advertising and buying power of Nordstrom's, but I cite them as an example of a retailer thinking beyond their business identity to effect real change in their organization. Some of their sales strategies are transferable on a smaller scale as well. For example, making ...

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Retail locations still make up a vast majority share of commerce in today's economy, meaning optimizing your retail location can be just as important (if not more) than strategizing whether or not you need to join the online game. Here are a few tips to improve your retail with today's advancements and advantages.

1. Groupon

"Everybody got a deal, I did it without one," sings Canadian hip hop artist, Drake. Although, in reality, Drake may be alone on this one if we apply it to the world of retail. With timed sales in eCommerce (Gilt, MyHabit by Amazon, Fab, Rue La La and the list goes on), liquidation retailers (T.J. Maxx, Overstock.com), and Groupon competitors popping up all over the world, we as shoppers are getting pretty darn used to deals. As a retailer, do not 'discount' the power of deals when it comes to marketing and sales. Groupon (and their competitors) offer a marketing edge for retailers, 'recruiting' shoppers in the door. An added advantage of deal...

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There is something about that feeling of walking into a well lit room surrounded by shiny brand new things. We are talking about a retail store. We both know it well. Today, we refer to stores as brick-and-mortar in relation to eCommerce, but there was a time when this experience defined consumer shopping.

Although, the retail environment today still captures our emotions, makes us feel warm, and gives us a sense of want. The act of shopping itself, the feeling of finding the perfect item, and even the familiar smell of new. Retail still makes an impact on our lives. Just because we have the option to shop online doesn't mean we always will. In fact, "US E-Commerce Sales as 'Percent of Retail Sales' is at a current level of [just] 5.10% for Q2 of 2012," according to YCharts Online. That means 94.9% of us are still shopping at brick-and-mortar retailers. What keeps us there?

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Sales guru, Nancy Nardin, recently wrote a post called Sales 3.0 The End of The Road for The Autonomous Sales Rep describing today's salespeople as empowered to act on their own, while "managing many resources, activities, and accounts." We agree, that to have truly effective sales teams, you must empower them, but at the same time you must give them the resources so that they are still able to effectively communicate while managing.

What makes this new era of Sales 3.0, according to Nardin is the technology, smartphones and tablets, that allow us to share more information to more people while on the move. One of Nardin's points for mobile effectiveness is:

"Use text messaging and message "billboards" so salespeople have no justifiable reasons for not communicating with regularity. Stimulate and encourage the exchange of ideas and 'out-of-the-box' initiatives. Actively support the development of teamwork and solidari...

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