Blog

Explore Salespod and discover why so many companies are using it.

  • Product updates - May 7

    Published in: Product on 05/07/2013

    Recently we released one really cool feature which will help field warriors in their work! Salespod has integrated with the Google Places to allow field reps enter new clients more easily and more fun!

    Salespod's "Mobile CRM" edition already allowed field reps to enter and edit client information while in the field, but the new intergation with Google Places allows them to explore places around them and enter client info more easily. It's even fun thing to do!

    How does it work?

    When you press on the "New client" button you will see one new button - "Search nearby". It will initiate a search for the 60 most relevant Google places in a 500 meters radious. When you pick a location from the list Salespod will show you basic information about that place: title, address, phone number, web address and the possition on the map. Click on the "Select" button to import ...Read more

  • Product updates - Apr 23

    Published in: Product on 04/23/2013

    Hi folks!

    Last week we updated a few features in Salespod, and we are looking forward to seeing you put them into action!

     

     

    Photo Tagging

    Tagging photos will allow reps to attach tags onto the photos they take, allowing back-office users to filter the photo gallery by tags. Retail merchandisers will find this especially useful, as they will be able to sort through the many photos they take by specific criteria: e.g. position in store, position on shelf, brand, etc.

    How does it work?

    After taking a photo, reps can write comments on the photo, marking tags using hash tags (#). Later, when filtering in the photo gallery, Salespod will recognize the words marked with hash tags and allow users to sort photos by those keywords.

    Additional Filter
    Improved "Additional...Read more
  • Product updates #2

    Published in: Product on 04/11/2013

    We had an extraordinary week in Salespod. We migrated to new servers in a new Data Center. Now the servers are in Washington DC. Current infrastructure had troubles keeping up with high demand so we moved to much stronger servers. We'll cut off all technical issues and geek-speak, the operations went smooth and all systems were up throughout the weekend.

    Alongside migrating, we managed to do some other things. We pushed new Android app to Google Play with support for client attached files download and some other bug fixes and enhancements. We're also working on Spanish translation, on both iOS and Android apps.

    Signature capture is almost out there. It's currently in test and will be available pretty soon on both iOS and Android app.

    iOS track introduced new Workforce tracker app<...Read more

  • Salespod's "Development Roadmap" pages are Live!

    Published in: Product on 04/08/2013

    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 ...Read more

  • Product updates - April 1

    Published in: Product on 04/01/2013

    "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

  • Using Billboard in Salespod

    Published in: Product on 03/05/2013

    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...Read more

  • Retail Merchandising with Salespod

    Published in: Product on 02/19/2013

    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
    • Read more
  • Direct Store Delivery with Salespod

    Published in: Product on 01/30/2013

    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...Read more

  • Customer Surveying in Salespod

    Published in: Product on 01/17/2013

    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 ...Read more

  • Daily Field reporting

    Published in: Product on 01/07/2013

    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:

  • Market Research with Salespod

    Published in: Product on 01/04/2013

    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.

    Read more
  • Monitoring Your Sales Team

    Published in: Product on 12/27/2012

    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...Read more

  • Clock Hours in Salespod

    Published in: Product on 12/20/2012

    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 ...Read more

  • The Benefits of Sales Tracking During the Holidays

    Published in: Product on 12/11/2012

    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...Read more

  • Texting on the Job and Getting Away With It

    Published in: Product on 12/06/2012

    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...Read more

  • Make Sure All Mobile Employees are on the Same Page, Literally

    Published in: Product on 11/30/2012

    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...Read more

  • Inputting Fields

    Published in: Product on 11/30/2012

    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...Read more

  • Photo Documentation & Consistency

    Published in: Product on 11/27/2012

    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...Read more

  • Make Shelving Nightmares a Thing of the Past

    Published in: Product on 11/26/2012

    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...Read more

  • Field Management for On-the-Go Businesses

    Published in: Product on 11/22/2012

    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 ...Read more

  • Adding Speed to Sales Processes

    Published in: Product on 11/09/2012

    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...Read more

  • Time Sheets: A Thing of the Past

    Published in: Product on 11/05/2012

    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...Read more

  • New UI Launch

    Published in: Product on 07/08/2012

    Salespod, a mobile sales, merchandising, and operational software solution (the Swiss army knife for your mobile workforce), is announcing a new user interface!

    The new user interface will ensure easy-to-use functionality, a clean look and feel, as well as upgraded usability. The new version includes Box.com OneCloud integration, one of the world's largest cloud storage services, for cloud storage and real-time synching. Now it's easier than ever to streamline and manage your sales, merchandising and DSD operations.

    Enhanced functionality and improved usability includes:

    • Build your own mobile forms and perform customer analysis
    • Report on activities for any field worker or customer
    • ...Read more
  • How Visit Tracking Is Used by T-Mobile and L’Oreal Adria

    Published in: Product on 05/25/2012

    Salespod has a feature called "visit tracking" which allows sales managers and other back office professionals to monitor how salespeople and field representatives are managing their time. With visit tracking, an individual's day can be planned ahead of time, or managers can adjust the day as priorities develop.

    As the worker completes each of their daily appointments, they check in, letting the back office know their schedule. Supervisors in the back office can schedule the next appointment based on need.

    T-Mobile Croatia found this solution to be just what they were looking for. Their technicians had been using a system where they had to carry a laptop, photo camera, and forms and record materials used during the work. They had to phone in and coordinate their schedule following each appointment.  Now, they use the Salespod phone app instead. With this phone app, they were able to create and update work processes, automate the...Read more

  • Salespod's customer support now powered by Zendesk: live chat, knowledge base and ticketing

    Published in: Product on 12/19/2011

    We always wished to give our customers the best support they can get and provide them with full assistance in their everyday work. So what did we do? We raised the bar.

    Recently we incorporated Zendesk support platform in Salespod's web site and back office app so every customer who needs any help or have a question could approach to us with an ease. All that one needs to do is to press "Support" button on the right  side of Salespod screen and choose between three options: knowledge base, live chat and ticket support.

    Searchbox Knowledge Base
    Knowledge Base

    Knowledge Base is a depository of knowledge, a forum-like support center with dozens of Tips & Tricks, Video tutorials and Community helpRead more

  • Need to make a Complete Blood Count of your client? Use Salespod, it'll hurt them less!

    Published in: Product on 12/16/2011

    Clients are the focus of all activities happening on the field. They are the nucleus of all your field operations and one of the most important factors in mobile business. Approach them always with the greatest care.

    No matter what your company does, and how many locations your client has, no matter if you are a retail company, personal service provider, janitorial service or even a wine company producing wine... your representatives always have to approach clients individually and work with them day by day. While for sales representatives clients will be different kinds of sales places and for vintners vine clusters in the field, basically, it will be the same. Client will always be the client. What your workforce manager is most interesed to and what matters the most are your client's 'blood test' results!

    Besides dealing with workforce employees and constant monitoring of their field work operations, every ones in a while workforce managers ...Read more

  • Salespod - a mobile worker's Swiss army knife

    Published in: Product on 09/15/2011

    Salespod is a powerful mobile business tool developed to support multiple work assignments specific to mobile workforce.

    From the very start, Salespod mobile application was imagined and built to serve mobile workers as their personal Swiss army knife - an 'all in one' tool that would contain handful of functionalities required for fulfilling everyday tasks of mobile workers.

    Mobile sales, one of the most common and most complex jobs in the mobile business industry, necessitates a highest level of agility and dynamics. This high demands that are put in front of every salesperson must always be supported with an update information on products and clients and available to them at the right time.

    Salespod solution fulfills all these requirements with ease and enables  salespersons to have exceptional control over their mobile sales proceses. In the same time, Salesp...Read more