How to Use Your iPad to Drive Your Sales

Let’s face it, Power Point is dead. Today, Quote Roller sets out to show you how to use the fad of now to convince and close — and how to organize your sales process in between.

More than 100 million iPads have been sold. Nothing (besides maybe the Big Mac) has ever sold that many units in that short of time. Chances are you or someone on your sales team has one. Even more probable is that your client has one and shares in the world’s Apple addiction. Even if you don’t have one, it’s sure that, whenever you go into a store displaying an iPad, you appreciate the unique please-touch fascination it draws. So why not use the iPad’s allure to spice up your next sales call?

Quote Roller spoke to Graham Hunt, a seasoned real estate agent, who advertises his homes and the Spanish property hunt in general in an iPad lifestyle magazine Spanish Property Magazine. This iPad addict even gives seminars on how to turn the iPad into your best sales tool. Graham says, “The iPad helps me to take the client along the route towards choosing the right house. All the photos of properties are stored in the cloud and accessed through Dropbox. The Dropbox app on the iPad allows me to give a great slideshow of potential properties to clients.” Not only does it help him make a sale, but Graham finds he himself has become an unintentional seller of iPads, too. “People love to interact with an iPad and find it so intuitive and easy to use, even when they have never used it before. They love looking at properties on it. More than 50 percent of my clients actually get an iPad after having the experience of using one during the purchase process.”

When used correctly, an iPad can be a way to take your clients and potential clients on a journey. Many of our Quote Roller customers already use their favorite iToy when they are designing their sales proposals and monitoring what their clients are looking at. Now, Quote Roller wants to offer you 5 more ways you can use your iPad to guide your sale.

1. Marketing

Who wants a paper cut from a brochure, when you can take them through a hands-on interactive tour of your products/services, including a convincing video testimonial with one of your most satisfied clients?

2. Discretion

Sometimes to make a sale, you need to pull out all the stops. Maybe your client wants to see last year’s numbers or maybe he or she wants to see a list of your other clients, but maybe you don’t want to put that data out there for the world to see. Also, if you leave all your numbers lying around a potential customer’s office, who is to say your competition isn’t going to use it to leverage their own sale. Using your iPad to show these details takes away that paper trail.

3. Wining & dining

You invite your client out for lunch under the auspices of catching up, but you’re probably trying to get him to re-sign your annual contract. At the appropriate moment, pulling out your just-happen-to-have-with-you iPad is a lot smoother and more “spontaneous” than pulling out your briefcase filled with marketing materials. You come off as prepared, not overly so.

4. To sell packages

We know a university textbook seller, who will, of course, give complimentary copies to professors. However, nine times out of ten, these copies either sit on a dusty old shelf or are resold into the usually illegal used textbook market. Still, the professor needs to see the book. Sweeping through and zooming in on the pages on an iPad makes it easy to highlight the book’s features, but no prof is going to be cheeky enough to assume that they get to keep the iPad. It also makes it a lot easier to search for and look up the specific topics that Quantum Physics doctorate wants to examine, without having to know what a quark is. And instead of selling that Moogle, Blackboard or other classroom management system on a computer, while the professor holds the book, it truly shows how the eBook and the study tools can integrate into a comprehensive learning system. Plus, by selling the whole interactive package, the seller then avoids the destruction-for-the-publishing-industry resale of that used book a semester later.

5. Signing on that dotted line

A big bonus you get from pairing iPads up with Sales Proposal Software like Quote Roller, is that, if you make the sale in the moment, you can edit the conditions right then and there and have your clients sign the screen, email or print them a receipt, and charge their credit card right then and there. Sometimes, especially in times of economic hardship, it’s best to get that sales proposal signed before they get a chance to reconsider!

BUT DON’T GET CAUGHT IN THE HYPE! Yes, you love your new iGadget and want to show it off, but make sure you:
A. Know how to use it well.
B. You’ve practiced presenting with it on a coworker or friend.
C. The battery is charged.
D. You have a good reason to use it. When all else fails, the clients needs are the most important conversation to be having. All the bells and whistles are useless without offering true benefits to your client.

Any other tips on how you integrate your iPad into your sales call?