Top 5 Must-Have Features for Mobile CRM Apps

According to Gartner, businesses are spending $12 billion each year on customer relationship management (CRM) systems worldwide. But far too often, these systems are underused. This is often due to the difficulty involved in leveraging CRM in the field.

Fortunately, CRM is being revolutionized by the mobile promise, “there’s an app for that.” Third-party mobile CRM apps can help mobile agents access their contacts, take calls, send emails, set up tasks and even browse prospects’ social feeds, all while automatically logging activities and syncing contact changes in CRMs like Salesforce.com.

Since mobile CRM apps are being absolutely devoured by enterprise users, we want to focus on some of the features that can help buyers separate the top dogs from the rest of the pack.

Here’s what the best mobile CRM apps do now.

Social Media

Social sales features are becoming a more vital. As such, buyers should look for mobile CRM apps with a social component that enables reps to listen to prospects’ social feeds in order to glean actionable insight. For example, if a lead communicates a need for certain services or products in Twitter, it can help signal that the lead is hot and needs attention from sales. There’s a lot of insight that can be gained by browsing a lead’s Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter Feeds. Quick access to this data can help you close deals on the go.

Sales Productivity Through Automation

You should make sure that a mobile CRM app automatically logs your activities in a CRM. Reps often waste countless hours logging their activities manually. But through seamless CRM integration, you can take calls, send emails, set up tasks, take notes and more while those activities are automatically logged. Mobile CRM apps that cause extra work should be avoided in favor of apps that save time and enhance productivity.

Enhanced Collaboration

Improved collaboration across teams often improves productivity. Therefore, great mobile CRM apps should also bolster collaboration with other reps. Expanding on the telephony component, this could entail the ability to transfer calls to other reps or supervisors. It could also include the ability to access Salesforce Chatter feeds.

Reps can also use Chatter to work together to close deals. For example, a sales rep can use Chatter to see if a marketing manager sent a lead the slide desk that she had requested. If not, the sales rep knows to follow up with the marketing manager to expedite the process.

Lead Qualification Features

Revenue.io’s mobile CRM app for iPad Mini

Mobile CRM apps shouldn’t just make it easy to access existing leads and contacts. They should also help you add new leads with ease. The best mobile CRM apps should also give you an option to quickly decide whether or not an incoming caller is worth being added to a CRM at all. For example, the Revenue.io mobile CRM app allows you to add new leads and contacts with a single click, while also telling marketing which leads are duds.  You can also assign a star rating to each call with a single tap.

A Strong Telephony Component

As a mobile sales rep, sales calls are your bread and butter. Calls are the primary way to follow up with leads, strengthen relationships, and close deals. Yet many mobile CRM applications completely neglect the telephony component of mobile CRM. You should avoid solutions that require you to exit a mobile CRM application to make a phone call. A great mobile CRM app should make it easier than ever before to access valuable prospect data within the context of a phone call.

2020 update: This post contains legacy content regarding Revenue.io features. For the most recent up-to-date information about Revenue.io, please check out our amazing solutions at www.revenue.io.