Here's an awesome business app success story that should inspire every rep to pick up the phone, and every sales leader to enable teams with smart solutions to accelerate sales. 

AirWatch is in the highly competitive and rapidly maturing enterprise mobility management space. They enable organizations to easily manage all of their smartphones, tablets and laptops, including the email, applications and content on those mobile devices.

The AirWatch sales team is fast moving, aggressive, tech-savvy and highly efficient, and have found that’s the only way to win in their competitive environment. AirWatch leverages Salesforce and more than 20 apps from the AppExchange to run their business, from prospecting to accounting.

Sales Team Growth

AirWatch has grown from less than ten to more than 400 sales people since Gavin Harris, Director of Sales at the company, started about five years ago. They’ve built an awesome career growth environment where young recruits start on a 50-person team selling to small businesses and have the opportunity to advance quickly. Most of the AirWatch reps are responsible for the entire sales process, from cold call to close, primarily via phone, email, and web demonstrations.

Peer Tip: “Building a sales team to scale and win in a land-grab market is all about enabling individual reps to move the dialogue as fast and far as the prospect wants to go. Buyers are ready and willing to do six-figure deals over the phone and web," says Harris.

Starting with a Smart Cold Call

AirWatch landed a $200 million series A funding round in 2013 (VMware acquired AirWatch in February 2014 for $1.54 billion). With guidance from their new venture capital partners, the company became more focused on measuring to industry metrics. Harris reached out to InsideSales.com, an AppExchange partner who had cold called him several months earlier to introduce him to the PowerDialer solution.

Harris recounts that he set out to find a system that they could implement and scale globally to help better collect metrics and accelerate the sales process. He explored a variety of call optimization solutions, but was drawn to InsideSales.com because of the integrated interface and reporting within Salesforce, and the unique, science-based approach to enabling inside sales functions like pre-recorded voicemail, call recording, and local numbers.

Harris started with a ten-person pilot of PowerDialer from InsideSales.com last spring, saw immediate value and made the purchase decision in June of 2013. Now the integrated solution has been rolled out across the Americas, and management relies on InsideSales.com reporting to measure and optimize the business.

Peer tip: “Get complete executive buy-in before moving into metric-based management. Executive management must be on board with what is being measured to ensure front line managers are effectively driving their team to build new sales habits," says Harris.

Embracing Efficiency

When I asked Harris to talk about results, he focused on a culture shift that he’s really excited about. “Making the most of using a system like this is all about developing new habits. The sales reps that embrace the technology see big productivity gains and ramp up quickly -- and it shows very quickly in their results.” 

One of the first features the AirWatch reps adopt is pre-recorded voicemail and email. “They realize they can record one crisp, concise voicemail and send it to many prospects, along with a follow up email, in five seconds, then move on,” says Harris. Then they experience the freedom to focus on other sales activities, and really get in the groove using all the great features available in the InsideSales.com platform.

According to Harris, “the biggest management value for sales leaders is the ability to easily record and report on sales activities, so their measurement can move to being more focused on results of dials rather than just quantity.”

Peer tip: “If you’re going to enable your teams with technology to automate any part of the sales process, be sure they focus on developing and delivering a tight, concise message. If they’re not well prepared to nail the message, opening statement, and live dialogue, the volume increase will be more harmful than helpful," says Harris.

Learn more about the advantages of a mobile sales team in this free e-book. Just click the button to download.