Picking an outside sales app or an outside sales customer relationship management (CRM) tool is a bit like deciding between a truck and a sedan. Both will move you from A to B, but they accomplish different things. If you manage relationships and close deals outside the office, you’ll likely find yourself considering tools that fall into these categories. And if you’re looking for a tool just for yourself or for your team, your needs change. Here’s how to decide if you need an outside sales app or a full-blown CRM.
What eventually grew into the CRM stemmed from the need to track contacts and customer engagements. In simple terms, a CRM is essentially a database to store leads and customers. Traditional CRMs truly excel when you’re at a desk, and selling to people who are also at desks, via email and phone. Objects like contacts, companies, and deals organize data into neat categories. They track everything from the first touchpoint to final purchase.
They log calls and emails. They organize contacts from prospect to lead to opportunity and to customer, creating neat sales pipelines to visualize progress. This lets users forecast and cross‑sell and even coordinate marketing activities.
This largely describes what can be called the traditional CRM market, which caters to inside sales. Then there’s the outside sales CRM market. These tools must be built for users on-the-go. They’re at least mobile-optimized, but the best are generally built mobile-first. Traditional CRMs are complex tools that often require development teams and outside consultants to build and maintain. Outside sales teams don’t necessarily require all of these bells and whistles. In fact, it’s these complex features that often get in the way and slow or impede adoption from outside sales teams.
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That’s why outside sales apps began to get built.
Field reps driving from one location to another, taking notes in parking lots, live a different reality from their inside peers. A traditional CRM typically requires a laptop to access. This led many reps to remain old school and rely on pen and paper. Some would track notes in a specific app. They’d pull up their next visit in a maps app. They’d add reminders to their calendar. The outside sales app was born from the need to consolidate these different tools into one. It’s also RepMove’s origin story.
“I was in a Starbucks one morning,” RepMove’s Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Dillon Baird said. “I used all of these different apps to manage my day. It hit me that there had to be a better way. I started to sketch out an app in my notebook, and that eventually turned into RepMove.”
Dillon worked in outside sales for more than a decade. Unlike traditional CRMs, and most outside sales apps, RepMove is built from the rep’s perspective and out. That ultimately means everything in the app is designed to be as easy as possible to use on-the-move. It solves all the administrative challenges that field reps dislike.
Modern field sales apps typically combine three key tasks. The first is route planning. Many successful reps essentially know who they’re going to meet each day in advance because they’ve managed the same territory for years. But for others, perhaps new reps or those who aren’t satisfied with the status quo, fitting more visits into their days is paramount. The best way to do that is by optimizing time. Creating a faster, more efficient sales route opens up the calendar for just that.
The second task is engagement tracking. This comes in the form of notes and follow-ups. Many reps also fill out call reports at the end of the day or week that get shared with management. Tracking engagements helps them stay on top of deals and management get visibility into their activities in the field.
The third task is relationship management. It’s the foundation of outside sales. Some might have a good enough memory to remember every detail for each account and customer. But for those who want to be able to pull up every detail of their visit histories, remember the front desk administrator’s name or the birthday of their best customer’s kid, having a digital record keeper that’s easily searchable is exactly what’s needed. It makes the difference between a rep who obviously is there to take an order and a rep who very obviously cares, who is memorable. That’s what an outside sales app does.
The average outside sales rep visits about 5 customers and prospects daily. The top 10% of reps visit about 14 every day. RepMove helps more reps realize their potential and significantly increase their production and sales.
Figuring out which you need boils down to a few simple factors. The first is who’s going to use the tool. Just you or do you manage a team?
Single users can often get away with just a mobile outside sales app. If you need something that tracks notes, builds sales routes, and serves as a basic mobile CRM, an outside sales app might be everything required.
If you manage a team, an outside sales CRM is likely the better fit. You’ll want a way to proactively lead your team. You’ll need insight into its activities. You don’t need to be Big Brother, but you do need data to help you identify the areas in which you can help your people grow and succeed. An outside sales CRM connects to each of your reps’ accounts, centralizes data, and surfaces insights.
Also consider the existing tools already at your disposal. Does your company already have a CRM, even if it’s a pain to use? An outside sales app that integrates with the CRM might provide the missing juice that’s needed to get value out of it.
Then there are tools like RepMove that do both. A tool that’s purpose-made for the job of outside sales.
If you simply need an outside sales app, RepMove’s simple mobile interface does everything you need and likely some you didn’t realize would accelerate your ability to sell. Sales routes? RepMove lets you build and optimize them. Visit notes? That’s the backbone, the North Star of the tool. AI-powered follow-ups? Just talk-to-text notes and tap a button to rewrite them into a follow-up email that’s ready to send. Need to track deals? Build and manage pipelines anywhere. All of your notes get captured and stored and can automatically get exported into an organized call report on whatever schedule you’d like.
If you’re managing a team, or simply want the smartest way to organize customers, RepMove offers an outside sales CRM. Territory assignment rules will automate how leads and prospects get assigned, based on criteria like zip code or unique tags. Customized pipelines can automate deals through the stages of your sales process. Communication helps keep everybody on the same page. And every outside sales app used by reps connected to your CRM automatically syncs data so everything is stored centrally.
If you need a standalone CRM, RepMove fits the bill. If you need to increase adoption of an existing CRM or if you need to increase the data flowing into an ERP, RepMove will bolt on and significantly improve your team’s ability to act. No matter your use case for outside sales, RepMove is smart enough to adapt to your specific needs.
