Sales managers all over the world are discovering, along with the promises – and problems – of managing the laptop revolution, that choosing a laptop is not a game for amateurs. If your salespeople are running amok in the troubled waters of on-site presentation, call reports and home office coordination, you may be investigating the laptop market, too.

Although it’s not for the faint of heart, the potential benefits can outweigh the headaches. So, here it is, a PSP special report from a number of companies that have made, or are in the process of making, the transition to laptop sales management. in subsequent issues, we will run this report as a regular feature covering laptop innovations, software to choose from and companies that have successful and helpful laptop stories to share.

“I use my Toshiba 5100 laptop for calling on clients and prospects and also to hook up to projectors for color demonstrations,” explains Hal Masure, Account Manager for Control Data’s Business Information Services Division in Philadelphia, PA. Masure, whose territory covers New York, New Jersey, St. Louis and Detroit, is responsible for developing and marketing mainframe and PC software for Fortune 1000 companies, banks and mortgage firms. “I spend two weeks out of every month on the road.” Masure explains. “Before I had a laptop I was relying on the prospect of client to provide me with equipment to use at the site.” Masure claims the biggest plus in traveling with a laptop is that he knows it will work when he gets there.

“I’m saving a lot of my time and the client’s time because all my software is in my machine. I don’t have to carry loads of diskettes with me. I have a lot of integrity and reliability with the laptop,” he says. In addition, when a customer who is interested in buying customized software says, “Make a change in the program,” Masure can accommodate that customer on the spot. You ordered more flexibility in the accounting tables? Bam! you got it. You’d like to buy ten of these programs to start and fifty more down the line? Yes, I think we can help you “At the client’s I have a completely reliable system to make dynamic changes,” Masure relates. Masure, whose background is in programming, developed his marketing expertise about ten years ago. “Laptops have two roles,” he explains. “They have been a really great time saver and have given me the ability to be responsive to customer needs on the spot. It’s been helpful to be able to display my products the way I want to display the.” It all comes down to control. With a laptop, the salesperson has it.

According to Janet Shull, who sells the Micro Express laptop line, companies that want to put laptops in their salespeople’s hands take it a bite at a time. “When a company starts buying laptops, they usually get just one in,” Shull explains. It’s a new toy and they want to see how it works. Press its buttons. Put it through a few paces. Take it to some prospects. See if it can help close some deals. “Immediately they like it and they order five more. Then their budget is approved for ten. Then they build up to ten a month. It’s an ongoing process; as they hire new salespeople, they buy a laptop. It’s part of the start up costs of a new person,” Shull declares. “A good feature is the ability to carry this little laptop around that you can plug into an external monitor-a color monitor if need be-to show off your product. A lot of salespeople do that. It really gives ;you a great sense of confidence to know that you can control what happens on a call because everything you need is right there in your hands.”

Bill Hamilton, President of Hamilton Associates in Spring, TX, uses a Sanyo laptop and an Atari palm top for field selling. “The laptop has a 40 megabyte hard drive and that takes care of my needs quite well,” says Hamilton, “but I’ve been transferring over to the Portfolio-the palm top-because it has a removable memory card in it.” What’s that you say? A palm top “It has a built-in worksheet, address book and diary, a word processor, and an electronic reminder, “continues Hamilton. Palm tops, the next generation after hand held, comprise a growing field of ultra small, fit-in-your-pocket, ease -of-calculator operation portable computers. Says Hamilton, “It’s easier for me to call on a customer, take the order, calculate it on the Portfolio, offer them ‘what ifs’ and make any changes right on the spot.” In addition, Hamilton doesn’t walk in lugging equipment. He looks like he’s just there for a chat. Then he reaches into his coat pocket and whammo-he’s superseller.

“The Portfolio also gives me an alarm when I’m due for a meeting. I can set it to ring, say, one half hour before I’m due to be somewhere. I know it’s an appointment when I hear the beep but if I don’t remember what appointment it is, I just reach into my vest pocket and pull out the Portfolio. It unfolds just like a daytimer so when I open it and hit the key to open up the diary, it takes me right to that day. I can be driving and it will beep from my pocket. I can pull up all of my appointment for the next day or week, add new ones, or delete some. The software is in the hard drive. It’s written in MS DOS so I didn’t have to learn any new operating system. I carry around the ac adapter in a shaving kit that I just throw onto the seat of my car,” explains Hamilton.

The Portfolio weighs less than a pound, retails for about $400, is Lotus 1-2-3 compatible, can run with other programs, or upload information and files to any other computer with the same operating language. Along with features mentioned earlier, it can also dial stored telephone numbers and handle spread sheet call reporting,. It can be used with a modem to transfer information, and it also has a memory card-about the size of a credit card-that is removable. A user can send the memory card to someone else, say, a manager, who can then slip it into his or her machine and transfer the data stored on it. It’s like a tiny diskette.

“If you’ve got this,” claims Hamilton, “you don’t need a desk top PC. The Portfolio frees you from your desk when you go out in the field and gather all this data. Even a laptop limits you to a certain number of battery hours and then an electric outlet, whereas the batteries in the Portfolio last for weeks. I can literally take this with me anywhere at any time and for practically an unlimited amount of time. It has a word processor build in and a small keyboard for typing. I consider it my mobile communications center.”

Although hand helds are a good bet for many salespeople, for those who are operating hardware up in the hundred megabytes with many programs to choose from, a laptop is still the answer. In fact, Hal Masure has a five step evaluation program for any laptop he’s considering. “I evaluate on reliability, performance, compatibility, versatility and portability. That’s top to bottom in priority as well,” Masure states. “For my needs the Toshiba is the best. The payback on my investment came within about six weeks. I may not have closed more sales but I have reduced the sales cycle and the laptop has allowed me to produce the software that I sell much faster, while allowing me to be more responsive to needs expressed by prospects and clients in the field. Now, to me, palm tops and hand helds address a very specific need. They are small, and lightweight and easy to use. But they have limitations. They are not general purpose machines. They are not general purpose machines. They are designed for a very definite, finite purpose. In the future, I can see getting a lot of data on a palm or hand held – maybe in the next decade – but right now a large database cannot be supported by one of these. To really have value in the business market, you’ve got to have data plus programs, plus interfacing capabilities.”

In addition, as Masure points out, it depends on what the salesperson is selling. “I require data and versatility of software,” he says. “I need a spread sheet. If I were just keeping track of inventory, numbers or sales calls, I could use a hand held. But let’s suppose I want to do analysis of the numbers I’ve stored. The real value in laptops, to me, is in taking stored data and getting some feedback from it.”

John Gerhke, President of Gehrke Mortgage Company, East Detroit, MI, qualifies home buyers who have been referred by a realtor, then sells their mortgages – paper to those in the financing field – to finance companies. Gerhke feels that by using hand helds in the field, his salespeople are more accurate and he has more control. “As far as our business goes,” says Gerhke, “you have to be computerized. If you’re not, well, it’s just like the milkman. He just disappeared. There’s too much paper in this business, too much regulation, too many numbers…If I write a mortgage in Detroit and somebody writes one in California, they’re basically going to be the same mortgage with the same information in them. To assure yourself that you can make that paper saleable in the secondary market, each document has to be the same. Computerizing assures you of that.”

Gerhke downloads information stored in the salespeople’s hand helds into 11 office PCs that operate off of one central bank. Gerhke’s decision making process for the computers he finally bought was long and thorough. “We took a year.” he states. “We analyzed our needs and looked at about 15 companies before buying the hand held by Texas Instruments along with the software that was specifically designed for us by high tech solutions (Lynwood WA, 1-206-776-5220). After we narrowed the choice down to a few, we wanted to see it our salespeople would use them.”

When asked how he did that, Gerhke laughed and explained, “Basically it had to be something extremely user friendly, easy to carry around ;anywhere, not big and bulky because these salespeople are already carrying a briefcase full of stuff.

Second, we picked this one because it looks and acts like a calculator. Our salespeople are all familiar with that, while only four percent of them are computer literate. So, to them we call it a calculator, but it’s really a computer. Our biggest fear was that when the computer arrived, the salesperson would be afraid to use it.”

Gerhke admits that he let his salespeople in the direction he wanted them to do. “We talked to the salespeople first. We tried to make it a team effort. We told them what systems we weren’t going with and why. We got them excited about the prospect of going with the TI. You know, you can mandate the purchase buy you cannot mandate what a salesperson does out on the road and we didn’t want anyone to leave over this shift. And, in the final analysis, and we’re still quite new to the hand helds, it has made us more efficient, more professional and has given us the ability to do reports we just couldn’t have done by hand because of the time they would have taken.”

Tom Merriam, who designed the software used by Gerhke and other hand held aficionados, gives the hand helds high marks for convenience and as a closing tool. “One of the things we’re seeing is a real potential for the hand held computers as a tool to help you make a sale and not just tract it,” explains Merriam. “A laptop is still fairly cumbersome. A lot of times you have to plug it in, boot it up and know DOS or some other operating language to use it. We know a phone company that sends its salespeople-armed with hand helds – out to offices where they try to sell a long distance service. When the prospect asks for a price quote, they ask the prospect to pull out an old phone bill. They then enter the area codes and length of call and actually print out a complete comparison quotation on the spot.” It’s a graphic price comparison tool that works very well indeed as opposed to old fashioned methods of getting the phone bill, taking it back to headquarters, doing some number crunching and then playing telephone tag to try to reach the prospect again to begin the presentation all over. “With a hand held, the salesperson can eliminate the second call and close the sale on the spot.”

According to Merriam, hand helds were first designed to serve students who needed something easy to use in classrooms. But students had little money to spend, so savvy marketers and programmers like Merriam looked to crack the potentially lucrative sales field. “In the future.” says Merriam, “you’re going to see hand helds with a lot more power and memory. The new TI78 is a good example. It’s just coming out, about the size of a deck of cards with the power of a laptop or PC. For companies that are looking for specific use computers with custom designed software, these are ideal. And the price per unit, with software, comes to around $500 so they’re very affordable.”

Hal Masure sees the future of the laptop painted in glorious Technicolor. “I see networks playing a big role in the future,” Masure predicts. “I also see longer battery life, the price coming down, lighter weight and color screens. Also, software vendors will have to make their products increasingly user friendly so that operating a laptop will be as easy as turning on a TV. They must be non-threshing.”

Technical salespeople, engineers and design consultants who work with complex graphic packages but have to take their computers into the field speak highly of the Dynamac. Because it is heavy-weighing in at just under 20 pounds-it requires some hauling to take out to job sites. Since it is designed to run on Macintosh systems, the Dynamac is another specific use tool. Users tout its reliability, graphic capabilities and tough design. The Dynamac, according to one user, can stand just about any punishment, and often does. Users like Tom Corish, Sr., President of The Survey Group, Inc. in Smyrna, GA, give it high marks.

“I don’t think of myself as a salesman,” says the elder Corish, who, with his son, Tom, Jr., calls on a variety of customers at job sites. “When I make a presentation, I just feel it’s a part of doing business. I guess it is selling…I just never considered it like that before.” Corish claims that the Dynamac gives him all the graphic capacity he needs, and the power, memory and sturdiness the job demands.

John Deere Life insurance switched from Panasonic hand helds to laptops after looking at the difference in cost between upgrading the chips – about $10,000 – versus upgrading software – about $650. Dave Jurmu, Sales Promotion Coordinator with John Deere in Jacksonville, IL, explains the shift by saying, “Statistics from the National Association of Life Underwriters have proven that, when salespeople use computers in the field, business in the first year increases by 25 percent or more.” After an agent finishes out the first year with John Deere Life, the company purchases a laptop for him or her and allows them three years to repay the investment. This gives the neophyte agent training time in all aspects of the business and ensures that the company is not investing in salespeople who will be there today and gone tomorrow. The company plans to expand laptop use in the future by using more sophisticated custom designed software, extensive databases and word processing capability which would be resident in all laptops in the field. Why did they go with Toshiba? “At the time many of our agents were already active laptop users. They recommended Toshiba, and, after we researched, that’s the route we took,” says Jurmu. In choosing software, John Deere executives relied on Lord and Ware, Carmel, IN (317/575-3388), a consulting firm that specializes in automation for the insurance industry. “Though education and showing agents that there’s nothing inherently difficult about using computers,” explains Jurmu, “a company can expect to improve productivity and, at the same time, create better working conditions for salespeople. Ten years form now everyone in selling will be using computers, probably PCs in the office and laptops or hand helds in the field. Prospects and customers want answers right now. For insurance agents that means, ‘If I give you $200 a month starting now, what’s it going to be worth in 15 years?’ An agent can’t go home and figure it out and then set up another appointment and come back. Competition is too fierce to allow for that kind of laid back attitude.”

Greg Osby, an agent in Iowa with Farm Bureau Life, has a gut feeling that most agents don’t take full advantage of their laptops. “I think most of them write proposals on the laptop and that’s all,” he observes. “Once you get into it, you might spend an hour programming something, but that will likely save you 40 hours down the road, so it’s worth it. I have 30 megabytes in my laptop and I could see upgrading that to 100 easily. I use all the programs I have and my database with the PC file is fairly large. The financial needs analysis takes a ;lot of memory. The Zenith 286 is fast enough for what I need.”

By now it’s obvious that laptops are in the sales field to stay and will occupy an ever increasing role in making the sale. The question of buying into the laptop market is not whether, but when; not how, but how soon?