My mantra for 2004 on the Sales Technology front is to "meet our reps in their medium." Simply put, any application or applicance that you can use to access electronic information shall be used to access relevent sales data.

I'm not alone in thinking this. Look what the folks @ IBM are saying:

"With the added capabilities of IBM's WebSphere Everyplace Access, salespeople, for example, can wirelessly access enterprise sales applications, such as Sales Force Automation (SFA), via their BlackBerry handheld to request prices, enter orders, determine available inventory and confirm shipments. Salespeople can also check calendars, make phone calls, send and receive e-mails, and use instant messaging applications such as IBM Lotus' Sametime Everyplace, allowing them to respond more quickly and efficiently to their customer needs. Field service groups and executives can also benefit from push-based, timely access to relevant information from back-end corporate applications, including service requests and sales reports, thereby helping to minimize the need to be in the office and enabling them to be in the field with customers and colleagues."

Its possible, but will it have a benefit? Check out this article about a company ban on internal emails:
http://www.ananova.com/business/story/sm_820520.html?menu=business.latestheadlines

This link from: http://iunctura.com/weblog/ , which has additional comments about quality communications.

The time delays may be of benefit for better accuracy, priority, and communication.

Dave,

You have a point, but what we're really getting at is making the sales rep more accessible to the customer. We already have cracked down on the level of corporate-to-field rep emails (insisting that they make contact via cell phone) and are seeking to give customers every reassurance that whatever medium they use to communicate, we'll get back to them and resolve their issues in a timely manner.

More to the point, this strategy was devised a little further down the value chain from email. We're really thinking of disseminating order status, quality control, and CRM information for real time field access, on an as-needed basis. Not everyone will use this, but by making this info seemingly omnipresent, sales people can interact with their data in the most convenient medium for them, at the most appropriate time.