Every sales person who is using flip charts or pages in a 3 ring binder should be looking to replace them with the iPad. Not only Keynote presentations, but the ability to pull up the company website, display price lists, pictures of products, audio/video clips, etc. iPad is perfect for this type of thing.
What is funny is at work I am the Apple fanboy it seems... I truly think they had a pool going as to when I was going to break down and buy the iPad wifi model. (Monday April 26th) And a second pool as to when I would return it and get the 3G model. (Split there, bought the iPad 3G on April 30th and will return the iPad wifi on May 3rd) LOL
But in the end I am the one that is having the last laugh it seems this week so far.
They are seeing the power of the iPad replacing our overstuffed price books of the things we stock - which need to be updated each week with newly printed pages. Not to mention shifting rebates and promos! Sometimes these happen so quick and frequently that we just hand write them in our price books.
And then there are those times we need to search the web to find the info that a customer requested. That computer is located at the back of the sales counter, and the customer can not step behind that counter in order to see what we are seeing. So we have to print it out for them. Which requires a trip to a different part of the sales floor.
And then there are the two 4 foot x 4 foot bookcases filled with vendor catalogs. Much are just printed off of PDF's that vendors send us.
What impressed me more was the comments from more than a few of my co-workers was that if we were to get the iPad on the sales floor - we might look like a more tech savvy - we deal in digital photography as you all can tell.
Some were taken by the Olympus use of a Powerpoint presentation, and saw simple "lessons" to illustrate a sales point.
So from an Apple fanboy, I have become sort of the visionary of the power of what Apple has to offer. LOL Funny thing is some of these ideas was what I said to some of the same co-workers when the iPod Touch came out.
It took the larger screen to make some change opinions.
In my shop there are 6 sales books.... and they float around as needed to fit the crowding that happens. And I can not (and would not at the current cost of the iPads) want "free floating" iPads - too easy for them to "walk off". I could see them bolted to the counter on a swivel stand that allowed us to share info with the customer. But to avoid bottlenecks we might need a few more.
As I and my co-workers see the power behind my iPad, I need to start working on sharing that power with the "powers that be". A big up hill climb. LOL
Back to our bookcases of catalogs. In our industry there are tons of companies that offer similar or the same product under different names. So if you came in looking for a particular solution it might take a great deal of time to search various vendors to find the solution.
In the end my rant at my shops needs are showing what the rest of the business world could reap by moving to something like the iPad.
