For years now, Tablet PC makers have searched for the “Killer App” that would launch the technology across the chasm. If you’ve sat waiting in a doctor’s office you may have seen a pharmaceutical sales rep with their tablet - they use them to store electronic doctor signatures. Warehouse workers, the Military, and nurses also use them. But these vertical applications aren’t pushing Tablet PC sales into the stratosphere.
Rumors of the Tablet PC’s demise are greatly exaggerated. Remote whiteboarding using a Tablet PC and a desktop sharing service is the killer app everyone’s been waiting for. You’ve probably seen a GoToMyPC or WebEx TV commercial talking about saving money on travel by conducting remote meetings. Remote meetings are great in theory, but sharing PowerPoint slides is the predominant way salespeople are using these services. One could argue that using a PowerPoint in person is better than delivering one remotely - at least you can see your audience nodding off and wave your arms or do stand-up comedy to try and revive them!
Services such as WebEx can actually measure how many people are “alt-tabbing” away from your presentation to do email and other applications while you drone on and on, one slide after the next. A 50% “attrition rate” is not unusual for a PowerPoint sales pitch or webinar.
By using an affordable Tablet PC loaded with Microsoft Office, you can use WebEx (or another service) to turn a mundane and sleep-inducing PowerPoint sales pitch into a dynamic, engaging, and interactive whiteboard discussion, and without any special training or extra software. (Would you believe that most Tablet PCs are MORE affordable than regular laptops?)
Ironically, Microsoft PowerPoint is the key software tool enabling this capability. Whenever you buy a Tablet PC and have Office installed, you get a bunch of “pen-enabled” features that allow you to turn a blank slide into a multi-colored whiteboard surface. As you draw, your audience sees your pen annotations in real-time, eliciting a “Wow, what are you doing?” Now, WebEx attrition rates are around 10% because your audience is captivated. You can then save the file and send it to your customer, who won’t need any special software to view it.
In our next few posts we’ll talk about which Tablet PCs to buy for whiteboarding and discuss some other ways to leverage Tablet PC technology.
Please share your Tablet PC whiteboarding stories!
Tags: death by powerpoint, enterprise sales, high technology sales, powerpoint presentations, presentation skills, remote whiteboard, sales enablement, sales methodology, sales process, sales readiness, sales skills, sales strategies, sales tools, sales training, software sales, tablet pc, whiteboard presentation, whiteboard selling, whiteboard story, whiteboard symposium
