J.M. Smucker’s national sales team was not happy with how they were communicating important brand messages to its buyers in the field.

As a result, the buyer experience was under serious threat. Sales reps had problems with content — sell sheets, videos, and price lists — that were frequently out-of-date. When in the field talking with chefs at national restaurant chains, independent operators and caterers, sales reps knew that their time with key stakeholders was short. If they didn’t have the most relevant documents, customers lost interest. If the chefs had questions they didn’t anticipate, sales reps had to improvise without immediate follow-through.

Enter Showpad Content. In 2017, Smucker ran a pilot test for 10 sales reps from a cross-section of regions and company experience. Training included a series of webinars using Showpad, an all-in-one sales enablement technology that gives users, in real time, access to a wide spectrum of marketing content tailored to their customer’s immediate needs.

J.M. Smucker asked its team to test Showpad Content and give feedback on the product’s ease of use, as well as their comfort level with using it in the field.

The results were a game-changer for the company. Not only did the reps discover how intuitive Showpad was — it became obvious there was a strong demand to expand it to other account teams.

So that’s what Smucker did. By mid-2018, more than 100 Smucker foodservice sales reps in the U.S. and Canada were using Showpad on iPads, and monthly usage rates shot up to 90 percent. The company was so confident with Showpad that it used the technology to present at the 2018 National Restaurant Association trade show.

Senior Manager of Training, Communications, and Fulfillment for Smucker’s Foodservice Sales Division, Lynda Bartell, said implementing Showpad “has been revolutionary.”

“It helps the company look modern and tech-savvy to our customers,” she said. “And Showpad is more than a site to host for sales content. It also holds information on all our sales initiatives. That makes it a vital business tool.”

Showpad lit a fire underneath Smucker account reps, from new hires to experienced pros. All questions now have immediate answers and all updates are now available in real time.

For reps starting out, Showpad gives them quick access to the company’s extensive brand portfolio, and they can easily communicate with their peers to share best practices.

In the field they can easily locate personalized content that speaks to the challenges of each customer, and it helps reps make more effective follow-through after sales calls.

Not only does Showpad make organizing content easy to navigate, but content is also highly targeted for specific customers on an array of platforms: PDFs, videos, and even augmented reality. These pieces take advantage of the iPad’s high-resolution screen and allow salespeople to smoothly guide conversations.

“Before, we didn’t have a good way of providing access to videos,” Bartell said. “So Showpad has been a total blessing.”

Already, Smucker has seen selling cycles shorten and the enthusiasm of their sales reps rise.

“Showpad has put everything at the tip of their fingers to help them sell all our products to one customer,” said Bartell. “We never had that before.”