Picture this sales scenario

Imagine two salespeople presenting the same product to the same potential customer.

The first arrives at the office of a hot prospect armed, he thinks, with some notes scribbled in his address book during a previous visit. Only he can't find them. Maybe he wrote them on that napkin he tucked in his wallet months ago. No luck; the scrap of paper has disappeared. Pressed for time, the salesman places a hurried call to his own office and asks a colleague to get out the prospect's file and pass along some intelligence.

Trouble is, the colleague pulls the wrong file and delivers the wrong information. The mistake becomes apparent in the course of a very confused—and brief—conversation, at the end of which the prospect is anything but hot.

A short time later, a second sales rep shows up at the same office. He takes a few minutes before leaving his car to open a file on a handheld computer device. Contained there are detailed notes about the prospect's business, as well as a few personal details.

This conversation goes well. The rep is able to convincingly relate the product he's selling to the prospect's business needs. And his inquiry about the Sunday League Football career of the prospect's eldest son is icing on the cake.

Back in his car after the meeting, the rep gets out his handheld and, with a couple of keystrokes, moves the prospect record into the new accounts file, creating and closing the sale. That night he will connect the handheld to his laptop, log into his company's network, and update the central CRM database to reflect that a prospect has become a new customer.