Use of XR in Technical Sales and Marketing

The use of XR in technical sales and marketing is accelerating in the post-pandemic world. A recent article by McKinsey reinforces that AR & VR will transform how we consume content from observation to immersion. AR and VR services will grow to a $95 Billion market by 2025. (Augmented and virtual reality: The promise and peril of immersive technologies | McKinsey). Now more than ever, it is crucial for businesses to focus on offering unique and differentiated pre/post-sales experiences. The pandemic environment has created challenges and once-in-lifetime opportunities for companies to adopt new digital technologies. Enterprises that build complex products with distributed teams, suppliers, and global customers face a unique challenge in this new business normal. Leaders that don’t adapt to build resilient businesses with the help of digital technologies will be left behind their competitors.

Sales and marketing departments play a key front-facing role in an organization. The first point of contact for customers is sales & marketing, which must be agile in adopting new technologies. Especially in light of these challenges.

• Aggressive competition demands a quick response time. The market competition is fierce and demands a quick turnaround time. The team at Sales and marketing teams need tools to help them quickly produce new product launches, communicate product upgrades, and present a large catalog of products. Tools that allow internal design teams to own the creation process without relying on long lead time services and studios will give a competitive edge to the enterprise.
• Increasingly modular products and ecosystem compatibility requirements for complex product lines within an existing ecosystem mean that prospects and end-users need to understand and interact with the products in a holistic manner. Sales teams must demonstrate complex use-cases to multiple groups who may be globally distributed within the buying organizations. This presents cost and time challenges that are extremely tedious with current communication technologies.
• Global disruptions, aggressive sustainability goals, and a growing distributed workforce are making travel increasingly unfeasible. Enterprises must find effective remote collaboration tools to maintain productivity and competitiveness.

Enterprises of all types, whether small, medium, or large are exploring the strategic benefits of extended reality (XR) technologies to solve these challenges and gain a competitive edge::

• Higher customer satisfaction and loyalty
• Cost-effective product demonstrations & information
• Save on travel, logistics, and operations
• Efficient interaction amongst stakeholders from remote locations
• Quicker onboarding and  availability of trained sales staff

Let’s look into more details as to how XR can be used and its impact on the sales and marketing function of engineering corporations

Immersive virtual demonstrations of complex engineering equipment to enhance the pre-sales experience

Engineering products are complex to purchase. It’s a high-value B2B decision process and requires involvement from multiple stakeholders from buyers’ organizations and partners from multiple engineering products that are complex to purchase. It’s a high-value B2B decision process that requires involvement from multiple stakeholders from buyers’ organizations and partners from multiple locations. Traditional sales methods include setting up physical booths at exhibitions, requiring buyers to travel to these locations for product demos, or inviting prospects to visit the manufacturer’s offices involving expensive travel and time.  This is a risk to the prospect as well as the seller if the product doesn’t fit the requirement, or a competitor has an advantage of the location to more efficiently reach a buyer
Implementation of XR technology can efficiently solve this problem through holistic 3D demonstration in virtual reality which is simply impossible by any other digital approach. This is by far the most effective approach to help customers make quick decisions to the benefit of both the buyer and seller.

Delivering on-demand quick post-sales support for installation, maintenance, operations support

In recent years, customer service has seen technological advances with chatbots, remote screen sharing, and video calls bringing large efficiencies in remote interactions. However, for engineering industries and professionals, interactivity with the engineered product features still remains a crucial challenge.

Extended reality is a game-changer to enable remote interaction with customer service in the engineering industry. Self-service tutorials and guides that help customers find engineering information related to 3D models quickly can be enabled with a self-service virtual reality platform. Options such as self-service to disassemble engineering equipment, dig into details of a product model and parts, and viewing animating equipment operations provide opportunities to enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty. One-to-one virtual demonstration of an engineering assembly or sub-assembly in an immersive environment can help save downtime of equipment.  XR can also help subject matter experts troubleshoot problems in the field. Subject experts and support staff save time spent on travel and the setup of physical equipment.

Building goodwill and Corporate Social Responsibility

Implementing extended reality solutions in sales and marketing can capture missed opportunities for increasing brand loyalty while meeting sustainability goals, saving time and cost. In addition, such solutions can also embrace partners in ways that are not possible with more traditional approaches. Every enterprise knows and strives toward building a socially responsible brand,  and extended reality provides a powerful and transformative tool for achieving this goal.

If you are planning to use XR for sales and marketing with no-code VR platform, feel free to reach us for a demo