By triggering transformational changes in go-to-market strategy and online demo outreach, 3D and AR technologies can help those involved in sales coaching and business development mentoring reimagine the impact of their sales force
Key takeaways:
- Sales coaches must continually reinvent themselves to optimize the performance of their teams
- A new generation of tech-savvy buyers are demanding DIY experiences, causing sales coaches to look at new avenues and approaches
- How 3D and augmented reality technologies are helping sales coaches reboot the capability and impact of their sales teams for a new digital age
Sales coaching can be described as the strategic, personalized and ongoing mentoring of the SDRs (Sales Development Representatives), sales consultants and frontline folks who make up the sales department of an organization. Sales are the ultimate source of revenue for a business, which makes the regular training and coaching of its practitioners, the most urgent focus for organizational leaders. At a time when business transformation is the ruling market buzzword, the best leaders prioritize sales coaching to maximize the performance of their sales teams, thrive in times of uncertainty and build a unique competitive edge.
At its finest, sales coaching is all about reinventing its own role to bring out the best in a sales outfit. It's about focusing on the unique strengths of every member of the sales team, pinpointing improvement areas and continuously re-charging their confidence levels. This entails empowering sales reps and execs with tested insights and unique approaches, updating them with new tools and techniques that are creating impact in the market ‘right now’, and connecting them to bigger horizons of possibilities. Avoiding the temptation to micro-manage, veterans of sales coaching will then step back to let sales executives, business development folks and sales channels feel their way forward and work their magic.
Benefits of sales coaching for manufacturers, brands and entrepreneurs
Prioritizing sales coaching can help a company achieve much more than just hit sales quotas and pump up revenue numbers, ushering a holistic business transformation that touches and influences nearly every aspect and KPI of the organization. Some significant, measurable and lasting benefits of sales coaching for a business – irrespective of industry, geography or size – are:
- Accelerated business growth
- Increased cash flow – the lifeblood of business
- Enhanced customer trust
- Boosted brand loyalty with greater customer retention
- Reduced cost of customer acquisition
- Better grasp over market pulse
- Unassailable competitive edge
Reimagining sales coaching for a new tech era
With a growing number of tech-savvy B2B buyers demanding DIY experiences instead of elaborate and intrusive in-person meetings, the sales function across businesses and sectors are going through a trying time. Sales coaches are now saddled with the responsibility to decode and customize new trends, avenues and technologies that can prepare their sales teams for new challenges and opportunities. In this context, 3D and augmented reality technologies (AR) can work as a savior, helping sales coaches and businesses reinvent and rejuvenate the sales function to embrace business transformation and woo a new generation of buyers. Here are three ways the sales coaching function can latch on to the 3D and AR bandwagon to reboot sales outcomes.
Immersive product demos enhance sales coaching and sales presentations
What makes a sales coach great?
Sales coaches must embed strategic thinking and behavioral shift in sales teams
One of the primary tasks of sales coaching is to inject strategic thinking in sales teams and provide big-picture guidance to the sales minds in their organization. With a Deloitte report showing 9 out of 10 mid-sized brands turning to augmented reality to power their growth, and with revenue for the 3D-AR sector slated to touch $340bn soon thanks to exponential adoption across businesses, now is the best time for sales coaches to introduce the disruption 3D and AR is bringing to the way sales has been traditionally conceived, planned and executed.
Research has shown that 3D and AR tech can be a powerful game-changer when it comes to boosting buyer confidence and driving sales, especially in the case of online sales where product-related uncertainty can be high (e-commerce returns amounted to $428 billion in 2020 - over 10% of total retail sales). Indeed, Shopify reports share that visitors are 65% more likely to place an order after a 3D-AR interaction. The first task for leaders and mentors engaged in sales coaching therefore is to open the eyes – and minds – of sales folks to the humongous opportunity this presents to their role, and for their organization. Supervisors and team leads involved in sales coaching must help their business development (BD), frontline reps and sales channels find ways to incorporate 3D and AR into their GTM (Go-To-Market) and customer strategies in intuitive and interesting ways, cashing in on the novelty and freshness.
As per a CGS study, the top use-cases for 3D and AR were product presentations, exhibitions and advertisements designed on 3D-AR. All three are critical cogs in any sales outreach strategy, and as they tinker with the new technology, both sales coaches and sales practitioners will doubtless figure out exciting and profitable ways to weave these elements into their roadmaps. It all begins with behavioral change, and its seeds must be planted as early as possible.
Sales coaches must train up their teams in the art of the ‘visual demo’
A Snap research confirms that an overwhelming majority of Gen-Z, a digitally native demographic driving the next purchase revolution, prefers visual experiences (confirming, in addition, that humans do indeed come visually hardwired). In fact, 93% of respondents for the UK survey of this research expressed a clear affinity for using AR for their shopping. In another survey, 42% of consumers said they would be interested in using technology (of any kind) when there was an expert to hand-hold and guide them step-by-step - either over a virtual demo or over phone or tablet. In the same survey, 71% of shoppers said that being able to experience a product in 3D-AR will make them return more often. At the provider or supplier end of the spectrum, 41% of business leaders validated that 3D and AR have brought in new ways to do demos and sell.
Click on the play button on the left to view a product demo on screen. Click on “See in your space” to see it in AR
All of this is a clear signal for those in sales coaching that the next focus must lie squarely in the education, training and upskilling of their sales reps, sales managers and sales agents when it comes to 3D and AR demos – both the online and the in-store kind. The mandate for folks engaged in sales coaching and mentorship begins by helping their SDRs, BDs and sales reps get familiar with the fundamentals of the latest 3D and AR software and tools, and quickly raise their expertise in these technologies. Some 3D and AR companies – like Enhance 3D and AR Solutions – extend a hand of help to sales coaches at this point, reinforcing an organization’s sales coaching function with special training exercises that can help both the sales leadership as well as the frontline sales force of an organization successfully take the big leap into 3D and AR territory, and power forward their business transformation plans.
Sales coaches must champion the role of data in amplifying customer experience
With more information at their fingertips than ever before, tech-savvy buyers are now a privileged breed with increasingly greater expectations from brands. Sales leaders and mentors in charge of sales coaching must respond by blending training in 3D and AR tech with coaching in the human aspect. They must emphasize the importance of understanding buyer intent, empathizing with the buyer’s specific challenges, ensuring seamless digital buyer journeys right across the discovery-engagement-conversion funnel, building memorable moments and ensuring that consumer delight and customer experience stay firmly at the centre of the process.
This is another area where 3D and AR act as a lifeboat for sales coaches and instructors looking to unleash business transformation and reclaim lost ground after the pandemic. By analyzing user-action and decoding customer behavior through visitor activity on the website, catalog or e-commerce page, there are 3D and AR platforms today (such as the one being pioneered at the labs of Enhance 3D and AR Solutions) that can equip sales teams with granular data, empowering them with never-before visibility into the buyer’s mind. This, coupled with the immersive wow moments 3D and AR are inherently designed for, can potentially revolutionize customer experience, allowing sales teams to deliver exactly what buyers want at the exact time they want it - and thereby tasting unprecedented levels of success.
