Augmented Reality is revolutionizing field sales of physical products. The benefits of in person contact remain the same with the passage of time, but AR technology is equipped to change the challenges of physical products in field sales.
AR displays your product virtually into the space of the client, making it appear like your product is there. Being a virtual version, it is easy to enhance it with information, animations and even show variations. You can bring your entire catalog with you, all on the phone or tablet you are already carrying.
Benefits of AR enhanced Field Sales
- Increases Customer Engagement: AR experiences are interactive in addition to informative. Adding animations and interactions that show features of the product can deepen the engagement.
- Increases Customer buy-in: Seeing the product in their own space changes the customer’s relationship with the product. They are literally seeing it there as if they already own it.
- Helps close deals using AR Enhanced Quotes: When the quote includes an image capture that shows the product in their space, the customer buy-in advantage continues and helps close the deal. Providing an ability for the client to view the AR on their own device post sales visit can likewise help seal the deal
- Reduces miscommunications: By adding AR enhanced images that capture both the physical and augmented scene together, the client can see exactly the product/variation/design that they are buying.
- Improves Field Documentation: Documentation of visits is an important part of field sales. With a proper AR image capture feature in the software, the field agent has records from the visit that include not only the product in place, but can be geo-located. These records also provide context and the ability to recall or even figure out details of the space post visit, reducing the chances of requiring a follow-on visit.
- Removes logistics and shipping costs: With Augmented Reality your product/design catalog is virtual. There is no carrying or shipping of the physical product required. This is particularly beneficial with large and heavy products, but also clutch with products that include variations and large catalogs of products.
AR Tool requirements
In order to get all these benefits, you need an Augmented Reality platform capable of delivering certain features and capabilities.
For AR enhanced field sales to work, the most basic requirement is a way to place the virtual version of the physical object into the user’s space. Although different AR display technologies are possible, generally the sales person will use a phone or tablet.
Place objects into the client’s space
The second requirement is the software that can place the virtual object into the clients physical space. This has to run on the hardware of choice, but also needs to support different methods of placement.
Touch placement where the device maps flat surfaces is popular. If exact placement is required a solution using physical anchors is required. With Misterine AR platform we support this in the form of QR codes and specialized Tracking codes that are even more precise. With this approach you can place the object exactly where you need by physical alignment, for instance in the corner where the object will be. This can also be used as an anchor for measurements.
Work offline
Although the world is more networked than ever, the ability for this to work offline is critical for field sales. Many solutions require connectivity and the last thing you want is to have the demo fail. This is why Misterine App allows download of content onto the local disk.
AR content creation
If you are selling customized product, it will be important to consider how easy it is to get that customized product design into AR and data protection. Assuming the design is created in some sort of CAD system, this can be very ease to do. In Misterine AR Studio it can be as easy as 5 steps to get a model deployed.
It will also be important that you don’t need to send CAD data to some online portal, potentially leaking the company’s IP. Misterine AR platform is designed for data security. With Misterine Studio the CAD is processed on a local machine and only data that can’t be reverse engineered is sent to the end device. In addition, the AR content can be securely transferred with password protection and encryption to a company owned device.
Ability to capture AR scenarios
Capturing the augmented scenario in the user’s space is the second most powerful part of AR field sales. Having an image of what it will look like with your product in their space makes closing the deal that much easier. Just the pure psychology of continuing to see in an image the product in your own space on a AR enhanced quote or shared image is enough to make this technology a must.
There are additional benefits of this capture. The AR enhanced image reduces miscommunication and mis-remembering what was discussed, improving customer relationships. It also assists the field sales agent in documenting the sales visit and can post hoc help assure fit of the product.
On mobile devices a screen capture can be done, but has some drawbacks, making a built-in feature to the software important. Screen capture generally requires shortcuts people often don’t know and frequently cause shaking in the AR images. It also captures UI elements, which detract from the illusion of it being a photo from the future of the client having the product in place. Having a simple camera like UI is intuitive and familiar to all.
Summary
Field sales rely on the personal touch and when the product is physical the personal experience of the product in the client’s space. Augmented Reality delivers the personal experience of the product without the necessity to bring the product with and provides new opportunities to enhance that experience with features like animations, brining products to life. The biggest benefit is however, the change that can be made of the potential clients relationship to the product using AR technologies, like AR enhanced quotes. By having the right tool, like Misterine AR platform, you can get all these benefits while being secure with your IP and deploying AR simply.