SalesTechStar Interview with Marc Loeb, Head of Global Sales at ByondXR

Extended reality can redefine the sales and customer experience; Marc Loeb, Head of Global Sales at ByondXR comments on the increasing use of extended reality and how it can benefit B2B brands:

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Hi Marc, welcome to this chat, tell us more about yourself and your role at ByondXR?

Thank you so much, I am the head of Global Sales for ByondXR.  I spent more than 20 years in the Wholesale, Retail, eCommerce Fashion Industry.  I joined ByondXR almost a year ago to run their Global Sales and Marketing teams.

We’d love to hear about your core sales processes and salestech at ByondXR that helps you and the team drive efforts and better collaboration?

ByondXR does very targeted and specific sales outreach to our prospective clients. We have multiple platforms that we offer, each catering to different market segment.   Our XRStores, which are 3D virtual eCommerce stores that live on the brands website and offer consumers the ability to shop, engage, win prizes and discover more about the brand has been widely adapted by the beauty/cosmetic industry and fashion industry right now.  Our sales team focuses on reach out to global clients in this market segment.   We have XRStores running at the same time for clients like Lancôme in 16 countries, soon to be 19.  Covering Asia, North America, South America, Europe and Australia.  Our platform is built to scale across multiple languages, markets and parts of the world, so we seek out clients with multiple branded global websites. We use sequence emailing with gifs to capture the attention of focused outreach.  Our XRVisualizer is for the home décor market. We have amazing experiences with Caesarstone and Tile Bar and direct new potential customers to these live experiences in our outreach.  Our XRStudio platform is concentrated on the Apparel market.  Our clients are designing their product all in 3D from the inception of the product life cycle and our XRStudio allows them to create robust catalogs of the styles including all pertinent information such as style number, season code, cost, fabric as well as 2D images, Video and 3D images.  This allows brands to design, merchandise, plan store setups all in 3D without having to make samples.  We are helping to shorten the time to market and there is a huge sustainability impact to not producing and discard physical samples that were not adapted into production.    Our sales outreach is directed toward brands that work with our partners, CLO3D, Browzwear and Optitex, the leaders in 3D fashion design softwear.

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In B2B sales today, what are some of the top concerns keeping sales leaders up at night? And a few top challenges you see sales executives and BDRs facing a lot of?

Some of the biggest concerns are separating ourselves from the competition, keeping the top of the sales funnel full and then closing the sales. We have lapped our competition in terms of photo realism, speed, scalability, analytics and gamification.  These are all aspects that our clients are truly looking for.  Since we are a full fledge technology company and not an agency, we are able to customize to our client’s needs and rapidly scale experiences globally in other languages and market specific checkout.   Our custom analytics dashboard offers our clients unique consumer insights which we use to optimize the experiences. ByondXR has great inbound interest in our platform and technology, but since it is new sometimes clients are hesitant to adapt.  As we add more global experiences, we are seeing clients adapt much faster.

We’d like to hear more about the ByondXR platform and how that’s evolved over the years, with the platform’s growth, how have sales initiatives and pitches changed to drive demand?

ByondXR started in Israel in 2016 as an Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality company.  We worked with amazing client such as Coca Cola, P&G, FIFA Sports, and the Olympics.  About 3 years ago we shifted our focus to Extended Reality (XR) which are 3D Virtual experiences that are embedded in clients’ webpages and optimized for Mobile.  Our platform is run on our own proprietary 3D engine and can easily be embedded in a clients website with a line of code.  We offer 3 unique platforms, our XRSTUDIO:3D design and merchandising solution. Our XRVisualizer platform creates one-of-a-kind 3D virtual Home Decor shopping experiences embedded in a B2C website with cart checkout to order samples or store location finder.  Our XRStore platform creates one-of-a-kind 3D virtual eCommerce experiences embedded in Brands B2C website with cart checkout.  Our XRStores increase Customer Engagement, Traffic, and Conversion. By using gamification we are lowering the average age of traffic to customers’ sites bringing new Gen Y.1 and Gen Z customers to our client’s doors.

As we add and develop new features our sales team is pivoting their pitches to include the newest and latest advancements.  We are working with more avatars, virtual try-ons, and more gamification to increase the level of consumer engagement.  As we learn and optimize in specific countries, we are able to share best practices with other brands to better connect with the local customers.  The more we share with our sales team on the successes of our company, to more word of mouth builds between customers.

How are you seeing the market for virtual shopping transform with today’s retail-tech and ecommerce innovations? A few of the most interesting ways in which you’ve seen these technologies enhance the online shopping experience across industries?

If you think about it, eCommerce has not changed in more than 20 years.  The endless scroll of product pages and the click down menus to find specific products and categories.  The basics of eCommerce are the same across luxury, mass market and even Amazon.  The Covid19 pandemic has accelerated the desire for virtual shopping around the world.  Brands are seeking new and more innovative ways to better connect with their consumers.  By helping brands create virtual shopping experiences, it is driving a new customer to their stores who may not have access to them because of lockdowns or geography.

Consumer shopping behavior has been severely impacted by the pandemic and Global retail e-commerce sales are poised to reach 5.4 trillion US dollars in 2022.

We are seeing and hearing the same needs and goals across industries, from CPG, Fashion, Beauty, Furniture and home décor. How do we better engage our brand with customers? How do attract a new younger audience to our brand such as Gen Z.  ByondXR is doing just this, while increase sales, cart conversion and increasing the customer base.

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As Extended reality redefines the online experience, we’d love to hear how  you see this move into other customer facing roles – like Sales! A few thoughts on the future of sales and do you see sales teams using XR in the future to present real-life-like sales pitches virtually?

We are already working with and speaking with companies that would like to create their tradeshow booths into Extended Reality Experiences.  This is going to revolution the way sales occur.  Many companies that rely on trade shows to sell and promote their product have not been able to travel to shows around the world.  Tradeshows are a huge expense for the sales organization of companies.  The cost of attending, building the booths, shipping the product, hotels, entertainment… it all adds up and takes away from the bottom line.  Many companies have seen their sales increase over the past year, not have attended any of their normal trade shows.  By creating Extended Reality experiences where buyer can see and the explore product on their own time could make the tradeshow business obsolete.   We have created trade show experiences with Avatars that explain and demonstrate product, setting the pace for a new type of sales.

Some last thoughts and takeaways before we wrap up?

ByondXR is at the forefront of how consumers are shopping online and connecting with brands.  The Pandemic has caused a cosmic shift in the way consumers interact with brand and shop online.  At ByondXR we are creating a new and innovative way for customers to have an instore shopping experience without having to leave their couch.  Generation Z is proving to be a very different consumer than its predecessors.  Brands are really thinking about how to engage with this new generation that grew up with smartphones in their hands since they were babies, what to be individual and unique, are not brand loyal and want to feel the brand is doing something good in the world.  We are helping Brand bridge that gap with our gamification and social media connectivity.

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