Most have heard the term “MarTech” as builders have been digitally marketing for years now. MarTech is basically the fusion of Marketing and Technology. Marketing brings buyers and sellers together. Technology simply improves those connections using the digital mediums of today’s tech-savvy consumers.
But consumers are no longer just shopping online. In today’s e-commerce world, they are also now buying online. In fact, we just recently had our first custom-designed home transacted online using our MyHome App.
With e-commerce, we’re seeing the convergence of Marketing and Sales online.
As seen on Amazon, not only can you learn about products via photos, 360s, videos and even augmented reality along with ratings and reviews. But with one click, you can immediately add them to your shopping cart and transact.
So what are the key differences between MarTech and SalesTech?
Historically, Marketing preceded Sales by creating the brand, messaging, content and channels. Marketing was unquestionably the top of the funnel. Consequently, Sales was dependent on Marketing to generate and funnel leads to them. Generally, Marketing took online leads and pushed them to onsite Sales. Not only is this a long and costly process that forces customers to change online behavior. But as we’ve recently seen, the funnel becomes a major bottleneck if Marketing is flooded with leads. The tapered sales funnel quickly becomes a slow hourglass. Basically, both customers and Sales are at the mercy of effective and efficient Marketing.
Meanwhile, consumer expectations are higher than ever. They want more transparency, more control, quicker response times, 24/7 service and less hand-offs – to the extreme desire to Do It Yourself. MarTech has improved some of these Marketing bottlenecks. But it’s struggling to keep-up with the continuous proliferation of new channels and content.
This is where SalesTech is emerging as a critical success factor in the omnichannel New Home e-commerce world. SalesTech helps narrow and shorten the widening and lengthening digital sales funnel. With new SalesTech tools, Salespeople may even be able to leapfrog MarTech’s broad Audience Engagement with direct Customer Engagement. SalesTech brings the salesperson to wherever their customers are online whether it’s at their home, the beach, the cafe or their sales center. Hence, less hand-offs which results in shorter sales journeys and better customer experiences!
SalesTech can even bring salespeople to the forefront of the sales process. Instead of depending on traditional Marketing hand-offs, salespeople can go directly to shoppers at the top of the sales funnel. Maybe through Facebook posts to get personal followers or conducting virtual group tours of communities and homes to simultaneously sell online to hundreds of prospects at 10 PM – from your own home instead of the model home. How convenient and efficient! Using SalesTech, salespeople can essentially create their own sales channels of followers in addition to getting curated leads from MarTech.
Basically, SalesTech improves online sales conversions. It’s composed of three online tools (SEAT): Sales Engagement, Automation and Transaction. Sales Engagement Apps enable one-on-one online interactions. Sales Automation uses AI (artificial intelligence) to match buyers with products and also provide sales guidance and notifications of triggered events. For Sales Transactions, online shopping carts enable digital payments and contracts.
SalesTech is already commonplace. You see it at airport touchscreen kiosks, at Chick-fil-A drive-thrus with employees and iPads, and behind the scenes in call centers to guide sales reps.
Another great example is Uber. Their app enables personal engagements between drivers and passengers. Their AI not only matches drivers with passengers and destinations. But it notifies both parties of arrival and then maps the best routes. But a surprising benefit is that it lets drivers shop passengers! Imagine if you could shop for your ideal customers to get the easiest and fastest conversions! Finally, the Uber app automatically calculates the optimum pricing and seamlessly handles the credit card transaction.
The key is for SalesTech to enable customer engagements higher in the sales funnel as Salespeople are better than Marketing at nurturing personal relationships and explaining products. Successful SalesTech not only preserves the critical human touch in an increasingly online world; but it also keeps salespeople in-touch with how today’s tech-savvy consumers communicate without being out-of-touch with how their customers are shopping online. Meeting shoppers where they are at in their sales journeys will provide a better customer experience and can even put the “fun” back in “funnel”!
