"No One Really Wants a Virtual Tour" Dean Scholey - VirtualPro - Matterpod Ep. 7

Dean Scholey
No one really wants a virtual tour. They don't want it. What's the point? Why do I need this? They want the solutions that it brings.

Christian Adams
Welcome back to the Openhaus Pro Matterpod podcast. We're excited to be joined with Dean today from Virtual Pro in New Zealand. Thanks so much for joining us, Dean. We appreciate you taking the time to chat with us and are excited to hear about your business and glean some of the insights that you have around the Matterport industry in general.

Christian Adams
So thanks so much for being with us today.

Dean Scholey
It's my pleasure.

Christian Adams
To go ahead and get started. Dean, we'd love for you to introduce yourself quickly here, a little bit about Virtual Pro and maybe how you got started in the Matterport industry.

Dean Scholey
Awesome, awesome. Thank you so much. Like you said, I've been with Matterport for about five years now, so a bit of a croaker. Early morning and predominantly mainly Matterport we’ve been doing obviously we started off trying to steer clear of residential because we did not want to be going into that. I guess when you go into residential, you become a residential photographer.

Just the nature of the business. So we were very much stuck to more businesses, daycares, anywhere else that we could tell a better story with with the Matterport. And then COVID obviously struck and then it was an obvious choice for everybody to go in that direction. My background is as a graphic designer, so it's a naturally a creative outlet for us.

But for me, I guess as a graphic designer, my, my, my full purpose of being graphic designer was to give my audience a choice, you know, which way, which which, which ad you want to pick which. And the virtual tour came along in my world and said she used well. I now have an opportunity to give my audience the opportunity of choice.

And in my world when I look at a virtual tour, I don't see anything more powerful at the moment to be able to give a more engaging opportunity of choice for my clients. So whether they're in a shop or a daycare, it's just your client base and your message changes with that.

Christian Adams
So when COVID hit, did you start doing more residential stuff then more experiential type tours like daycares and museums or or different types of Matterport tours?

Dean Scholey
pre-COVID I was very much into businesses that I obviously had to find a way to market this to. Matterport is an awesome tool. Like anything, if you if you find a way to sell it, you have to you have to know how to market the product because the reality is, in my world, in my perception of business, no one really wants a virtual tour.

They don't want it. What's the point? Why do I need this? They want the solutions that it brings in. And a lot of us try and come up with problems that we're trying to solve or create an issue that isn't really there. That's where we're getting stuck. We're getting stuck and saying, Oh, here's the problem. You never thought you knew you had the thing is to be targeting the problems that are currently existing with those clients because they want to no problems and never to think about them before.

And they don't want you to create one for them. So really focusing for for us was very much one of our key clients was a, believe it or not, a car rental company. Our very first major client, the ezi car rental. Their biggest problem that they hit was that when people checked in, it from the international airport, they could not find their kiosks for thinking it the car.

So they at that junction in time three years ago, four years ago, there was no other way. This is an awesome, awesome idea getting someone to play with it and it was so successful that they were voted the key from the customers, the best customer service was most of their clients were international from Japan or from China or from.

So the language barrier was there. But were with a Matterport You don't need a language barrier. So every time you went to the site or put something, they would send you a this is how you get to a kiosk from Wellington Airport, from Auckland, from Christchurch, from Dunedin And we just and that was awesome because they the agreement with the airport is every single time they update something at the airport, they needed to update the virtual tour

So it's kept us awesomely busy. But obviously with COVID that businesses got hit dramatically. So that just kind of moves sideways and again, like with most Matterport guys in the industry, we we always shot at the high end level where we piggybacked on the sides of photographers. But obviously with COVID, it was safe for us to and clients wanted us to do the entire thing because they didn't want to have to two or three different people going through a place.

So we naturally just figured out how to shoot the same photography with a decent cam.

Christian Adams
Yeah, that makes total sense. That's way cool that you were able to solve that problem for the car rental company. I want to just kind of double click into one thing that you mentioned. You said that sometimes it's hard to sell virtual tours because it's it's it can solve potential problems that the person that you're trying to sell to doesn't necessarily know exist.

And so one question that I have for you is what advice would you give to somebody who's maybe newer to Matterport when it comes to trying to sell Matterport or virtual tour experiences to a non residential type client?

Dean Scholey
It's a very good question. If you break it down, there is no real, real answer to this. The only real answer is that you're passionate about doing this. So you really, really want to do this and you believe in what you're doing. It's going to solve a problem. You aren't doing this because it's just the next coolest thing.

You know you're doing this because Matterport is you believe in what the technology does and how you as a person or as a business can solve or create a difference for a company. Without that belief, you're going to get knocked over all the time, every single time. No one is going to want to spend money, especially if you if you're pitching to cheap, they're going to go, it's rubbish.

If you're pitching too expensive, they're not going to see the value. It's your passion in the middle that says, Look, I love this so much that I'm just going to do this for nothing. And eventually you figure out how to get through this game with these people. You figure and sticking with a niche is as often as possible.

Dean Scholey
Let's say, for instance, that kids go with the Jedi kids, you're going to get knocked everywhere all the time. It doesn't matter if you if you know that the goal is line there, if they're the difficult, most difficult client, one of the most difficult clients to deal with, they busy. You can't get to the owner as soon as you can show value first.

Well yes the tours or let me do five or six points for you just to show you I believe in so much and I'm prepared to give this to you. And that's how we started. My my entire my entire framework of what I do is I deliver wow moments. Wow. I didn't know this was possible. Wow. This is awesome.

Wow. Holy Heck! when you deliver that wow, you can start charging for sure.

Christian Adams
I love the two things that you brought to light which is, one, you have to have a fundamental belief that the technology itself is solving a problem or helping whatever client or customer you're trying to sell. And if you don't truly believe that you're adding value to that client or customer, then you're going to you're not going to be able to sell.

Christian Adams
You're not going to be successful.

Dean Scholey
You'll just keep getting knocked down. I mean, how do you go to a hospital and say, hey, give me $6,000? They just don't it's weird. It's strange that the the higher up the value chain you go, the easier it does get. But you need to really, really, really understand. And it's only sold at the passion point.

Christian Adams
Yeah, I agree 100% and then we are also Matterport providers ourselves. And one of the things that we're passionate about is e-commerce and shop ability and where we've seen success is focusing on e-commerce features for potential clients. Like for example, we worked with GE Appliances to create shoppable 3D showrooms of virtual kitchens featuring their appliances. And we ourselves are passionate about, Hey, if you're a potential GE customer, you should allow your customers to be able to experience these virtual kitchens.

Click on any of the appliances in this space and learn more and interact with with those products inside of a matterport tours. And I think only because we had the passion about that potential customer experience, that's what allowed us to break through with such a large potential client, because without that, we would have just been like, Oh, I can't get to the right decision maker.

Nobody is responding to us. And so we can't really, at the end of the day, sell this type of experience and then kind of doubling down on that niche, like you said, like once you find something that you are passionate about going after maybe that specific niche and trying to nail and scale from there. So I think that's that's profound.

Dean Scholey
It's also the case with your passion. It's like it's kind of a, you know, kind of being a bit silly yourself. But it's when you're looking for new clients is like have the, have the approach in your own self that says you are fortunate that I hadn't taken the moment to find you the all you going to turn this opportunity down I'm going to do my best not to pick you up and throw up because most of us have that problem.

You know, we get too excited about the product and we and we oversell it. It's so and so the client is so confused that they know what they're buying. The other option is when a client does approaches, you treat them like they are just gone. You know, they are amazing. Like you found me. Every dollar you spend with me, I'm going to give you ten back for sure.

See you getting the swing of it and you seeing how this is working. You can comfortably start charging what your real value is. You know, we're never going to deliver true value because until this product becomes a high end search, you know, keyword that's with $500, you're all going to struggle.

Christian Adams
And the customer interactions are really, really important and they can sense that you do have that conviction and desire to help them with whatever pain point you're trying to solve with the virtual toys is super important.

Dean Scholey
But one last thing for anyone starting out, it's kind of you kind of have to go all in. You know, if you're going to if you want to be a virtual small business, which we focus on, you're all in on making this work. You know, you don't, you know, having a sidekick. It never for me anyway. It just wouldn't have been successful because how did one a sidekick you can ever get into it for sure.

Christian Adams
Yeah. It's like you've got to be fully committed to making this this work because if not, you'll get rejected by a handful of people and say, this technology is being accepted wide stream enough for me to be able to make this my my full time job. But you're living proof that somebody can make a full time dedicated business to providing virtual tour experiences for for businesses.

One one other question I've got for you, Dean, are is what are some of the biggest challenges that you're currently facing as a matterport provider? And what are you trying to do to solve those problems.

Dean Scholey
I guess? Matterport itself is Matterport itself. If you if you allow the the noise around it's of of the sentiment of the problem that you're reading through all the forums and stuff is that no one has the same problem. No one. There is no blankets. It is not all of a sudden we can do something together or someone's losing the account or the sunsetting of this.

There's a lot of stress that's coming from it. But the reality is, if you weren't in the Matterport business with Matterport and you were in your normal business, there'd be other stresses that came from it. So I think one of the biggest thing is not is filtering the noise. You know, if you're going to commit to Matterport, commit to Matterport because, you know, if we done, it's not going to be there for sure.

Christian Adams
Are there other solutions that you know that people are using that you've potentially looked into aside from Matterport or.

Dean Scholey
I'm always looking I'm always looking at. I think the problem with what I'm what I'm feeling is that people are trying to cross over into this accuracy scans point, you know all the BLKs, the Leicas and they they're trying they they may be a miscommunication some where or a misunderstanding. But I think the problem is that because Matterport said or you can go into construction and you can extract 57, it doesn't mean it's accurate.

It just means that those files are available. But some people in the industry or this is this is thin line some way that's causing a lot of noise going oh, let's compare it against BLK, let's compare for a difference it's it's completely different and if you continually broadcasting that it's not the same if you you can't be selling that product it's why would you do that?

I don't understand. That's just the is the confusion there that I think sorry with regards to I guess I'm always looking at other products, but I'm looking at more for myself as a designer, more customizable, more own, a more unique product. So I am I am looking at the likes of 3D Vista, which is fully customized, fully, you know, as a designer, I like to be able to to, you know, and then you have many others, there’s giraffe.

It just depends on what you want to focus on. But I think the I think there's going to be more of an art form. I think the process has kind of simplified any creativity that's going to be required.

Christian Adams
Yeah, totally. I think what I'm understanding from what you're saying is it's really important to focus on the job to be done, because if you are looking at working for some architecture project that needs very, very accurate point cloud data, then, you know, Matterport might not be the solution. The Pro three might not be as accurate quote unquote as is something like the BLK

But focusing on back to our previous point of what are you passionate about, what problem are you trying to solve for your customer? Then you can go to, okay, what solution is going to best solve that problem for the the the client that I am passionate about that I'm trying to sell these projects to you because if that's the case, you know, maybe 3D, this is the solution or maybe it's Matterport, maybe it is something else.

And so I think really just deciding what customer segment am I most passionate about, what problems can I try and solve for that customer? And then what is the best solution that exists out there that can help me solve this problem for that customer?

Dean Scholey
Definitely. Like with us, all I can understand is quite it's difficult as soon as you find a customer that gets it, well, this is awesome, this model. What else can we do? Our natural thing is, is to keep going. We can do more. We can do more kits because the the technology says, I can do more. But we don't understand that.

We don't understand the measurements. We don't understand the the implications of us selling them something that is not accurate. The point is to completely understand my job is to shoot a virtual tool that is useful information and communication. The client says to me, then, hey, can we, can we take that you 57 or can you create some measurements and create your full plan?

It's, it's for visual purposes. I know we meeting it at scanning. Okay, cool. I have a few clients or a few collaborators that take it to that next level. I then introduce them to them. I have I have now handed over their client to the next level. The relationship I have with the scanning company is we do the Met reports, they do the high end scanning, which means that at any point there is a, you know, this whole thing in the world at the moment need to protect their clients.

You need to also protect them by not delivering them a bad solution. Yeah. Not, not talking to you is that they'll look to you waited this go wrong. Oh I used Dean. You invaded the virtual term within. That's wrong.

Christian Adams
Yeah. You have to always be careful of saying you can do something in and deliver a solution when in reality maybe you can't. And it's the.

Dean Scholey
Is. We will only do it with It’s like I try to explain to everyone this is purely an extension of photo and video metaphor. It's a it's the next level. Nothing false there.

Christian Adams
Totally. No, I agree with you. Well, Dean, we appreciate you taking the time to jump on the phone and chat with us quickly. I think there's been some awesome things that can be learned from this, in particular for people that are new getting into Matterport, how they can best go about targeting specific customers and really trying to sell them on using virtual tours to solve real pains that they are experiencing in their business.

So I appreciate your your insights and thoughts. They're really, really helpful.

Dean Scholey
Thank you so much.