Guided selling is definitely a thing you’ll encounter when you dive into the world of CPQ software. Guided selling and CPQ have a lot to do with each other, and when handled correctly they also enhance one another. On this page, you will read all about the dream marriage between CPQ software and guided selling.
Before we look at how the use of guided selling principles can enhance your CPQ software. But first, let’s explain what guided selling exactly is.
The easy way to answer this question is to show you the blog we’ve written about guided selling as a business solution. In short, guided selling is a process that helps your potential buyers to choose the product that best suits their needs. When you are selling complex products, a product configurator that only highlights the technical details of the product is not enough. You need to guide your buyer to the optimal solution.
You guide your buyer to the desired and optimal configuration by using guided selling principles. You don’t ask in-depth technical questions that your user will not be able to answer, but you ask simple questions about the application of the product. As such, you assist users of your configurator with selecting options and making choices.
With the assistance of guided selling your configurator becomes much easier to use. Let’s share a great guided selling example: if a customer answers a question that makes a few options impossible, you don’t have to ask them the questions regarding those options. Because that will overcomplicate things. At the same time, a customer gets a notification when there are conflicting choices, and an alternative is offered. Whoever is using your configurator will be assisted as if someone is sitting next to them, someone with all the relevant and available knowledge. The optimal support for the sales pitch!
Imagine you are selling a technically complex product. The use of CPQ software becomes almost unavoidable. By adding a layer of guided selling to CPQ, you almost create a guided selling tool, suddenly making a technical and complex product very accessible to end users. For instance, you do not ask whether they want stainless steel or regular steel, but whether they will use the product in a dry or damp environment. With that information, you are the expert that decides what material is needed.
Long story short: ask your user functional questions, and let the software determine the technical implications. This brings many advantages, as can be read in the example below!
If you’re looking for guided selling examples, we’ve got enough to share. Let’s take a look at how the combination of guided selling and CPQ is working out at WSP. They use guided selling principles within their CPQ software, as a solution to quickly and easily compose budget quotations. This works as follows: a project at WSP can easily consist of 30 or more machines. The calculation of these kinds of projects can take up to 4 days. Should you then end up with a quotation and budget estimate that is far above the customer’s expectation, then all your time spent calculating will have been for naught.
Now they use guided selling in their CPQ software to get to a target price much faster. With answers to a few questions, for instance about capacity and usage of the machines, a target price can be determined within 15 minutes. With that simple budget quotation, you will directly be able to visit your customers with an offer, much faster than your competitors.
“At WSP, we notice that conversions on quotations have risen massively, and that they have reduced price calculation time by 75%”.
There are a few companies that make great solutions for combining guided selling and CPQ. If you are looking for the best guided selling tool money can buy, look no further. Request an Elfsquad demo and we will show you exactly how guided selling and CPQ software can enhance your pre-production process. Enable your salesforce to use guided selling techniques and sell your complex products!
Elfsquad removes all worries from your pre-production process. With Elfsquad as backbone, we realize the digital factory that smart industries have been trying to find for so long. We do this through a product configurator, with integrated solutions for marketing, sales, and operations.
Let us know what you think.