Why Guided Selling increases the performance of your sales teams and your dealers
The idea behind the job of a sales representative is simple: help your customer find the best solution that fits their needs. However this task is a lot harder in a B2B environment in which companies are often struggling to explain complex products. This is where guided selling comes into play, a powerful strategy to regain control over your solution offering.
The concept of guided selling has been around for a very long time. It describes the process of guiding a customer through the selection to find the right solution, managed by a sales representative asking a set of (predetermined) questions. This idea is fairly simple to implement in real-life shopping experiences, but the online equivalents often seem to lack a proper guided selling strategy. The same way a customer shouldn’t be left alone lost and confused in the store, an online guided selling approach should help customers to find and purchase the optimal solution for their needs.
This will have significant benefits for both sides. On the one hand, sellers will no longer feel the pressuring need to hire the most experienced and expensive sales reps. A junior profile will be able to come closer to the performances of experienced sales representatives, using an elaborate tool that helps them in every step of the way for the process. The sales teams will require less training too, and will be able to reduce mistakes. This allows sellers to cut costs considerably.
On the other hand, customers are experiencing a much more smooth and pleasant buying process. Guided selling will lead even a layman to the fitting product in an easy way, but will also let him navigate through and explore the entire product range, increasing awareness and product knowledge. A good platform is completely dummy-proof: anyone can find a needle in a haystack when guided selling is well executed. However, it is important to keep in mind that a long, elaborate list of complex questions will bore your customers away. Therefore we highly recommend using product visualization, to keep the buying process interesting for customers. This is a rather unique, but very effective approach to guided selling.
In HiveCPQ, we have embedded an elaborate guided selling mechanism. Predetermined questions are presented in a clear overview, and our product store is equipped with a large selection of filters, helping customers navigate to the optimal product. An atypical guided selling feature in Hive is detailed 3D visualization of products. This reduces any mistakes or misunderstandings and keeps customers enthusiastic. On top of that, we have installed a unique spare parts system that allows users to find the correct spare parts in a matter of seconds based on serial numbers and interactive product visualizations. HiveCPQ is therefore a powerful platform for guided selling.
Research from McKinsey (2018) has shown that guided selling throughout the online platform can significantly increase the revenue. This does not come as a surprise, considering it improves the customer experience and allows customers to browse easily through the entire product range, while simultaneously improving the performance of sales teams. Spend less time trying to find the right product, and more time selling it!
Worauf warten Sie noch?
Folge uns
Related articles
5 B2B strategies to sell more in 2021
We are slowly but surely reaching the end of 2020, so it’s time to look back and look ahead! This year was not what anyone expected, but suffice to say it was a life changing year. Every aspect of our lives seems to be different, which means that customers will have a changed behavior too. How do you anticipate these changes as a sales representative? Let’s look at some of the trends we can expect in 2021 for B2B Sales in 5 fitting strategies.
Time is money: the importance of time efficiency
“Time is money”, the famous words from Benjamin Franklin prove that time efficiency was even in 1748 a trending topic. Today, the pressure is higher than ever to not waste any time, which has in turn influenced customer behavior. Customers today are demanding a better and faster buying experience. How can you handle this growing difficulty as a company?
How to increase sales for your manufacturing business
Manufacturers are often struggling with long and complex sales processes, making it hard to increase sales. This has to do with the complex nature of the goods, but also with the fact that B2B sales requires various stakeholders to work together. On top of that, the manufacturing market has had some intrusive changes: increasingly demanding B2B buyers and global competition continue to impact companies. Increasing sales in manufacturing is therefore not as straightforward as it often is in other industries. We are bundling some tips to increase your sales again. Read along!
