Guided Selling vs. Guided Configuration:
The Ultimate Comparison

In B2B manufacturing, the growing complexity of customizable products creates a challenge for both salespeople and customers. Guided selling offers a way to simplify and streamline this sales process by presenting a tool that can ask customers targeted questions about their needs and recommend suitable product variations or configurations. This not only empowers salespeople to provide personalized recommendations but also helps customers navigate complex product options, ensuring they get the perfect solution for their needs, leading to a smoother and more efficient sales cycle.

While many manufacturers understand the benefits that a guided selling solution brings them, those that deal with the most complex products often struggle with the time and effort required for initial setup and configuration. In addition, the long-term maintenance of these guided selling rules in conjunction with the growth of their product offerings presents a reoccurring resource challenge.

A better, long-term solution for these companies is guided configuration. Before I walk you through the evolution from guided selling to guided configuration, let us first take a look at the basics.

Guided selling employs a series of targeted questions to understand a customer’s specific requirements and then recommend the most appropriate product or solution that fits their needs.

This process offers many great benefits, including:

• A focused configuration, perfect for inexperienced users
• The ability to quickly find meaningful results
• Increased potential for order conversions

There are, however, several drawbacks to consider, such as:

• Intensive property mapping and product alignment
• Required product expertise and technical prowess
• Does not adapt to changes in user preferences

It is obvious that the benefits for salespeople as well as the customers far outweigh the burden placed on those managing the rules.

But what if you could reap additional rewards beyond guided selling, and without the technical hangover?

Using Configit Ace® and Virtual Tabulation®, guided configuration optimizes the user-experience with live feedback and 100% accurate configuration results, all without having to manage an additional layer of rules in your product offerings.

The benefits extended beyond guided selling include:

• Adaptive configuration, perfect for all experience levels
• Prioritizes what the user values the most
• No property mapping, with 100% accurate results

Drawbacks:

• Only available with Configit Ace®

Embedding guided configuration into the core of the selling process unlocks efficiency gains and decreases the dependency on specialized resources. By maturing from a guided selling tool to a guided configuration solution, manufacturers benefit by minimizing the intervention between sales and engineering.

In addition, customers gain confidence in their decisions knowing that they have full control over what matters most to them, matching their needs to manufactured solutions.

Tom Davidson is a Senior Sales Engineer at Configit with over 20 years of experience in promoting the evolution of product configuration data. Starting out in his career as a Mechanical Design Engineer, Tom understands the struggles and complexities involved in managing engineering data and presenting a solution that can be utilized by the entire organization. He is deeply passionate about discovering the connections between engineering, manufacturing, and sales processes to alleviate some of the industry’s most common challenges.