What is guided selling? Frankly, it’s one thing for B2C and quite another for B2B.
B2C guided selling
In B2C, guided selling is essentially driven by the buyer.
Yes, you have to create a system that listens to the buyer, presents steps and information based on what it “hears” from each buyer, and walks a buyer through a seemingly independent decision-making process.
(We say “seemingly” as guided selling is about presenting the buyer only the choices that make sense for your business. E.g. the first step in any B2C guided selling process is rarely, “You should check out our competitors first.”)
But it is the buyer who’s guided to initiate a process, and eventually make a decision (ideally, while delivering valuable feedback at each decision-point). Your system guides a buyer based on their feedback, the data they enter or carry with them, and real-time analytics.
Think about the e-commerce experience: a shopper types, say, “golf balls” on a shopping site. Rather than simply presenting the shopper with only an offer for balls, a guided selling approach will include supporting offers: gloves, tees, even local lessons.
It will also guide the golf ball buying process, too, presenting questions about experience, handicap, etc., that will guide the shopper not just to golf balls, but to the best golf balls for their game.
It’s a win-win: the shopper feels listened to and empowered, and the seller is creating more opportunities to build the relationship and drive additional revenue.
B2B guided selling
B2B guided selling has a few definitions, but in most cases it’s creating a system or platform that guides your sales reps and sales processes. I.e. in B2B guided selling, it’s more the rep who’s being guided than the buyer.
And that can make B2B guided selling into something as simple as a platform or interface in which reps simply follow the steps. (In some ways, this kind of guided selling method has been used for decades, ever since the first telemarketing script was written.)
Guided selling & CPQ
While used primarily for the creation, delivery, and tracking of sales proposals, a configure, price, quote solution (CPQ) also works wonders as a guided selling tool, even a sales training tool.
Note that the strengths of CPQ are “end of the funnel.” CPQ will not really help you warm-up leads and/or create sales opportunities. It will, however, help you close leads and create upsell opportunities.
But its ability to guide quoted opportunities to closed opportunities is unparalleled: a sales rep with a customer ready for a quote simply opens a proposal template, populates it with preconfigured product/pricing options, and presses “send.” The system then tracks the quotes, sends alerts, and guides the entire process.
And the reason CPQ can work as a training tool is built-in to that same process as well. To build sales proposals that reflect your brand and lines of business, and to get a bird’s eye view of your most popular and effective product and pricing configurations, a rookie rep doesn’t need to be trained by anyone — they just need to open up their CPQ solution.
Like the term “sales enablement,” guided selling has a rather elastic definition, depending on who’s providing it. But in our experience, it’s about empowerment more than anything else: in B2C, it’s the shopper who’s most empowered, and in B2B guided selling, it’s your reps and your business that are most empowered.
