According to the research company Gartner, 75% of B2B sales companies will supplement their traditional sales techniques by implementing guided selling technology in 2025, allowing them to increase customer engagement and increase conversion.
What exactly is guided selling, and how can it benefit your company? And, more importantly, how do you implement this method in a way that helps you gain more customers and boost sales overall?
In this guided selling start-up kit, we’ll go over the basics of how the process works and what it can do for your company. We’ll also look at some guided selling examples and discuss some tools to assist and end with best-selling techniques for guided selling to make the most of this method.
Ready? Let’s go.
What is Guided Selling?
Guided selling involves studying sales trends, historical sales, and customer data to help sales representatives provide individualized customer product recommendations and increase the probability of converting.
How Does Guided Selling Work?
Guided selling is like selling solutions, utilizing data about sales and customers to recommend items or services that meet consumer requirements.
In real life, this strategy uses AI-driven data analytics tools that can combine current trends in the market with specific consumer behaviors to deliver customized solutions that “guide” consumers along the route to buying.
The purpose of guided sales is to provide buyers with various alternatives that satisfy their needs and give evidence-based reasons for which of these options is a good choice.
It differentiates guided selling from standard sale frameworks that tailor advertisements to specific consumer behavior or categories of buyers and leave buyers to make their own decisions when they land on sites for businesses.
Think about a simple example. Visitors find your website through conventional marketing and social selling tools in a typical sales strategy. After clicking through, they’re on their own to explore possible purchasing options using typical category or product type drop-down menus.
They might be directed to a particular page by clicking on links from social profiles or online ads.
For instance, when guided sales are used, customers are provided with specific product recommendations based on collected data. In brick-and-mortar stores, it is usually collected by sales reps who inquire with customers regarding what they’re looking for, how much they’d like to spend, and the problems they’re seeking to fix.
It could be an online questionnaire for online businesses that helps sales personnel make the most appropriate product for their customers.
Guided selling can be used in both B2B as well as B2C scenarios. The main distinction is that B2B methods typically require direct contact between account managers or business buyers, whereas B2C solutions usually focus on online questionnaires that collect data to direct customers to the best products.
Key Benefits of Guided Selling
Guided selling provides three important advantages for companies.
There is a higher chance of conversion. If people feel like they’re being heard by providing an array of options that could all satisfy their requirements, they’re more likely to purchase from your website.
The second is a good impression on the customer that can generate more repeat business. With the multitude of options for products and services available today, it’s easy for consumers to become overwhelmed by the options.
If your company can offer an easy and simple experience that gives customers what they want when they need it and want it, they’re more likely to return. 80 % of customers prefer to purchase from brands that offer a personalized experience.
Finally, a data-driven strategy offers ongoing marketing and sales teams insight. Instead of attempting to predict broad trends in purchasing patterns, businesses that use AI-driven guided selling techniques will help identify particular areas where sales efforts are most efficient.
Guided Selling Examples
So, what exactly is guided selling? Below are 3 examples.
Example 1: Offsetting Choice Overload
The number of options accessible online has many shoppers in a panic. They know what they want to purchase but aren’t sure what to search for since there are so many choices.
Guided selling could help reduce this oversaturation. Think about an online home furnishings store. With many styles, fabrics, and color varieties, buyers can become overwhelmed when determining what they’re looking for—a few simple questions once they’re on-site.
However, asking about the space they’re hoping to furnish and the kinds and colors of furniture they would like could make a huge difference in helping them find the right furniture.
Example 2: Identifying Specific Needs
Sometimes, customers visit your site without knowing what they want or require. A quick set of questions will assist in identifying specific needs and guide them in the right direction. Let’s imagine you’re an online clothing store.
You can ask your customers about the fit and material they prefer to help them navigate the purchase process and then show them the items that are most compatible with their preferences, increasing their likelihood of buying.
Example 3: Providing Decision Data
Guided selling may also be utilized to supply decision-making information. This method is typically employed in B2B purchases or if your website sells complicated or technical products.
Read more: Best B2B Website Examples & How to Design a Great B2B Website.
Providing detailed information about their products, like the dimensions and specifications of brands, can assist customers in finding the best product for them and helping them feel confident to make the right choices.
Great Guided Selling Software
Are you searching for guided selling software tools that can help you make life easier? We’ve got your back with five excellent alternatives.
HubSpot
HubSpot Need help to make your analytics and marketing data useful to you? Begin by using HubSpot’s marketing analytics and dashboard program. With the capability to monitor the performance of all your sales and marketing campaigns simultaneously, HubSpot equips your team with a solid foundation of data that guides sales efforts.
Zebrafi
Zebrafi is an online guided selling system that will help your company identify sales opportunities, present transparent information to customers, and boost sales. The main benefit here is Transparency across your sales funnel to find out what’s working, what’s not, and what requires to be changed.
Revenue.io
Revenue.io is an all-in-one platform that uses AI to provide guidance, insights, and tools to assist teams in identifying the best sales strategies and directing customers in the proper direction. With the capability to automate the adoption of sales playbooks and use, this tool offers crucial insights to both sales teams and prospective customers.
Clickpoint
Clickpoint is a lead management and communications solution that helps businesses streamline their sales processes and boost revenue. From lead prioritization to customized sales emails to customized sales information, Clickpoint lets companies take control of their guided sales activities.
PandaDoc CPQ
PandaDoc is a configuration price, quote, and configuration tool that allows you to tailor your quotes for customers and, consequently, provides an opportunity to blend guided selling and even more precise quoting requirements. It is particularly useful for businesses with high-tech or complicated product lines requiring detailed quoting to increase sales.
Guided Selling Best Practices
- Be sure to keep it driven by data.
- Create it as fast as you can.
- Make use of images.
- Provide the context.
- Guide, don’t direct.
Although every guided selling campaign may look different, there are a few commonly used best practices that help in the effectiveness of this method:
Be sure to keep it data-driven
Guided selling is dependent on reliable data. It requires instruments capable of collecting and analyzing the data for concrete results. Combined with human-based experience, data-based techniques for guided selling stand the best chance of turning visits into sales.
Create it as fast as you can.
Speed is important if you’re developing an online survey or data collection form to improve the selling process. Before launching, ensure your tool for guided selling is simple to use, quick to respond to, and provides exact recommendations based on customer responses.
Read more: What Is a Trouble Ticket?.
If potential buyers wait for answers when they’ve submitted their responses and aren’t unsatisfied, they’ll move the business to another place.
Make use of images.
Make use of images to enhance your selling strategies. It includes displaying images of your products and close-up pictures of important characteristics. It’s also beneficial to utilize clearly-defined icons demonstrating the progress of the guideline selling framework to give customers a sense of the distance they will be completed.
Provide the context.
Don’t simply ask questions -give the context. For instance, if you ask your customers to choose between three similar products they’d like to purchase, offer details about the features or functions that distinguish the three types of products, making it easier for them to decide.
Guide, don’t direct.
Make sure that your sales guidance doesn’t deviate from direct selling. The purpose here is to encourage rather than dictate. If the end product is just one item or you hinder customers from exploring and locating other options on your website, the potential for sales will swiftly fade away.
Getting the Most From Guided Selling
Remember that data is your main driving factor to get the most value from guided selling. With the help of customer-generated and collected data is possible to curate products and present an array of products that match user preferences, increasing personalization and setting the stage for better opportunities for profits.
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