Imagine that you are planning to build a new house but are unsure where to start.
You have a basic idea of what you want but are not an expert in home construction or design.
In such a situation, you would need a skilled architect who understands your needs, preferences, and budget and then guides you through designing your dream home. The architect would help you make informed decisions about your new home’s design, materials, and features.
Similarly, a guided selling tool uses customer data and sales expertise to help customers navigate the purchasing process and make informed decisions. It can provide personalized recommendations based on the customer’s needs and preferences, answer questions, and offer advice to help them choose the right product or service.
What is Guided Selling?
Guided selling is a strategy involving a structured approach to lead potential customers through the sales process. It is the process of analyzing current sales, historical sales, and customer data to help sales reps provide tailored product recommendations to customers and increase the likelihood of conversion.
Let’s say you are shopping for a new laptop. You visit a website that offers guided selling, and you’re prompted to answer a series of questions. The questions might include things like:
- What will you primarily use the laptop for?
- Do you need a large screen or a lightweight design?
- How important is battery life to you?
- What is your budget?
Based on your responses, the website would then recommend a few different laptops that meet your needs. It might provide detailed information about each laptop, such as the processor, RAM, and storage capacity, as well as customer reviews and ratings.
The website might offer additional guidance, such as recommending accessories or providing information on warranties and support. Throughout the process, the focus is on helping you make an informed decision based on your unique needs and preferences.
Guided selling can be particularly effective for complex or high-value products or services where customers may require more personalized guidance and support to make informed purchasing decisions. By providing a more consultative sales approach, guided selling also helps to establish long-term customer relationships.
How Does Guided Selling Work in B2B SaaS
In B2B SaaS, guided selling typically involves a sales representative or a customer success manager who guides the customer. The process usually begins with the customer expressing their needs and goals and the guide using that information to suggest relevant products or services. The guide may use various tools, such as a software demo, to help the customer understand the features and benefits of each option.
In addition, guided selling often involves providing educational resources to the customer to help them better understand the product or service and how it can help them achieve their goals. This may include case studies, white papers, or other content that provides valuable insights into the benefits and use cases of the product.
Let’s have a look at the guided selling process in detail:
The Process of Guided Selling Tools
The guided selling process is a customer-centric approach to sales that involves guiding potential customers through the buying process by providing personalized recommendations, advice, and support. The following are the general steps involved in a typical guided selling process:
1. Gathering customer information
The first step of the process involves collecting data on the customer’s needs, preferences, budget, and any other relevant information that can help the sales process.
2. Identifying customer pain points
In this stage, the sales team uses the information gathered in the previous stage to identify the customer’s pain points or areas of concern.This is typically done through a series of questions or a needs assessment.
3. Providing product recommendations
Based on the customer information and pain points identified, the sales team provides recommendations on the products or services that best meet the customer’s needs.
4. Presenting solutions
At this stage, the sales team presents the recommended products or services to the customer and explains how they address the customer’s pain points. The sales representative provides information about the recommended products or services, including their features, benefits, and pricing.
5. Handling objections
If the customer has any objections or concerns, the sales team addresses them and provides additional information or alternative solutions as needed.
6. Closing the sale
Once the customer is satisfied with the recommended product or service, the sales team closes the sale by facilitating the purchase process.
7. Follow-up and customer support
After the sale is complete, the sales team provides follow-up support to ensure the customer is satisfied with their purchase and offers any additional assistance or support as needed.
Examples of Guided Selling Tools in Businesses
Here are some examples of techniques of guided selling tools:
1. Automate sales playbook
To ensure consistent performance, sales playbooks should be automated. Guided selling relies on a solid foundation of methodologies, blueprints, and plays that facilitate the sales process. It’s important to choose a solution that simplifies the playbook for sellers, allowing them to follow the plan and consistently advance deals easily.
2. Identify specific needs
In some situations, customers may need a clearer idea of what they are looking for when they visit your website. In such cases, a brief questionnaire can be used to determine and guide their specific requirements.
For instance, if you run an online clothing store, you could ask customers questions about their preferred fit and fabric to steer them toward products that best match their preferences. This approach can increase the likelihood of a purchase by helping customers make informed decisions based on their needs.
3. Real-time response
For a guided selling software to be effective, it needs to be adaptable and flexible, able to react to changing circumstances in real time. At a fundamental level, ensuring that sales representatives remain attentive to communication and other sales activities can reduce the time it takes to close deals and result in higher revenue velocity.
In other cases, access to real-time information can make all the difference in determining whether a sale is won or lost. Responding to leads within minutes rather than hours can greatly increase the likelihood of a sale.
4. Pipeline visibility
Guided selling software should offer comprehensive insights into the sales pipeline, enabling representatives and managers to evaluate pipeline status, recognize opportunities, and quickly address deals at risk. A visual heatmap can be used to track customer engagement and assess their level of interest over time.
Sales managers and coaches can access a complete overview of team activity and easily assess individual performance by comparing how representatives allocate their time.
5. Integration with sales stack
The Miller Heiman Group reports that the typical sales tech stack incorporates 10 different tools. As a result, it is essential to select a guided selling tool that integrates with all the tools you use on a regular basis.
Integrations play a crucial role in guided selling since the effectiveness of the software relies on having a complete understanding of all factors that could potentially influence a deal. Suppose the guided selling tool is only connected to your CRM and sales communications, not content usage or engagement analytics. In that case, the sellers will need to find out which sales material is the most effective at each stage.
The more data you can provide to the platform, the better the guided selling tool will perform.
To learn how you can drive revenue with an AI guided sales tool, read our exclusive blog.
With so many techniques, it is no wonder that more and more revenue teams are opting for guided selling tools. Here is a list of top guided selling tools for 2024.
Top 15 Guided Selling Tools for 2024
The best guided selling software offer a personalized sales experience, interactive content, omnichannel integration, and analytics and reporting tools. Here is a list of the top 20 guided selling tools for this year:
1. Nektar
Nektar helps you close deals faster with better CRM data. You can supercharge your CRM by automatically capturing valuable contact and activity data scattered across tools. Leverage unified revenue data to consistently create more prospects in the pipeline and close more deals.
Nektar helps create a sales strategy that can grow and be duplicated easily while having a clear view of the sales pipeline. By unifying contacts, mapping buying groups, and using actionable indicators of deal health and pipeline performance, sales leaders can obtain valuable insights that will help them achieve consistent success in their sales efforts.
2. Hubspot
HubSpot’s marketing analytics and dashboard software enables you to track all your marketing and sales campaigns at once. HubSpot provides your team with a reliable data basis that guides sales efforts.
3. Salesforce
Salesforce CPQ accelerates the quoting process, price management, and deal closing by providing companies with the necessary tools to take charge of their sales process, from generating quotes to receiving payments. This CPQ solution is available in three editions, with the complete Quote-to-Cash edition supporting billing and collection processes.
4. Revenue.io
Revenue.io provides a comprehensive platform that employs AI to provide teams with guidance, tools, and insights that help them identify the most effective sales methods and steer customers in the right direction. This software tool enables the automation of sales playbook adoption and application automation and delivers essential information to sales teams and potential customers.
5. Clickpoint
Clickpoint is a solution for managing sales leads and communication that assists businesses in streamlining their guided sales process and achieving greater revenue. With features such as lead prioritization, customized sales emails, and personalized sales data, Clickpoint empowers companies to take control of their guided sales initiatives.
6. Aviso
Aviso brings together various workflows of contemporary revenue teams, such as deal collaboration, pipeline inspection, conversational and activity intelligence, and predictive forecasting, in a single workspace. It offers a fully integrated AI Revenue Intelligence Platform to help your team win more deals faster, enhance win rates, and please buyers and customers.
7. LevelEleven
LevelEleven offers personalized scorecards, real-time TV broadcasts, and data-driven coaching to drive the behaviors that result in sales and customer retention.
With performance scorecards, you can get your team to concentrate on the behaviors that lead to revenue, positive customer experience, and business results. Real-time KPI tracking as they update Salesforce helps you identify immediately if they are falling behind pace. This will allow you to course-correct sooner so your team can get back on track and achieve their objectives.
8. Zebrafi
Zebrafi is a system for guided selling that operates through the cloud, and it can assist your business in recognizing potential sales prospects, furnishing customers with precise data, and boosting overall sales. The major advantage of this system is the ability to gain insight into your sales pipeline, enabling you to discern what is effective, what isn’t, and what modifications are necessary.
9. DealHub
The Revenue Amplification Platform from DealHub is an award-winning solution that provides your organization’s most comprehensive and interconnected revenue workflow. With zero-code solutions, forward-thinking leaders can unify their teams and processes, expedite deal closures, and generate more predictable pipelines with greater efficiency than ever before. The platform streamlines B2B buyer interactions and integrates every aspect of the sales cycle through an easy-to-use guided selling playbook.
10. Veelo
Veelo is a cloud-based solution that enables sales teams by integrating training, ongoing support, optimization, and onboarding into a single platform. Veelo’s onboarding capability enables the creation of interactive learning paths based on roles for new employees. With the Guided Selling feature, Veelo can automatically suggest content to sales reps.
11. Quark
Quark Docurated streamlines the process of locating, suggesting, and sharing company content by providing a content intelligence tool that can monitor the content’s performance. This tool works with various essential assets like images, videos, PDFs, and Microsoft Office files. By leveraging this content intelligence feature, you can eliminate guesswork from your content strategy, and instead, gain insights into what resonates with your target audience and identify potential areas for improvement.
12. Dooly
Dooly’s integrated workspace simplifies the process of disseminating crucial deal-related data to relevant personnel and software, enabling you to achieve your revenue targets with ease. With Dooly, you can save an infinite number of sales hours and preserve your sanity. The best part is that it is ready to use in a minute, and there is no need for setup or credit card information.
13. Parabola
Eliminating time-consuming manual procedures is the way to succeed. Parabola offers the solution by enabling you to automate, document, and collaborate, leading you towards operational excellence. Parabola is ideal for businesses with intricate and constantly evolving workflows, individuals who are knowledgeable in their processes but not in coding, and teams who want to overcome engineering barriers and achieve scalability with ease.
14. Tact.ai
The goal of Tact.ai is to enhance the user-friendliness of enterprise software. Tact.ai prioritizes salespeople by offering CRM solutions that are effortless, connected, and provide guidance. Its patented Edge AI platform drives the transformation of sales behavior, allowing Fortune 500 sales teams to digitally revolutionize their daily interactions with customers. With Tact.ai, businesses can achieve exceptional productivity and collaboration levels.
15. Vymo
Vymo is a guided selling platform that is specifically designed for financial service institutions to increase sales productivity and effectiveness. It provides intelligent nudges and relevant industry playbooks to frontline personnel, sales managers, and business heads to help them make informed decisions and close deals efficiently.
The platform also offers deep insights into sales performance and customer behavior, enabling businesses to identify areas for improvement and optimize their sales processes.
Guided selling tools are becoming increasingly important for businesses as they seek to improve the customer experience and drive sales. Guided selling tools in 2024 include AI-powered chatbots, virtual shopping assistants, interactive product selectors, and personalized product recommendations. It is important for businesses to carefully evaluate their options and choose the tools that best fit their specific needs and goals.
Nektar provides an AI-based guided selling tool to integrate into your current sales processes. You can connect our software to your existing CRM, to guide your sellers on how to interpret the data it contains.
To know more about our guided selling tool, contact us.
