Guided Selling - Process and Practice

Process and Practice

Guided selling is put in practice with an information system that supports the central management and maintenance of knowledge; furthermore, the system supports the use of this knowledge by web services such as online product advisors, customers, dealers and sales representatives. Such knowledge is stored in semantic knowledge models; these models are interacted with by means of questionnaires and explanations to / feedback options to product recommendations. The knowledge stored is related to functional, commercial and technical aspects of the customer needs and the possible solutions. The proposal-specific functions of guided selling are recommender systems, product advisors, product configuration, technical calculations, commercial calculations and document generation.

Guided selling-solutions are applied in the following use cases:

• Websites of online-shops, product manufacturer websites and service providers. Guided selling-solutions are used to analyse user requirements and generate buying recommendations to make sure online-shoppers find the product best fitting to their needs
• Kiosk-applications, call-center solutions and instore-devices in specialised trade stores. Goal is to help the potential buyer and / or the sales representative or service agent to efficiently guide through the product selection and purchasing process.

Guided selling does not address the internal, private, offline, or behind-the-scenes decision issues that buyers must address before they are ready to make a solution choice.