An old riddle once said “I’m not in sales, but I’m your best agent. Who am I? The answer to that is happy customers and users of your product.
Making sales is never easy; it can be as confusing as the riddle mentioned above. For instance, you can have meaningful interactions with a prospect and be close to a deal, but the deal falls through for any number of reasons. Or you could think a deal is dead and your prospect changes his or her mind and closes a deal with you.
This riddle has gone on for every sales team in any business, manufacturing is no exception.
All your sales team wants is to enable your prospective customers before, during and after the sales process. Is it possible to meet your customers anywhere and anytime? It’s possible to do all of this and more by enabling omnichannel sales for your team.
Search:
The first step in an omnichannel sales cycle has shifted from cold calling to your prospects searching for products online. Much like when you meet a client for the first time it’s important to give a first good impression when prospects search for your product. With a visual product configurator, you can make a strong impression on anyone. Buyers aren’t interested in reading about your product anymore they want to see it. 80% of people remember what they see, compared to 10% what they hear and 20% of what they read. Quit waiting around for customers to call you and engage them with 3D and AR visualizations of your product.
Buy:
Now that you’ve captured the imagination of your new client with stunning visualization (we don’t need to let our marketing budget speak for us, our products do) it’s time to get your quoting process in line with your visuals. Sloppy quoting isn’t going to solve the riddle and make your customers happy. It’s going to make them look for better options. Losing money isn’t an option, especially with a gloomy economic picture in the forecast. Delivering the best quote, the first time will save your sales team time and stress.
Using CPQ fundamentally changes how your sales team interacts with customers. With 100% accurate quotes sales team doesn’t have to worry about going back and forth with your engineering team to ensure a product is correct.
Quoting isn’t the only issue CPQ solves. Integrations to CPQ (Microsoft Dynamics, Salesforce, SAP) save your sales team even more time. Quickly and effectively create a seamless buying journey by connecting your existing CRM systems to CPQ.
Delivery:
CPQ and visualization have done their part and now your engineering team will have to deliver the products you’ve promised. Using Design Automation (DA) can help streamline production and reduce engineering costs by providing the correct drawings and info to engineers. Now that you’ve saved time and money it’s possible to improve your R&D and provide new products for a happier customer.
Service:
We’ve covered all our basis so far, marketing, sales and engineering. But what happens after the sale that can provide value? Understanding how to leverage CPQ data can provide new intel on buying patterns, delivery trends and portfolio performance. CPQ analytics can enable your organization to become more omnichannel by connecting every process.
From the first touchpoint to the servicing of the product it’s critical to create a seamless connectivity that enables omnichannel sales. With Tacton Smart Commerce it’s possible to go where no other CPQ vendor has gone before. A true omnichannel experience that keeps you connected to prospects and current customers at every touchpoint.
Don’t let other vendors tell you they know the manufacturing industry like we do, we’ve got over 20 years’ experience with the biggest names such as Siemens, Caterpillar and Scania.
We’ve solved the manufacturing sales riddle in the past. Why would your company be any different? Get in touch with us and schedule your demo today.