In a crowded market where customer expectations are rapidly increasing, businesses need to provide a personalised and engaging experience to boost conversion rates and forge meaningful relationships. Guided selling is a powerful tool that can help businesses achieve this goal.

Guided selling is a process that involves asking customers a series of questions to determine their needs, preferences, and budget. By doing so, businesses can provide personalised recommendations that match the customer's specific requirements, in turn, increasing the likelihood of conversion.

The Customer Experience Benefits of Guided Selling

There are several ways guided selling helps provide a superior customer experience. By asking questions, businesses can learn about the customer's preferences and tailor their recommendations accordingly. This level of personalisation can increase a customer’s likelihood of making an initial purchase.

Providing personalised recommendations also demonstrates that a business understands the customer's needs and are committed to helping them find the right product or service. This can lead to increased customer loyalty and repeat business.

Another benefit is that the process can help businesses overcome common objections that customers may have. By asking questions about the customer's needs and budget, businesses can address potential objections upfront and provide solutions that meet the customer's requirements, reducing the likelihood of customers abandoning their purchase or seeking out competitors.

Examples of Guided Selling

As the marketplace becomes increasingly competitive, businesses that adopt guided selling are likely to have a significant advantage over their competitors.

A great example of successful guided selling is on IKEA’s website, where products such as mattresses come with a comfort guide to ensure the customer’s needs are being met and overcome objections. The Comfort Guide asks customers a series of questions such as how many people would be sleeping on the mattress, preferred bed type, bed size, preferred temperature etc. to match customers with the ideal product.

Once all answers have been submitted, the guide lists a series of recommendations for customers to shop from, safe in the knowledge that their preferences have already been considered.

Another good example of this is The Fit Finder on fashion brand Weird Fish’s website. The Fit Finder is displayed on the Product Details page and is an alternative to a generic size guide chart. It is more interactive, asking a series of sizing questions and at the end it displays recommended size. This tool delivered an 8% increase in conversion rate for the brand and a 2% increase in revenue per visitor.

How Guided Selling Helps Businesses

Guided Selling Tools are expected to continue playing a crucial role in enhancing the sales process. At Merkle, we help our clients elevate their customer experience, including the development and delivery of site enhancements such as guided selling tools.

Guided selling tools benefit businesses by delivering:

• Data-Driven Insights: Guided selling tools generate a wealth of data that can be analysed to gain valuable insights into customer behaviour, preferences, and market trends. By leveraging this data, companies can refine their sales strategies, identify new cross-selling or upselling opportunities, push well performing products on the company website and continuously improve their products or services based on customer feedback.
• Enhanced Productivity and Efficiency: With guided selling tools, companies can optimise the productivity and efficiency of their sales teams. These tools provide sales representatives with valuable information, such as customer preferences, historical data, and competitive insights, enabling them to prioritise their efforts and focus on high-value opportunities.
• Scalability and Consistency: Guided selling tools provide a scalable solution that can be used across multiple channels and markets. They ensure consistency in sales messaging and customer interactions, regardless of the location or experience level of the sales representative. This helps in maintaining a unified brand image and delivering a consistent customer experience, even as the company grows and expands.

For more information on how guided selling can help your business or how Merkle can help you harness data, technology and analytics to make your advertising more addressable, customer experiences more personal and build meaningful relationships, get in touch with us here.