Changing client needs, changing products
18 June 2010
It’s a simple heading: changing client needs, changing products. But this title hides a world of challenges. Suppliers of client-specific products know from experience: clients sometimes change their minds. When a product is configured specifically for a certain client, changes in the customer’s needs can have far-reaching consequences.
Changing client needs
Changing client needs can mean that the product’s composition changes, with technical and commercial consequences. Good product configuration software makes sure that this process can be run through very quickly, so that the client can speedily receive a new quotation based on a changed starting point. When dynamics can be controlled for the client in this manner, a lot has been gained.
Product supply in development
Reality is however even more complicated: not only clients change their minds, but you do too! Your product supply is constantly developing. Technological innovation brings new versions of your products with improved parts, new options and diverging prices. Because of takeovers of other companies, products are added to your supply program. That’s good news: you increase your head start on the competition. But the changes in your product program cause extra complexity. This is especially the case when your sales processes take a long time. Then we find that not only offers to the client change because the client changes their mind, but also because product supply has changed while time has gone by.
Controlling dynamics
During sales processes for client-specific products, not only the goalposts move, you also move. The larger dynamics on both sides of the sales process need to be controlled, so that when the transaction takes place an exact product configuration is sold that exactly fits the needs of the client.
Adjusting offers quickly
Guided Selling is necessary in these kinds of situations. In a good Guided Selling system, quotations can be very quickly adjusted to changes in client needs, but also to changes in your product portfolio. The Guided Selling system bridges two rapidly moving worlds: that of your client and your own.
Otto van der Tang is Managing Director at Sofon - supplier of sales support software. As Otto has a lot of contact with clients, he has a clear insight into how companies that deliver customer-specific products and services can realize improvements within their sales and quotation process.
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