When customers find exactly what they need quickly while experiencing personalized service, everyone wins.

Guided selling and personalization are natural partners. Both speak to the customer’s need to find certain products or services, and to the customer’s need to feel like a three-dimensional, unique person rather than just another quota.

Comprehensive product knowledge combined with the ability to ask the right questions and learn a customer’s needs is the foundation of guided selling, whether in person or online. It encourages the sales rep to be attuned to customer responses and understand their perspective. If your sales professionals’ selling solution guides them to exactly the right content in the moment, the in-person customer interaction becomes personalized without wasting any time.

The ultimate goal of guided selling in the B2B context is making the purchase process easier for the customer. Everyone benefits: the customer, who has exactly what she needs, and the provider, who has an easier time reaching sales goals. Here’s why guided selling is needed, and how to put it to work for you.

What Do You Already Know About Your Prospective Customer?

If someone is new to your website or you’re encountering a new customer in person, you’re operating on limited knowledge, but there are already several things you do know. You know what you provide and can safely assume the potential customer is in the market for that, whether it’s office furniture, software, or cleaning products. With powerful, guided selling tools, you’re ready to personalize the interaction on the spot, almost like a “choose your own adventure” approach. Establishing a relationship is easier and more efficient.

Removing Rather Than Adding Friction

Ultimately, guided selling should remove “friction” from the buying process. Online or off, buyers want the most straightforward path to satisfying their B2B needs. That means that your techniques have to walk a fine line between being available when needed and hovering too much. Attuning yourself to each customer’s attitude and tone, as well as their spoken words, and having outstanding guided selling tools go a long way toward eliminating friction in the buying process.

Guided Selling Is Not Micromanaging

While guided selling is about helping your B2B customer obtain the perfect product or service for her needs, that doesn’t mean you should take a “micromanagement” approach, which is annoying and makes the customer feel as if you question her judgment. You want to provide the helpful map and landmarks, not take control of the steering wheel and pedals. That means listening and responding appropriately to each customer at whatever stage of the buying process she is in, and acting as a consultant or trusted advisor. Guided selling tools are designed to facilitate that.

Important Best Practices for Guided Selling

Guided selling simply won’t work without your sales team having consistent and comprehensive product data. Similarly, knowing who your customers are and being able to envision them using your products or services is fundamental to building a smart, guided selling approach. With your team, develop questions designed to help potential customers find the best product or service for their needs, and to do so with more warmth and personalization than a search engine. Know which customer answers lead to which sales rep questions so your reps can focus in with more specificity at each step.

Guided Selling Builds Strong Customer Relationships

The personalization of guided selling is why it’s so powerful in helping you build customer relationships. With commitment to continually learning more about each customer, and prompt, appropriate response to their inquiries, you can remove friction from the buying process while building customer loyalty at the same time. Strong, long-term customer relationships are the lifeblood of the successful B2B business—and there’s a direct tie to revenue growth. Guided selling is an exceptionally powerful method of building these relationships. Having the right guided selling tools will lead you and customers to the right solution quickly, while ensuring they are fully informed along the way.

Click below for a quick look at how interactive content can personalize your sales meetings for every unique prospect.