Project case:
Digital sales support through an intelligent offer and consulting tool
Objective
The increasing complexity of the product range and the number of (digital) products in need of explanation pose an increasing challenge to the after-sales/service sales department of a European technology company. An intelligent product configurator for maintenance contracts has to be developed, which supports the sales department during sales conversations in the short term and acts as an independent additional online sales channel in the long term. The tasks of EbelHofer Consultants included the development of an efficient query strategy to identify customer needs, the derivation of an efficient recommendation strategy for the optimal components of the service contract as well as the structured integration of pricing and discounting into the configurator (better controllability of sales).
Approach by EbelHofer Consultants
The basis of the approach is the most precise possible digital replication of the sales and consulting process of the best sales employees (goal: know-how transfer / learning from the best). For this purpose, categories of customer needs/benefits-customer needs/benefit dimensions are identified and backed up with guiding questions. In the next step, the existing product portfolio is evaluated based on the benefit dimensions and the pricing/discount logic is adapted. The key element of the project is to program a sales support tool with a long-term perspective of being used by the end customer as an additional sales channel. EbelHofer Consultants accompanies the customer up to the implementation (test in pilot regions) and incorporates the wishes and requirements of the sales department ranging from the management to the external sales force when programming the tool.
Result
After working with EbelHofer Consultants, the customer received a web-based sales tool for consulting and offer generation. The tool can be called up by the sales force on the tablet during the sales meeting and guides the employee through the sales meeting with a series of intelligent queries. At the end, product, price and discount suggestions are provided, from which an offer can be created directly. For the medium-term, the customer was also provided with detailed specifications for the company's own ERP system.
