Tag: order
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Help the sales team help the customer
This morning I was talking to the VP of business process improvement for a company that sells industrial machinery. Their products are highly configurable. She told me that every year they have 50% new configurations they have never seen before. The number of choices on their products has grown over time. ”A salesperson can’t know everything about the product,” she said. “Customers want a few choices, and before you know it, the quote has crept into a configuration that’s bad for the customer and bad for us. “
As the VP explained, the biggest opportunity for complexity management is at the point of taking an order. A customer wants to be guided to complete their order. This concept is called Demand Shaping. There are myriad ways a configurable product can be ordered. However, each customer cares only about a few features that are of high importance to him or her.
