Needs Analysis

Selling can be thought of as helping the customer to buy. In other words, selling is not about offering products, but about determining the needs of potential buyers, translating these needs into an appropriate solution and then offering this solution. Uncertainties are inhibiting factors in the buying process. They arise, when it is not clear to buyers whether an offered product will in fact meet their needs, whether the stated price is in fact the total price and whether the supplier is in fact in a position to deliver what has been promised according to the specification. If you are able to remove uncertainties more effectively or more quickly than your competitors, it largely strengthens your competitive position. Even if the price of what you are offering is higher than that of your competing suppliers, there is a high possibility that your offer will be chosen if the potential buyer feels most confident about it.

Sofon Guided Selling makes a distinction between the functionality and technology of the product range. In contrast to conventional configuration software, Sofon therefore makes it possible to think from the buyer’s perspective. The questions for drawing up the quotation, for example, are asked from the point of view of the buyer (desired functionality) rather than that of the sales representative (available technology). We call this “thinking from the outside in.”Only once it is clear what the buyer wants is this then translated into the correct product and into the correct product specifications.

In Sofon, this information is recorded in product models. By separating functionality and technology, the building of these models is simplified considerably. The questionnaire for buyers is drawn up independently of technical product structures. As the relationship between functionality and technology can be recorded much more flexibly, the traditional tension between commerce and technology is greatly reduced. The sales team gets its customer-oriented questionnaire, while the technology team gets its technical specification.

With this approach, Sofon Guided Selling offers supports the needs analysis from the customer’s perspective prior to product configuration or calculation.