Guided Selling Predictions for 2010: Crossing the Chasm from Transactions to Trust

2009 as a crucible that both companies and people passed through, making them stronger, smarter, more aware of how critically important trust is in these times is a good way to look back on last year.  Trust is the enabler of selling, not just price or any other aspect of a channel or marketing strategy.

Trust is the bridge across the most treacherous chasms any company – or person – has to face which are uncertainty and exceptional levels of risk. In 2010, guided selling strategies will be more about building trust and being open than ever before – and will contribute to sales chasms be crossed through trust, not just price.  Predictions for how guided selling in 2010 is going to make the buying experiences online more efficient, transparent and trustworthy are presented here.

• Rapid advances on context-aware and location-aware 3G and WiFi networks are going to revolutionize guided selling. Google Latitude, the APIs Twitter added in 2009 to be able to track to GPS coordinates the location of subscribers and the advances Nokia is making on location-based advertising and messaging will all significantly change guided selling starting in 2010.  This will continue rapidly as guided selling apps over mobile handheld devices will give marketers the chance to define potential upsell and cross-sell products for customers literally as they are walking by their stores.  In B2B applications this will streamline order status and quotation management from guided selling systems as well.

• Guided selling systems will align more accurately to how customers want to buy more than ever before, relying on a combination of Web analytics and personalization. Now over a decade only, personalization technologies are already getting a makeover based on Web analytics.  The use of Assemble-To-Order manufacturing strategies to back up guided selling will accelerate as manufacturers especially seek to gain greater levels of production efficiency.

• XML and XLST make guided selling apps pervasive across microsites, enterprise websites and through social networks. XML is the de facto integration standard that guided selling, product configuration and enterprise catalog management systems are using today to integrate together at the role-based and process levels.  In conjunction with the advances in XSLT technologies, guided selling will become more of an indispensible strategy for launching products.  Catalog management integration to the XSLT command level will also make personalized catalog online shopping experiences a reality.

• Guided selling is already transitioning from standalone app to Web Service and this will be accelerated in 2010. No long will guided selling be just a stand-alone Web application that is licensed; Web Services are already being used to streamline guided selling, turning the Web into the operating system.  Web Services based on Microsoft .NET for example will be much more mainstream in 12 months and as a result guided selling will be a heavily used app on smartphones and PDAs.

• Catalogs that support multiple product taxonomies and role-based use emerge as dominant. In industries including electrical products distribution where product taxonomies are exceptionally complex there is going to be a long-overdue upgrade to catalog management apps.  In those industries including healthcare and insurance were role-based use of guided selling is predominant, expect to see catalogs that can also support Business Process Management (BPM) workflows and the automation of tasks.

• MRO Finally Gets Its Due.  Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul (MRO) is the lifeblood of many asset-intensive industries including aerospace and defense (A&D), which generates the majority of its revenue from replacement products and services. MRO, long a revenue source for A&D manufacturers, will be pervasively adopted as a lifetime product selling strategy.

Bottom line: Guided selling is due for a breakout year due to these trends, some nascent and others quite visible, impact selling strategies across industries using them.

Courtesy – Louis Columbus

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