Bill Paseman
Co-founder, Calico Commerce
1 Executive Summary 1
2 Retail Leaders Face Constant Challenges
2.1 The Retail Sector is Hyper-Competitive
2.2 Increasing Product Complexity Makes Closing the Sale Difficult
2.3 Customer Loyalty is Increasingly Elusive
2.4 The Internet: Golden Opportunity for Retail Leaders
3 The Solution: Customer-Facing, Guided Selling Solutions
4 The Customer-Facing, Guided Selling Approach
4.1 A Framework for More Effective and Efficient Selling
4.2 Turn Complexity into a Competitive Advantage
4.3 Build Valuable, Long-term Customer Loyalty
4.4 Leverage Multiple Sales Channels
5 Integration with Enterprise Applications and Data Melds E-Selling Into Existing Business Processes 8
6 Conclusion
Appendix: Case Studies
Cabletron Commerce
A Leading Computer Hardware Manufacturer
A Leading Consumer Electronics Retailer
Retailing is a dynamic business that has undergone dramatic
changes over the past 25 years. Once a stable, highly predictable sector,
retail has been rocked by the emergence of new, hyper-competitive formats
and market entrants that are rewriting the rules of the game. Companies such
as Best Buy, Gateway and the Gap were virtually unknown or, in many cases,
didn’t exist 25 to 30 years ago. Yet today, they epitomize the “category killers”,
superstores and national specialty chains that have eclipsed many of the traditional
independent or regional retailers.
Now, as the world moves into a new century, the rules are
about to change again. The Internet is emerging as a viable sales channel
for most retailers. Leading research firms have estimated that in 1998 total
retail sales over the Internet exceeded $7 billion, a figure that is expected
to increase many-fold over the next few years. Major “physical world” retailers
have taken notice of this “virtual world” success and begun implementing Internet
strategies in earnest, with generally favorable results. More are expected
to follow as online sales continue to grow.
Another key force impacting the retail market is the increasing
complexity of many products. In categories such as consumer electronics—ranging
from home theater systems to PCs—buyers have an overwhelming number of choices.
This not only creates confusion and delays the buying decision for consumers,
but it also causes difficulties for retailers, whose sales associates are
overwhelmed by the volume of product information and rapid changes that are
taking place.
While the Internet does not necessarily spell the end of
physical-world stores, its rapid rise forces you to take a hard look at how
your business might be impacted. Can you ignore the success of retail innovators
such as Gateway and Dell, which daily
sell in excess of $10 million of complex computer systems over the Internet?
How can your company once again change the rules of the game and create a
winning “physical/virtual” selling strategy?
The solution is a customer-facing, guided selling system.
Guided selling solutions for retailers combine the best of both the physical
and virtual worlds, transforming the in-store buying experience while bringing
expert guidance to the Internet. These solutions provide a way to sell complex
products and services intuitively and effectively—helping you to accurately
assess needs, provide relevant, up-to-date information, explore options, and
put together the right solution to meet individual requirements. They offer
each user a unique buying experience, driven by his or her individual needs
and preferences—while gathering valuable marketing data for you.
To truly succeed in an environment where customers can
access your company through multiple channels, these solutions should be deployed
seamlessly across all of them. For example, driving in-store kiosks to empower
both sales associates and customers. Over the telephone, these guided selling
solutions make your telephone sales associates much more effective, with virtually
no ramp-up time for new associates. At the same time, customers can take control
of their interactions and easily find the best products for their needs—whether
at the store or over the Internet. When in-store kiosks and the Web are brought
together, a powerful combination results. Customers can research products
and select complete solutions on the Web, then retrieve their quotes in the
store, where they can “test-drive” their selections before completing the
purchase.
In the store, over the phone and on the Web, customer-facing
guided selling enables you to better leverage your sales associates, shorten
sales cycles, cross- and up-sell effectively, eliminate order errors, and
reduce costs—while delivering greater value to your customers and earning
their long-term loyalty.
Until relatively recently, retail was a comfortable business.
Regional general retailers and smaller independents carved out niches that
each chain or store could prosper in. Customers showed a high degree of loyalty;
retail formats changed slowly; and retailers counted on steady, if unremarkable,
growth.
Today, innovative companies have reinvented retailing,
transforming the business into a hotly contested, constantly changing landscape.
The Internet promises yet another wave of reinvention, with a new group of
winners and losers. Your company must once again change the rules of the game,
or face the same fate as those who missed the revolution in which your company
emerged a leader.
The hyper-competitive retail marketplace of the 21st century
bears little resemblance to that of the 1950s and 1960s. A number of trends
have contributed to the rapidly escalating challenges that retailers will
face in the coming years. These trends include:
As a leader in the retail marketplace, you have not only
helped to create this environment, but also thrived in it. To capitalize on
the significant paradigm shift that is reshaping retailing, you must continue
to seek a competitive edge in every aspect of the sales process.
Many retail purchases—such as consumer electronics, personal
computers and office equipment—have become more complicated. New technologies,
standards and features proliferate. Consumers are overloaded with information
and become confused, causing them to postpone purchases until they feel more
comfortable with the decision.
In addition, a growing number of these products tend to
be big-ticket items, such as multimedia PCs and home theater systems. Because
the purchase represents a large expenditure for most consumers, an inordinate
amount of time may be spent researching and comparing alternatives—often at
several competing retailers.
Retailers have responded to these challenges by recruiting
and training sales associates to answer customers’ questions and convert comparison
shoppers into buyers. Unfortunately, the rapid introduction of new lines and
models has overwhelmed sales associates almost as much as buyers, making expert
assistance increasingly difficult to deliver. High turnover on the sales floor
and the difficulty in finding well-qualified sales associates have only made
the problem worse.
The result is that customers remain confused and dissatisfied,
training time is wasted and profitable sales are lost to better-prepared direct
marketers and the growing crop of “virtual” retailers doing business on the
web. Only by embracing and building on these strategies can you regain momentum
against these newer, and often nimbler, competitors.
As the market has become more challenging, customer loyalty
has become more elusive as well.
The emergence of new store formats has contributed to greatly
increased customer segmentation. Where mass marketing was once the norm, retailers
today must define and create a defensible niche. To further complicate matters,
the same customers can belong to multiple and seemingly inconsistent segments—depending
on individual needs, products, circumstances, and other factors.
Overstoring has also affected consumers, making them more
jaded and demanding. With such a wide range of often-indistinguishable offerings
to choose from, consumers no longer have a compelling reason to be loyal to
a particular brand. In addition, many families now rely on two working parents,
greatly reducing the amount of time that can be devoted to leisure activities—including
shopping. This has led to dramatic shifts in buying decisions: consumers are
increasingly rewarding those retailers that are able to meet a variety of
needs more efficiently and cost-effectively—with more business. As today’s
retail leaders all vie for the same business, however, even this is quickly
becoming merely a “ticket to play”, rather than a basis for true competitive
advantage.
To reclaim your customers’ loyalty and once again achieve
a competitive edge, you must market to each individual client. By tailoring
your customers’ buying experience to individual needs and preferences and
allowing them to drive the sales process in the manner that is most intuitive
to them, your company can claim a leadership position in this direction.
While the Internet still accounts for a very small percentage
of total retail sales, its use as an alternate sales channel is rising rapidly.
In 1998, there were strong indications that the Internet
had finally “arrived” on the retail scene. According to Jupiter Communications,
online retail sales in the U.S. were $7.1 billion and are expected to grow
to $41.1 billion by 2002. Forrester Research was even more enthusiastic, estimating
sales of approximately $7.8 billion in 1998, growing to $108 billion by 2003.
Zona Research cited growth of nearly 200% in online spending in 1998, fueled
in large part by first-time buyers and the over-50 age group. Strong gains
in e-commerce are also being reported in European and Asian countries.
These gains haven’t gone unnoticed by your competitors.
According to Ernst & Young, 39 percent of retailers are now selling products
or services on the Web, up from a mere 12 percent only a year ago. That’s
a huge shift in mindset that makes it dangerous to be left behind.
Although the Internet is no immediate threat to make brick-and-mortar
establishments obsolete, it has clearly emerged as a very viable sales channel,
just like the catalog and mail-order business. The Internet is also an ideal
way to collect marketing intelligence. Information about customer profiles,
browsing and purchase patterns, and product preferences is easily captured.
This data can be used for everything from optimizing your product mix on a
store-by-store basis to fine-tuning advertising and promotional efforts. In
addition, the Internet has important applications in building loyalty through
responsiveness and customer convenience, and in improving the quality of service
and support that you provide. E-commerce leaders such as Dell, Cisco and Gateway
are already exploring how to build customer loyalty and lock in customer relationships
using the Web. Late followers risk taking themselves literally out of the
game!
As a retailer seeking ways to win in this highly competitive
marketplace, you need to meet these challenges and create meaningful differentiation
for your customers. To do this, you must:
Customer-facing, guided selling solutions can help you
accomplish this. These powerful, highly intelligent solutions present relevant,
up-to-date and context-sensitive information about your products and services,
which can be used by in-store or telephone sales personnel—as well as by customers
taking advantage of self-service channels such as in-store kiosks and the
Internet. The solutions center the interaction on your customers’ needs and
desires, just as an experienced sales person would do.
Many retail sales associates are already being stretched
beyond their capacity to master the various complex options available. This
is especially true in categories where product lines and features are constantly
changing, making it much more difficult to assemble the right components that
will deliver maximum value to the customer. When confronted with so many choices,
most associates rely on whatever sales information they have committed to
memory, which limits the breadth of the products and services that they are
willing or able to present to customers. The ability of a customer-facing
selling solution to draw upon the combined expertise and knowledge base of
your entire company can dramatically improve the effectiveness of your sales
associates and the value that your customers receive.
Your company can also apply the critical sales data collected
to personalize the buying experience for customers. This consistent focus
on the customer encourages sales associates to fully and accurately assess
customer needs and select or design the best possible solution every time.
Also, as more of your customers demand the ability to self-service, you will
need Web-based applications that customers can easily and effectively use
themselves. Such applications must provide useful, intuitive interactions
that solve your customers’ problems, provide only that information which is
relevant to them and make it more compelling for them to do business with
your firm than with your competitors.
Customer-facing, guided selling solutions offer two key
benefits:
By providing expert, customer-centric advice at the point
of sales, these solutions allow users to manage the overwhelming complexity
of retail products and services. These solutions deliver targeted, up-to-date
information through a simple mouse-click, allowing purchase decisions to be
made much more quickly to increase sell-through. The latest and best sales
knowledge of your entire firm is put into the hands of every sales associate,
reducing training time and expense, enhancing cross-selling and up-selling
opportunities, minimizing product returns, and enabling effective customer
self-service.
Guided selling spans all phases of the sales process—fielding
initial inquiries, assessing requirements, providing tailored information,
identifying constraints and proposing alternatives, and delivering proposals
and quotes. The solutions also work across multiple channels: driving innovative
in-store kiosks that empower customers and sales associates with a flexible
guided-selling experience, supporting more efficient and effective telesales
operations, and providing the foundation for customer-oriented, transaction-based
Websites. As a result, they not only enhance your in-store sales and traditional
non-store selling such as catalog sales, but they also position your company
for the future of e-commerce—in which customers will be at the helm.
The benefits of customer-facing guided selling are clear:
your customers will know that the products and services they buy match their
exact needs. And your company will reap the rewards of reduced sales costs,
greater productivity, more successful cross selling and up selling, higher
revenues, and most important, improved customer satisfaction and loyalty.
In retail segments with complex product decisions, configuring
the right solutions for your customers has never been more challenging. Guided
selling makes every sales associate as capable as your best sales person and
every customer an “expert” on your products—guiding them through complex interactions
with ease.
Your users (whether they are sales associates, telesales
representatives or customers serving themselves) can configure a product in
whatever manner is most comfortable and intuitive to them. Significant technical
expertise is not required. For example, sales people working for PC retailers
or selling home theater systems in consumer electronics stores will be able
to simplify the often hundreds of choices customers face and eliminate confusion
caused by multiple operating systems or incompatible video and audio formats.
With a guided selling solution, you can emphasize price and product quality
when selling to one consumer, and state-of-the-art technology and features
when selling to another. The entire process is driven by the customer’s individual
needs and preferences.
Guided selling solutions make the latest product information
available to users every step of the way, without time-consuming and often
frustrating searching. At any time during a session, the user can get instant,
context-sensitive information. Ideally, the solution incorporates a virtual
“catalog” that effectively integrates information from any number of sources,
including multiple vendors. This catalog requires no re-hosting of content
and is automatically updated whenever products or services change, so it is
always current and virtually maintenance free.
Selling solutions that force users to follow a set order,
closing off options and not flagging problems until the end, technically may
allow for solving complex problems, but in reality are very user-unfriendly
and ultimately not effective selling tools. A true customer-facing, guided
selling system charts a different course. It alerts each user to problems
on the fly, helping them to arrive at the optimal solution. If a selection
is made that doesn’t work with the system being configured, the user is not
simply informed, but also told why. This way, the sales associate or customer
can elect to change any part of the system—such as selecting a computer with
more expansion slots or a larger hard drive—or
rethink the present choice, whatever he or she prefers.
The result is a properly configured and priced solution
in minutes, not hours or days. Sales cycles are compressed, the need for sales
training is reduced, and order errors are all but eliminated—improving both
the top and bottom line.
As more and more companies shift their selling efforts
to the Web, having an attractive Web site will not be enough to guarantee
a steady revenue stream through e-commerce. Something more will be necessary
to differentiate your offerings from an increasingly crowded field. Focusing
on the customer’s buying experience can provide a key source of differentiation.
The goal of a customer-centric e-commerce site is to enhance the user experience
so that the customer not only buys once but also returns ¾ again
and again. To succeed in the long-term, you must sell profitably and
build customer loyalty; on-line buyers
are only a mouse-click away from your competitors.
Customer-facing, guided selling solutions tailor the way
you interact with your customers by creating an experience based on your customer's
needs–ensuring that they choose you first and choose you often.
Furthermore, the entire buying experience is
tailored in both its content and its presentation so that your customer feels
that you are communicating with them, not only directly and effectively, but
also personally. With these solutions,
you are always in touch with your customers-even after they leave your site.
When customers perceive that their voices are being heard, and their needs
anticipated and met, they feel valuable and important to the company. And
customers who feel valued and important come back again and again.
True customer-facing guided selling goes beyond delivering
personalized content. It takes advantage
of what you already know about your customers and uses it to create a unique
interaction based on their needs and interests. From tailored promotions to
order status to product upgrade information to special pricing information,
your customers are guided to the right information at the time they need it.
The customer's buying experience is fast and efficient and satisfying.
Before the Web, buyers and prospects depended on people
to answer questions, give advice, provide information, solve problems, and
take orders. In the world of the Web, the customer is the pro-active navigator,
and it is the "site" that meets the customer face-to-face, "listens"
to the customer's issues or questions, and responds with advice, guidance,
recommendations, or pointers to other sources. Customer-facing, guided selling
uses a customer-centric approach to make the experience customers have on
your Web site more rewarding and intuitive. By anticipating what information
customers need, based on what you know about them, you can provide them exactly
what they want and more.
The more you know about your customers, the better you
can serve them. Gathering customer information in a real buying situation
can provide a deep understanding about purchase behavior. The information
derived from this natural purchase setting can yield valuable insights about
unspoken needs. Companies can use these ideas, along with other research gathered
from the site, to drive new product and service development. Ongoing feedback
can close the loop by allowing you to use customer requirements, purchase
intent, and other information to make site, service, product and process improvements.
When customers feel you are listening to their ideas, they will feel good
about doing business with you. This is one of the building blocks of customer
loyalty.
Finally, in a Web-based world, it is critical to maintain
an ongoing dialog with your customer, even after they leave your Web site.
You must proactively engage customers–making sure they are informed about
the things that are most important. By receiving special offers that pertain
to their purchases or installed base, customers give you the opportunity to
maintain or grow mind share between visits to your site. For example, if a
major customer has a volume discount or rebate that starts at a certain sales
volume, and they only have two days left to hit their target, the system should
notify the customer so they come to the site and make the required purchase.
Content need not focus on making an immediate sale. Relevant, targeted product
information, content and promotions can be sent to customers to draw them
back to your site. Customers will value service bulletins, maintenance information,
or new product announcements that specifically relate to what they already
own. This ongoing dialogue helps strengthen the bond with your customers,
driving greater value for your company.
A real challenge for all businesses—particularly those
using multiple channels across different geographies—is the speed with which
they can bring new products to market. This is especially true in the retail
industry, where windows of opportunity are narrower and today’s stylish trend
is tomorrow’s trash. By delivering consistent information simultaneously to
all channels and geographies, and reducing the need for extensive training
and education, guided selling solutions can greatly expedite your speed to
market. In addition, the best solutions are designed to be easy to maintain.
You can add enhancements and update the business logic quickly and efficiently—without
specialized programming skills.
A complete business process automation solution requires
links between customer-facing guided selling solutions, and the corresponding
front-office, back-office and self-contained legacy software systems. Data
entered by the customer should transfer seamlessly between all enterprise
applications. Customers and company staffers also should have the ability
to query the same information. Finally, a web-based guided selling solution
also should eliminate re-keying data. For example, information entered by
a customer for a quotation should automatically flow into a purchase order,
which in turn should automatically feed into the ERP order entry and billing
system.
Many enterprise applications are custom solutions with
their own data repositories. Integrating these systems is a non-trivial issue.
Traditional point-to-point integration is complex, expensive and time-consuming.
Most organizations prefer to avoid custom integration projects whenever possible.
To this end, leading customer-facing, guided selling solutions support quick
integration with existing enterprise applications by using open Application
Programming Interfaces (APIs) and leveraging industry leading middleware software.
Using this approach is faster than traditional point-to-point integration,
which often requires custom changes whenever a company changes a software
module. By using middleware, new modules snap into the architecture without
endless programming changes.
Although many companies have approached first generation
e-commerce as an experiment, creating stand-alone solutions that are not integrated,
this seemingly effective “quick-fix” approach presents serious threats going
forward. The experience of industry leaders shows that the Internet is being
accepted as a mainstream channel to conduct business. Furthermore, as the
Internet is embraced, not having visibility into the enterprise, or, worse
still, receiving inconsistent information through different channels, is completely
unacceptable. Companies who do not realize this, and integrate these systems
with the rest of their enterprise, risk being left behind as their competitors
grasp this and win over their customers.
The retailing landscape continues to shift precipitously,
with traditional leaders gearing up for battle and nimble new competitors
targeting every weakness shown by incumbents. You can no longer interact with
your customers the old way; customers will walk away if their needs are not
met fully and efficiently.
Many leading retailers are already exploring customer-facing,
guided selling solutions. Can you afford to let your competitors gain any
advantages over you?
The best customer-facing, guided selling solutions provide
robust, enterprise-ready solutions that address the most critical selling
issues confronting retailers. With in-store kiosks, empowered telephone sales
associates, and an e-commerce-enabled web site, you will deploy a seamless,
multi-channel strategy to differentiate yourself effectively from the direct
retailers and “e-tailers” that compete for your customers’ business. Your
company will once again change the rules of the game, integrating your physical
presence with the power of the Internet to provide a compelling combination
that only you can deliver.
Finally, with a customer-facing, guided selling solution,
you can:
Reduce sales complexity
Maximize customer value
Maximize profitability
For Cabletron, a recognized leader in the computer networking
industry, customer access and interaction have always been a driving force.
Cabletron develops, manufactures and sells networking products. “By the mid-1990s
we had very successfully built a customer base among high-end users, mostly
Fortune 500 companies,” explains Alec Turner, Cabletron’s European Electronic
Commerce Manager in London. “Going forward, we knew the real growth opportunities
in our business were going to come from smaller firms that understand the
value of networking their offices. Now they have the means to do so using
our medium to entry-level solutions. The Web was clearly the most effective
and efficient way for us to reach these users.”
The result is CabletronCommerce, Cabletron’s new, global
electronic business-to-business Web site that provides Cabletron’s customers
and partners with the ability to research products, configure networking systems,
generate quotes, purchase equipment, and track orders using the World Wide
Web. Cabletron recognized that selling their complex range of products over
the Web would be difficult. They needed an intelligent selling guide to assist
on-line buyers, speed their decision-making process, and prevent costly ordering
errors. A customer-facing, guided selling solution was a perfect fit, acting
like a personal purchasing coach to engage and guide individual customers
to products that exactly meet their needs.
Deploying a customer-facing, guided selling solution has
resulted in dramatic productivity improvements over Cabletron’s previous way
of doing things. With the old method, Turner points out, writing up an order
“could take anywhere from a couple of hours to five days. Now when customers
come to our Web site, they can put together an order in about 10 minutes.
We calculate we’re cutting 96% of the cost for each order. By the end of 1998
70% of all quotes and 40% of all orders will be processed over the Web. The
savings will be phenomenal.” The company estimates that it saved $12 million
in 1998 alone by virtually eliminating misconfigured products and incorrect
orders.
But the benefits for Cabletron have extended beyond productivity
increases. “I have to tell you,” says Shannon Hunter, Cabletron’s eCommerce
Relations Manager, “our sales people love the system. Now, they don’t have
to spend their time writing and tracking orders and inputting data. It frees
them to do what they’re best at and what we prefer them to do: build lasting
relationships with customers and bring in more business.”
Cabletron’s sales people aren’t the only ones commenting
on their positive experiences. “Customers who use our site have given us a
lot of positive feedback,” Hunter reports. “Customers find our eSales system
easy to use, simple to follow, and almost everybody tells us they ‘got it’
the first time.”
Cabletron has been so pleased with their guided selling
system that they are beginning to link it to their customers’ Web sites. For
example, they have provided a direct link to Avnet, one of Cabletron’s largest
distributors. Now a customer can log onto Cabletron’s site, configure an order,
then click on a link and be sent to Avnet’s site to receive a price and place
an order.
A leading PC hardware manufacturer in North America is
responding to increasing competition and shrinking margins by modernizing
its operations to increase its market share. To stay ahead of the competition
and maintain profit margins, the company relies on its sales force to proactively
sell the right products and services— everything from low-end PCs to high-performance
servers—to its customers.
Recently, the company introduced a new line of high-end
servers with RAID array drives that required sales representatives to choose
a specific set of options for each configuration to generate a valid order.
The complexity of the product line combined with the company's velocity and
increasing volume of sales transactions resulted in an error rate of 40 percent.
While these orders went through a configuration validation process, 10 percent
of the server orders hitting the manufacturing floor were still in error.
Although the company's quality control system would eventually catch
the errors, these errors were costly in terms of having to re-manufacture
the servers as well as delay shipments to customers. After reviewing a number
of possible solutions, the company selected a customer-facing, guided selling
solution to make its sales force more effective, and to manage the cost of
the sales process—giving the company a competitive advantage.
The solution provides intelligent tools to accurately configure
and quote products, allowing the company to reduce the time it takes to create
an order from several weeks to a few hours. In the past, sales representatives
would have to send customer requirements to the in-house technical staff,
which would recommend a solution based on these requirements. The sales process
typically required multiple iterations between the company and its customers.
With the new system, sales representatives can now build and present a tailored
solution for the customer without having to wait for technical staff recommendations.
Eventually, this capability will be linked to the company’s electronic order
entry and inventory system, providing full visibility from the quote to the
invoice. By automating much of this process, the company estimates it will
strengthen relationships with its customers by delivering required solutions
in a much shorter timeframe.
The guided selling solution also ensures that sales and
service representatives have the most up-to-date product and service information.
This reduces the time it takes to introduce new products by eliminating the
need for lengthy training of the sales force. With a slate of more than 10,000
products, including 500 new product introductions annually, salespeople were
having considerable difficulty staying current on new products.
By putting the expertise of the best sales representative at the fingertips
of every sales person, the system greatly improves their effectiveness.
This leading consumer electronics retailer, is one of the
clear winners in this fiercely competitive sector. Although its main competitors
are other consumer electronics retailers, it faces increasing competition
from new directions, some of them “physical world” retailers, such as office
supply superstores, and others new business models, including direct marketers
of PCs and online retailers.
To counter these threats, the company will offer the same
“build-to-order” flexibility of these newer players, while leveraging the
advantages of its well-known and trusted brand, its product offering from
multiple manufacturers, and its extensive retail presence. The company has
chosen a customer-facing, guided selling solution to “change the game” and
create this winning “physical-virtual” strategy.
The solution will initially be deployed on in-store kiosks
that let customers assess their needs, explore their options, and select systems
in a completely user-driven fashion. The user interface, a critical component
in this consumer-focused retail environment, is intuitive and appealing, and
adapts itself to each customer’s experience level, needs and preferences.
Ultimately, customers will be able to start their shopping
at the company’s online store, then finalize the purchase if they choose at
a retail location. This will allow shoppers to “design” their systems at their
convenience--at any time and any place--and purchase their system online.
Or they can visit any store and retrieve their online quote, then personally
experience the sound, picture and other attributes of the components they
have selected, before completing the purchase in the store.
Beyond the clear value to customers, this customer-facing,
guided selling solution provides the company a number of key benefits: