Selling customizable products and services can be a difficult activity.  Customers want what they want, when they want it and at the price they want to pay.  While it is not possible 100% of the time to meet all of these requests, there are ways that salespeople can make use of the lead-to-order (LTO) process in order to meet as many of those needs  as possible.  This is the first in a series of steps vendors can take in order to optimize this process.

The problem is that for many companies that offer products configured to-order, the LTO process is ill defined with disjointed steps and lacks automation and integrated flows of information.  This increases costs, error rates, and the overall time it takes to get the product to the purchaser.  This series will outline step-by-step what vendors should do to improve the LTO process as part of a larger mass customization strategy.

The very first item to consider as part of your LTO process is lead management.  This involves taking steps to get leads into the sales pipeline and keep them there until they are ready to make a purchase.  I will not get into a detailed description of lead generation here as that is not the point of this series, but suffice it to say you should have a program in place to generate leads on a consistent basis.

Once a lead is identified, lead management should first consist of assigning the lead to the most appropriate sales representative, which in some cases may actually be an external channel partner.  A number of factors can go into this decision, including the industry of the prospect as well as the industry expertise of the sales team, geographic considerations, existing relationships, and personality compatibility.

Once assigned, the prospect and its needs should be qualified by the salesperson.  You would also be well advised at this point to ensure the prospect information is input into a CRM system for ongoing tracking of the sales cycle progress.

The next step in the LTO process should be a detailed customer needs assessment, which will be discussed in the next post in this series.