In my last post, I discussed lead management activities as the first step in the LTO process.  Today I’m going to cover the next step, performing a customer needs assessment.

In order to create a customized product or service for a specific customer, the assigned sales representative needs to gather and analyze that customer’s requirements.  This customer interaction should utilize the capabilities of a product configurator to present the customer with thorough on-line product catalogs.  The on-line product catalog provides visualizations that enable the customer to compare products and options.  Often referred to as “guided selling,” the configurator capability can quickly provide and display visuals for alternatives, and can easily trigger up-and-cross selling of these options and products.

Whether the ‘user’ is a customer ordering directly online or a sales representative speaking to the customer in person or via telephone, the configurator will deploy multiple needs assessment methods as the user starts identifying product options.  These product options can be displayed individually or in combination.  For example, they can be displayed as the myriad of choices available by the rules of the product model or by identifying performance requirements that the configurator logic then automatically translates into specific product variation to satisfy the customer’s stated requirements.

Following this needs assessment, the next step will be to create and validate the specific product configuration, which will be discussed in the next post.