Although selling custom products can make you unique and stand out in eCommerce, efficient sales order management is needed to stay competitive. That’s also when many merchants think about adopting automation to transform their traditional sales process.
By integrating sales pipeline automation, tailor-to-order brands can reduce manual tasks and back-and-forth communication, enhance customer satisfaction, and save efforts. Additionally, custom products demand precision; therefore, automation can minimize errors while speeding up sales phases such as configuration, quotation, and fulfillment.
This blog will clarify everything about online sales automation, key features to look for in a standard sales system in eCommerce, and best practices for successfully adopting it. Ready to boost efficiency and grow? Read now!
Understanding Sales Automation for Custom Products
What is sales automation?
Sales order automation is the application of technology to automate repetitive sales tasks and lengthy workflows, effectively saving resources. These tasks often involve data entry, email outreach, and follow-ups. However, selling custom products online demands much more, like pricing updates, complex product combinations, and personalized input. On top of that, the design process itself can be time-consuming and frustrating for both customers and sales reps, which often leads to delays, errors, and even product returns.
That’s when you should consider investing in online sales process automation software. Below are the benefits that sellers can get from this investment in the future:
- Streamlined design process
Automation enables faster iteration and collaboration in the product design phases. Instead of back-and-forth and manual adjustments, both customers and salespeople can ultilize a sales product configurator track and respond to design changes in real time. This helps you achieve a smoother design process and reduces design errors effectively.
- Increased orders and sales
Sales automation software automates tasks like quoting and order confirmations, helping the sales team close deals faster and respond quickly to customers’ requirements. Additionally, you can reduce the risk of manual bottlenecks in handling custom orders. This allows for delivering more orders than ever, boosting sales and ensuring accuracy.
- Improved customer experiences
Online sales automation enhances quicker communication via accurate, real-time configurations, prices, and quotes. This makes buyers feel more engaged and supported.
- Data-driven forecasting
A major advantage of a sales automation platform is that it can automatically collect and analyze data. Sellers can easily get insights into customers, products, and sales results.
Key features of a Sales Automation System
CRM Integration
A Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system centralizes and syncs real-time data to manage sales orders. This integration gives sellers accurate insights into nurturing leads and following up better, ensuring a smoother automated sales pipeline.
Notably, businesses using mobile CRM software can reach 65% of their sales quotas. That's why integrating CRM into your sales system is vital for custom product businesses. Even with a growing customer database for scalability, the CRM system can easily manage and make that data actionable.
Product Configurator
Selling custom items, especially complex designs like furniture, might take lots of time. Traditionally, sellers need to communicate back and forth with buyers for final designs. This can delay orders and frustrate customers, risking lost sales and poor online service.
Integrating a product configurator into your sales pipeline automation system can automatically update all product customization in real-time. Notably, 3D product configurators allow everyone to interact with their own product designs in 360 degrees. This helps see exactly how the final designs are displayed, turning a stressful, confusing design process into a seamless, engaging experience—driving higher conversion rates.
VividWorks: 3D Meeting Pod Configurator_Demo
Quoting and Pricing Automation with Dynamic Pricing
When customers change their designs, quotes, and prices need to be updated quickly and accurately. For businesses offering custom items, manually handling these updates is time-consuming and error-prone. Salespeople often feel overwhelmed by the complex combination and struggle with constant revisions in designs, quotes, and prices.
That’s when you should consider Configure, Price, Quote (CPQ) software as a part of your sales automated pipeline to solve this with accurate, real-time pricing and quotation. When users configure their products, prices and quotes reflect their choices all at once. From that, buyers can feel less confused and more confident in closing their deals.
Nowadays, many sellers prefer using Visual CPQ. This advanced CPQ lets them interact with customized products and quickly get price quotes. You can also inspect a product in interactive visualizations, saving customization time and effectively aligning other tasks.
VividWork Visual CPQ is one of the go-to choices for custom product businesses, especially when selling complex designs such as furniture, kitchens, and baths. It stands out with its rule-based configuration, helping ensure error-free product designs. This Visual CPQ software also offers true-to-life 3D visualizations powered by AR and instant quotes and prices to support sellers and buyers with the most current information.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ps9DVDWyrmg&t=4s
Workflow Automation
Salespeople usually manage many tasks independently. These include order approvals, inventory checks, configuration, pricing, quoting, and shipping updates. Selling custom products apparently demands repeating these tasks to perfect the final products. Thus, investing in an online sales automation system is key to streamlining internal workflows. Sellers can cut operational bottlenecks and focus on innovation and customer service.
How to Implement Sales Automation for Custom Products
Identify Business Needs
First and foremost, custom product businesses need to evaluate their current sales process to spot inefficiencies (e.g., slow quotes). These analytics will give teams the insight needed to identify which feature to focus on automation in sales and marketing. Whatever you decide, consider your overall management goals first. This ensures the best optimization of business resource use while driving better results in orders & sales.
Choose the Right Software
An ideal automated sales order management software should work well with current systems. This helps manage complex workflows for custom production without errors. Besides the key features listed above, let’s look for the analytic feature. It gives you customer-centered insights to track and improve the sales process if needed.
Define Product Rules and Pricing Logic
Your sales process automation software needs to have a rule-based system and pricing logic to ensure accuracy in every order. This strategy is especially vital for modular items. Any incompatibility can cause production delays, customer dissatisfaction, and returns.
Integrate with ERP and CRM Systems
The next step is to integrate with ERP and CRM systems to unify data on orders, inventory, and customer preferences across channels. This will allow you to easily collect real-time updates, gain customer behavior insights, and optimize your current workflows. As a result, you can strengthen your management, a foundation for error-free operation.
Test and Optimize
Thorough testing is always essential to launch the sales automation process effectively. Your teams should run simulations on the first orders. This helps spot potential issues in configuration, pricing, quoting, and other production handoffs. Then, continuously improve your automation sales process to solve errors and meet changing sales needs.
Conclusion
Sales automation changes how custom product businesses work. CRM integration, configurators, dynamic pricing and quoting, and workflow automation are the key features to look for in a well-performing sales automation platform. Last but not least, follow our step-by-step guide to have the best preparation for your in-reality adoption.
If you want to discover how Visual CPQ empowers your sales process, book a free demo with VividWorks. We can offer a custom version based on your needs and preferences!
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