An agent that works out what the customer actually needs, and guides them to the right product.

A customer can tell you the result they are after. They usually cannot tell you what it takes to get there.

Somebody asks what a job would cost. An email asks whether you can help with a situation. A message arrives about a product they saw somewhere. In each case the real answer depends on things nobody has asked them yet.

Your agent runs those conversations, by email, by text or on the phone. It asks what it needs to know, checks the answers against your rules, works out the scope, and guides the customer to the product that actually fits, so the enquiry reaches your people as something ready to close.

Customers arrive unsure which service they need, whether they qualify, or how big their job is.

Those are three different kinds of not knowing, and each one has to be settled before anybody can be sold anything. Which service fits the problem. Whether this customer is eligible for it at all. What the work really involves once somebody looks at it properly.

Your agent settles all three. It gathers the details that describe the scope, checks whether the service is right for this customer, and then guides them to the product that suits them best.

Three enquiries, and what each one really needed.

A commercial equipment supplier. A customer asks the price of a compressor. What matters is what they are running off it, how many hours a day it will work, how much room they have, and what they are using at the moment. Those answers often point to a different model, and they nearly always point to the fittings and the service plan the customer never asked about. Sell them the compressor they named and it struggles, and the supplier gets the blame. Sell them the one that suits the job and they come back next time.

An immigration consultancy. Someone writes in describing their situation and asking about a program they found online. Often it is not the program they qualify for, and sometimes the one they do qualify for needs a language test they have not taken yet. The agent asks about their schooling, their work history, their test results and whether they have a job offer, checks those answers against the routes this practice handles, and hands the consultant a complete file. The consultant gives the advice. The asking has already been done.

A catering company. An enquiry comes in for a lunch for sixty people at an office. What decides the job is the room, the timing, what the guests can and cannot eat, and how it has to be served, and the customer volunteers none of it because they do not know it is what you need. The agent asks the few things that set the format and the tier, works out which package fits and what the minimum really is, and books the tasting with the details already gathered, rather than leaving a caterer to chase them one email at a time.

The agent gathers the details that decide the answer, including the ones the customer never knew to mention.

You already know which four or five facts change a recommendation. Your customer does not, and there is no reason they should. So the message that arrives leaves out the part that matters most, and somebody has to go back and ask for it.

Your agent does that asking. It works out which details are missing for this particular enquiry and requests them in the reply, two or three at a time, changing what it asks next based on what comes back. Where an answer is something it can look up rather than ask for, it looks it up.

What lands on your desk is a full picture instead of a question.

Nobody can price a job properly until somebody has established how big it is.

Scope is the part your customer is least able to judge. They know what they want at the end of it. They rarely know how much work sits between here and there, and they usually guess low.

A quote built on a scope nobody established gets corrected later, in front of the customer, after the work has already started. That conversation costs more than the difference in the price.

Your agent establishes the scope first, using the questions you would use and your own rules about what counts as included. Then it shows you the answers it built that scope on, so you can see how the number came out where it did.

Customers shop from the part of your range they already know about.

People ask for what they have heard of. A competitor's advertisement, something a colleague mentioned, whatever they bought last time. Your range is wider than the part of it that reaches them, and what suits them best is often something they had no idea you offered.

This is where your agent earns its place. It knows what each product and service is genuinely for, so it can recommend the one that fits, add the part that makes it work properly, and explain in plain terms why it is recommending that rather than what the customer named.

By the time anybody in your office picks it up, the selling has already been done.

A customer who has been asked the right questions, told plainly whether you can help them, and shown the product that suits them is most of the way to buying. What is left is the price and the paperwork.

Where your prices follow rules the agent can apply, the customer gets the figure while they are still in the conversation. Where a person has to price it, the file arrives with the answers already in it, so whoever picks it up quotes once rather than starting with questions.

Once the customer says yes, the agent takes them through onboarding. It collects what you need to start the work, sets up the account, and tells them what happens next, so nobody in your office repeats what the agent already asked. The enquiry reaches you as something ready to close.

Gathers what is missing · works out the scope · recommends from your range · gets the sale ready to close

It runs the sale, not one step inside it.

• It reads what came in and works out what the customer is trying to achieve, rather than which product name happened to appear in the message.
• It asks for the details the recommendation depends on, a few at a time, and changes what it asks next according to the answers it gets back.
• It looks things up instead of asking, using the sources your business already pays for, so the customer is not made to supply facts you could have found yourself.
• It checks whether the customer is eligible for the service they are asking about, against the rules your business actually applies.
• It establishes the scope and shows which answers produced it.
• It recommends from your range, including the accessory, the option or the service plan the product needs to do the job properly.
• It prices the work where your rules allow it to, and hands the file to a person where they do not.
• It writes the recommendation up with the reasoning attached, so the customer can understand it without ringing you to have it explained.
• It carries the conversation by email, by text or on the phone, whichever the customer started on.
• It takes the customer through onboarding once they say yes, collecting what you need to start and telling them what happens next.
• It brings you the ones that need you with the position already established, and it stops rather than deciding when your rules do not cover the situation.

Your range, your lead times, and the work you would rather have

What gets recommended comes from what you actually stock or supply, what you can genuinely deliver and when, the jobs that have been good business before, and the ones you have learned to price differently or turn down.

Your agent is built against those rules. It recommends the way your best person recommends, and when you change what you sell or what you will take on, it changes with you.

Every recommendation says which of your rules produced it

Each recommendation records the answers it was built on, the rule it applied, and why it landed on that product rather than another. Each scope shows the questions behind it. You can read the line that produced any result you are looking at.

You decide how much goes out on its own. Recommendations can wait for your approval, go out as they are made, or go out only where the situation is straightforward, with anything unusual held back for you.

Who this is for

This suits businesses that sell something a customer cannot fully specify on their own. Suppliers and distributors with a range wider than most customers ever see. Consultancies and professional practices where the right service depends on answers the enquiry does not contain. Specialist manufacturers whose product has to be matched to a requirement. Anyone whose best salesperson is the owner, because the owner is the one who knows what suits what.

If your enquiries turn into orders when the right person handles them, that is the person to build.