Build your own interactive product recommendation system in CRM with Guided Selling.
Update: CPQ was a public early access feature from March 2023 — January 2024.
Since February 2024, this is a public feature.
Since February 2024, this is a public feature.
Zoho CRM's in-built CPQ engine now facilitates Guided Selling, a setup in which the CRM system makes tailored and interactive product recommendations based on the unique needs and preferences of each customer, thereby enabling sales people to choose the most relevant products for them and create accurate, tailor-made quotes instantly.
Guided Selling — An Overview
The primary goal of any business is to cater to the ever-changing needs and preferences of their wide customer base. This could result in the introduction of new product lines, modification of existing product suites or updates to pricing. While this is a great way to accommodate the demands of your customers, what this also means is you must appreciate and acknowledge the complexity that this could bring about for your sales teams to create accurate, relevant and timely quotes for your customers.
When a customer makes an enquiry and there are over a hundred products to choose from, how does a sales person navigate the existing plethora of product choices and offer the right fit for their customer?
It could become a tedious task and slow down your sales pipeline if a sales person has to refer to a product list every time a quote needs to be tailored for a customer.
Here's where Guided Selling helps. While automated product and price rules in CPQ help you with product combinations, free products and dynamic pricing, Guided Selling goes a step further and helps you with which product to recommend to a customer in the first place. Sales managers can now guide their reps via the CRM system on which among the wide range of solutions suits a customer's needs the best.
Consider the example of Zylker Watches, which offers an exquisite collection of wrist watches and wall clocks. The watches come in all sizes and colors for men, women, and children.
For a customer making an enquiry regarding available options for watches, a sales person may have to navigate various products. The right choice of watch for the customer would depend on a multitude of factors, such as the color, warranty preference, manufacturer, gender, and so many other features of the watch. A sales person in this scenario would be bogged down by the sheer complexity involved in selecting from the myriad choices, and here is where guided selling helps.
In this case, Zylker could construct a Guided Selling flow in CPQ, where all of these factors that influence the choice of the right product can be organized as a questionnaire of sorts for the sales person to answer.
The questions in Zylker's case could be as follows:
So, originally if there were 50 watches available, once you answer each question, you could narrow down from random 50 to relevant top 10 and that makes your selection of products easier. The system now acts as a senior sales consultant trying to prod and help the sales person select the right product by asking a series of "questions".
Filtering products based on association of related modules
What's more, since the Guided Selling flow is part of Zoho CRM's in-built CPQ system, you can include not only product-based factors but also other related factors — that is, factors based associated accounts, contacts, vendors and deals (via lookup modules). This takes personalized selling to the next level and helps you build the most accurate and timely quotes.
In the same scenario, let's consider the following factors that are not directly related to the product itself.
— Say the customer prefers a particular watch Vendor only— named Titanix.
— Also, for more likely hits, the sales rep wishes to study and narrow down products previously purchased by customers similar to the one he/she is handling. For example, say the current customer is a student/homemaker. So the sales rep wishes to see which set of wrist watches were previously sold to other customers who were also students/homemakers. This would further narrow down the hunt with more likely hits.
So that leaves us with two additional factors based on two different modules in this case— Vendors and Contacts — which are related to the Products module.
This way, Guided Selling efficiently supplies the much needed sales context to the act of "guiding" a sales rep on identifying the most relevant products for their customers. Similar examples include:
- Filtering products that were <<previously sold to Indian customers.>>
(Input field here will be: Associated Contact Mailing Country is India) - Filtering products associated to <<winning deals.>>
(Input field here will be: Associated Deal Stage is Closed Won) - Filtering products that were <<previously sold to large enterprises.>>
(Input field here will be: Associated Account No:of Employees >= 50)
So using related modules, you filter based on additional sales context that is supplied to you by the CRM apart from the straightforward product factors present in the Products module.
In the Guided Selling setup, each question is mapped to a particular "CRM field" as the "Input field". This way, all the sales person needs to do is choose the field value and as they answer each "question", what they are essentially doing is filtering the products further and further and zeroing in on the right products based on their answers or "criteria".
Note that the questions created in this Guided Selling flow involve input fields from both Primary module (Products) and Related modules (Accounts, Contacts, Deals, Vendors). Related modules are typically those that are associated to the primary module via a Lookup field.
To create a Guided Selling flow, all you need to do is create a set of Input Fields and frame your questions to the sales rep. These input fields could be from the primary (Products) module or Related Modules (Contacts, Deals, Accounts and Vendors).
To learn more about creating your own Guided Selling flows, please refer to this Help document.
Availability and Release Status:
Guided Selling is available in the Zoho CRM Professional Edition and above. It is live now in all DCs.
Note: CPQ and Guided Selling are available on the Public Early Access* mode.
(*) Public Early Access — Refers to a the status of a feature that is available for all applicable Editions, however, is subject to changes, improvements and updates as part of continuous development.
Access your files securely from anywhere
New to Zoho Recruit?
Zoho Developer Community
New to Zoho LandingPage?
Zoho LandingPage Resources
New to Zoho Survey?
New to Zoho CRM Plus?
Deliver unforgettable customer experiences
New to Zoho CRM Plus?
Deliver unforgettable customer experiences
New to Zoho Marketing Plus?
Everything you need to run your marketing
New to Zoho Marketing Plus?
Everything you need to run your marketing
New to Bigin?
Topic Participants
Vaagdevi Ravishankar
Toca Travel
Strategy and Planning
Sunderjan Siddharth
Sticky Posts
Good news! Calendar in Zoho CRM gets a face lift
Dear Customers, We are delighted to unveil the revamped calendar UI in Zoho CRM. With a complete visual overhaul aligned with CRM for Everyone, the calendar now offers a more intuitive and flexible scheduling experience. What’s new? Distinguish activitiesVoC in Zoho CRM is now data savvy: Explore response drilldown, summary components and participation in CRM criteria
VoC has all the goods when it comes to customer intelligence—which is why we're constantly enhancing it. We recently added the following: A customer drilldown component that shows you the list of prospects and customers behind a chart's attribute ExpandedWrapping up 2025 on a high note: CRM Release Highlights of the year
Dear Customers, 2025 was an eventful year for us at Zoho CRM. We’ve had releases of all sizes and impact, and we are excited to look back, break it down, and rediscover them with you! Before we rewind—we’d like to take a minute and sincerely thank youPresenting ABM for Zoho CRM: Expand and retain your customers with precision
Picture this scenario: You're a growing SaaS company ready to launch a powerful business suite, and are looking to gain traction and momentum. But as a business with a tight budget, you know acquiring new customers is slow, expensive, and often deliversCreate and populate a record in an instant: Introducing zero-shot field prompting to Zia's ICR
A couple of months ago, we upgraded our in-house AI image detection and validation tool, Zia Vision, with intelligent character recognition (ICR). By training Zia with sample images, you could create and enrich CRM records with data extracted from standard
New to Zoho TeamInbox?
Zoho TeamInbox Resources
Zoho CRM Plus Resources
Zoho Books Resources
Zoho Subscriptions Resources
Zoho Projects Resources
Zoho Sprints Resources
Qntrl Resources
Zoho Creator Resources
Zoho CRM Resources
Design. Discuss. Deliver.
Zoho Show Resources
Get Started. Write Away!
Writer is a powerful online word processor, designed for collaborative work.
Zoho CRM コンテンツ
-
オンラインヘルプ
-
Webセミナー
-
機能活用動画
-
よくある質問
-
Ebook
-
-
Zoho Campaigns
- Zoho サービスのWebセミナー
その他のサービス コンテンツ
Nederlandse Hulpbronnen
ご検討中の方
Recent Topics
Tip #49- Navigating the Remote Support Dashboard in Zoho Assist- 'Insider Insights'
The Remote Support dashboard in Zoho Assist is designed to help technicians quickly access, manage, and monitor all their support sessions from a single, intuitive interface. Whether you’re starting a new session, managing ongoing connections, or reviewingBMI formula
I've been trying for hours to calculate BMI using height and weight as my only inputs. It's a simple calculation and I even went to ChatGPT to help me figure this out in Zoho Forms, but it led me down a path of "try this" and "try this". None of my attemptsSEO on blogs
Hello, google is not able to find my blogs. Can you advice me if I need to change some settings or anything else to make it retrievable via SEO many thanks, hansDuplicated Notebooks
Out of the blue, almost all of my notebooks got duplicated and the different copies contain different information. Some seem like older copies than the others. I use the linux desktop app and sometimes the Android app. I assume that the sync failed at some point and was unable to merge the two versions together. But I'm afraid to add anything else to my notebook because if it can't properly sync 5 notebooks with only a handful of notes each, what will happen when I have hundreds of notes and I loseMind mapping in Zoho Projects
Good morning, I would like to congratulate the Zoho team for building such an inovative and responsive application that fits in the daily challenges of so many work groups. I would like suggest you another functionality that helps a lot in project planning and development: mind mapping. Mind mapping would be of great help for brianstorming, knowledge management and other needs in online collaboration. Thanks and wish you all the best! George Maha Empresa Júnior Multidisciplinar do Instituto deRetainer invoice in Zoho Finance modlue
Hello, Is there a way of creating retainer invoices in the Zoho Finance module? If not can I request this is considered for future updates please.Documents don't sync properly
Hello, My team recently moved to Zoho workDrive, some of my team, work remotely so we believed Zoho would be the best way to share and edit files as well as access files withing the team. However we are experiencing sync issues, when a file is uploaded in the file explorer and shows sync complete, same file can be seen on the Zoho web app but other team members can't see the said file because it is not syncing properly. i figured out that if i were to go to preferences in settings and resync theWe are looking for an experienced Zoho Developer
Hi Everyone! We’re on the lookout for a skilled Zoho Developer with hands-on experience in the Zoho Developer Platform (The Vertical CRM Platform) and if you don't know what that is, then you are not the person we are looking for. You would also needInitiate approval workflow after "on edit --> on success"
Dear Community, currently I am working on a initiative tracker which should handle approval workflows based on different initiative status. As far as I understand, an approval workflow can be triggered (only?) when data is entered for the input form to the database. Example: A new initiative is created and submitted. --> Approval Workflow triggered Here comes my question: Is it also possible to trigger an approval workflow if the form was "simply" updated? (on edit --> on success) Imagine the initiativeTax Deductible Donations to a Charity Organisation
For Australia, what's the best/proper method for entering an expense that is a tax deductible donation to a charitable organisation. And thus is appears correctly in Accounts and BAS as a GST payable deduction?Simultaneous use of WhatsApp Account in SalesIQ and ZohoDesk
Hi, We have only one number registered in Meta, it's possible use same account for two apps? All times here we try is stopping in SalesIQ. Regards,External lookup fields to synchronise with Analytics
Hello. I suggest adding external lookup custom fields to the Zoho Analytics integration settings. Currently, these types of fields are not available for synchronisation, so they cannot be used to generate reports with related tables in Analytics. ThankWe should have an option to Toggle Off KB Article Links in AI Answer Bot Replies
Hi everyone, I'm creating this topic to share a feature idea that I think would improve the customer experience when using the AI Answer Bot for self-service. The Current Behavior (The Problem) Currently, when the AI Answer Bot generates a summary orBoot Loop After Removing Service from Client via Admin
We have multiple laptops experiencing a boot loop / unable to login after the Zoho Remote service was removed from their machine remotely via the desktop client. The Windows sign-in screen is not available, and users are unable to login. This seems likeRequest Backend Correction — Domains Mapped to Same Help Center (Multi-Brand Setup Failure)
Hello Zoho Desk Support Team, I need assistance correcting a domain-to-brand mapping issue in our Zoho Desk instance (The Blue Ribbon Project). Both of our verified domains currently point to the same Help Center instead of separate brand portals. Currentis there any option to enable the participants interact - can write on the screen, while the screen is shared by the host?
this is most expected features - for teaching children. is there any option to enable the participants interact - can write on the screen, while the screen is shared by the host?How to disable the Login button in Desk Helpcenter
Hey there, I'm testing out whether the help center within Zoho Desk could replace our existing Customer FAQ. I tried to customize the themes for the public help center frontend, but stumbled across the login button in the navigation bar. Is there anystock movement report by each transaction for each item
Dear Sir we are using zoho inventory for foodstuff and we lack the transaction report which clearly shows movement of an item from Opening balance of the month to Goods received in, Supplier return out, Invoice out, Sales return In, Transfer out and TransferFull Text Customization & Translation in SalesIQ Chat Widget Settings
Dear Zoho SalesIQ Team, Greetings, We would like to request an important enhancement to the chat widget customization options in Zoho SalesIQ. Current Limitation: At the moment, only some of the text shown in the chat widget is editable or translatableBest way to display complex Bookings Consultation Descriptions on Zoho Site?
I am a new user so apologies if this has been asked before. I couldn't find any answers in the forum. We offer 18 complex Consultations to our subscribers. Our current platform lets me put detail on these Consultations thoroughly (200-300 words) duringGmail is ramping up its email sender policy as of November 2025
Hello marketers, As you may be aware, Gmail introduced a guideline for bulk senders starting February 2024. If not, here's a quick refresher straight from Google: After this policy was announced first in 2023 and soft-implemented in February 2024, weModifying iframe data of Zoho booking iframe
Hello, I have integrated a Zoho Bookings embedded iframe into my website. Currently, I am pre-filling the booking form with default values as part of our process flow. However, I want to ensure that if an input field is already populated with a defaultZoho CRM Workflow and Function Backup Options
Hi everyone! I have been able to make several backups of my CRM data and noticed that the Workflows and Functions are not included in these backups. To my knowledge, there is no backup feature for workflows and functions, which is problematic in of itself.Is or will be possible to associate meeting transcription and summary, made by Zia, to meeting/contact/account record in CRM?
Would be useful to keep context and track jobs, better if it will be autoDesk Field Not Showing in Analytics
Hi there, I recently added a field to our Zoho Desk Ticket Information. I went and added the data retrospectively to the tickets. It is also marked as required, so all new tickets cannot be closed off without it being filled in. When I try to run a reportExport data using advanced export options and customizable settings
Hello everyone, The user interface for exporting data has been revamped with updates to make data exports more flexible and efficient for users. These updates not only enhance usability but also bring advanced capabilities to help users extract preciseMoving data from one pipeline to another
Hey all, I've got some complex pipelines to build and I'd like to seperate them into seperate pipelines rather than have one mammoth one. If I create 2 pipelines, is there any easy way to use the output of Pipeline1 to be the input into Pipeline2? OrHow to export/find all deluge code.
Hi, I have a large app wich contains several forms, reports, html views, I need to find thow my application if any contains specific word, I could find it manually by editing app and see on every section(field code, on succes, on load, etc) but I would like to do it faster. Is there a way to at least export it to a file the whole deluge code on my application?Have Some Bugs in Zoho CRM Ask Zia Assistant
Hi Support Team, I have found some bugs in Zoho CRM Ask Zia Feature Please Check below screenshot, insight option is showing twice i think its in early access that's why its have some bugs .COD with Partial payment
Two reasons why we need COD with partial payment option. 1) Since we deal heavy weight products our shipping costs are too high. If shipment is rejected by customer we incur huge loss. 2) Some competitors place fake orders with different names and returnSlicers are now available in Zoho Sheet—filter your data interactively
At Zoho Sheet, we diligently track user requests and feedback. In line with this, based on extensive user requests, we've integrated Slicers to pivot tables and are delighted to announce its release. Slicers are interactive visual filters that have add,Resizing a Record Template Background Inage
Hi everyone, I have an issue which I can't seem to resolve: Basically, I'm designing a record template in certificate form. I've specified A5 landscape. I've set my background image the same dimensions with total pixels at 443,520. Whatever I try, whenUpdated font library: New font styles and custom font options in Zoho Sheet
Zoho Sheet's font library now supports 500+ font styles in 60+ languages! The updated font library is stacked with new font styles, and some of the previously available font styles have been replaced with equivalent options. There are two ways you canIntroducing Data Bars: Graphically represent changes in data within the cells
Conditional formatting has helped millions of spreadsheet users analyze and highlight their data more efficiently. In addition to the classic rules, color scales, and icon sets available in Zoho Sheet, you can now apply Data Bars, a convenient methodDefault Font Size in Desk
How do I set my default font size in Desk? It takes me about 45 minutes to find the place to set it, then, when I sign out of Zoho and log back in, it's back to font 10 again. Seems like this would be simple, but like everything with Zoho, it's buriedTip #19 - Create checkbox tracker in your spreadsheet
Hello Sheet users! We are here with yet another tip to help you get the most out of Zoho Sheet. Spreadsheets can be used to handle a variety of tasks, but ever tried using checkboxes to track the progress of your action items dynamically? Here's a sampleTip #20 - Three things you probably didn't know you can do with picklists
Hello Zoho Sheet users! We’re back with another quick tip to help you make your spreadsheets smarter. Picklists are a great tool to maintain consistency in your spreadsheet. Manually entering data is time-consuming and often leaves typos and irregularPer Level Approval for admins
We need Process admins like Zoho CRM in Zoho Books for per stage approval Currently in books, admins only have the option for Final Approval But for example, in cases like when an employee is on leave, we can't just approval one level we only have optionFeature enhancement: Highlight rows based on a cell value
Hello Sheet users, We're excited to announce a new feature enhacement, shaped directly by your valuable feedback! As you might know, conditional formatting is a great tool for anyone dealing with large data sets. Previously, if you’ve ever wanted to drawUpdating custom fields in Zoho Projects
Hi I am wondering if anyone has experience with custom fields in Zoho Projects. I am struggling to update the field using either deluge or the api endpoint. My code is: //custom_Map = map(); custom_Map = {"UDF_DOUBLE_1":"0.27"}; update_Map = map(); update_Map.put("custom_fields",custom_Map.toList());Next Page