Today, much of the B2B industry has transitioned from face-to-face sales to purchasing, and manufacturing companies are faced with a new set of marketing challenges in capturing and keeping customers' attention.
The Internet age has leveled the competition. Manufacturers can no longer rely on gorgeous showrooms, great locations, or charismatic sales reps to drive sales. Instead, each company can see numerous global competitors with just one click.
Search engine advertising is expensive, optimization is sometimes good and bad, and social marketing is not suitable for B2B. If a business wants to capture the attention of its customers online, it must provide an engaging and extraordinary buying experience.
With 3D CPQ, you can create a virtual showroom that is more appealing than anything you create in the physical world. You can set up personalized product configuration processes, shorten sales cycles, and ship faster than ever before.
What exactly does CPQ mean?
The core of CPQ (configuration, pricing, and software) is to automate the process of product configuration, pricing, and automation within the enterprise.
Instead of using an endless list of part numbers to configure a product, sales reps can use a CPQ tool called the Product Configurator. The configurator walks them through the configuration process to pick the best option for each customer. Once the configuration process is complete, the CPQ is calculated and automatically generated. 
The advantages of CPQ are as follows:
Sales reps can quickly configure highly complex products without errors, each product is optimized to ensure customer satisfaction and maximize profits, each configuration is effective from an engineering standpoint, newly hired salespeople can master operational skills in days, not weeks, eliminate pricing errors and malicious discounts, sales reps can get rid of the shackles of excel and start aggressively selling, accelerate the time, keep you ahead of your competitors, and shorten the entire sales cycleWhat's wrong with traditional CPQ solutions? The problem with traditional CPQ solutions is that they are internal sales tools designed for sales reps and don't allow customers to self-serve.
Today's B2B buyers, mostly millennials, are no longer willing to deal with sales representatives. They want to research the product independently and place an order at any time from any device. Interpersonal interaction is seen as an obstacle to purchase, not a facilitator.
If your competitors sell build-to-order products and you don't, your customers will quickly defect to each other. If you want to deliver a great** buying experience that captures your customers' attention, you need 3D CPQ.
How to capture your customers' attention with a 3D visual product configurator
3D CPQ reinforces the benefits of traditional CPQ solutions and adds an additional layer of functionality on top of them. The most important differentiator, and the feature that most captures the attention of customers, is the 3D visualization product configurator. 
The Visual Product Configurator is a highly intuitive 3D interface that customers (and sales reps) can use to build 3D products. Instead of simply typing text and clicking on drop-down menus, buyers interact with photorealistic 3D product renderings in a fully immersive environment.
With the visual product configurator, buyers can change colors, sizes, parts, and additional features with just one click. They can drag and drop to zoom in, zoom out, and inspect the product from all angles; Experience the product in action with an animated sequence and get a complete overview of each of the options available to them.
In short, visual product configuration provides an engaging buying experience that sets your configure-to-order products apart from the competition. Best of all, it's intuitive enough to be used by anyone, from the most knowledgeable product experts to the most bewildered new customers.
Manufacturing companies can provide full or partial self-service customer service by simply embedding the configurator into their**, empowering customers around the world to configure their own products without any sales or engineering input.
Wow your potential customers with augmented and virtual reality
AR (Augmented Reality) and VR (Virtual Reality) are revolutionizing the way B2B companies** sell their products. With 3D CPQ, manufacturing companies can leverage these transformative technologies to deliver an industry-leading buying experience that hitherto only B2C brands have been able to provide.
With AR, manufacturers can overlay computer-generated images of products onto the real world captured from the screen of a phone or tablet. This physical-virtual mash-up allows buyers to see the configured product before they place an order, improving decision-making efficiency and motivating them to make an immediate purchase decision.
Unlike AR, VR (the more immature and expensive of the two technologies) builds on a simulated reality where buyers can configure products and interact with their own creations. Once the customer puts on the VR headset, they can take a 360-degree look around in a spectacular virtual showroom.
Incorporating AR and VR into the CPQ process provides customers with the following benefits:
Get a complete view of highly complex configurable products: see products before they are produced (no unpleasant surprises), enjoy a configuration experience, don't have to interact with sales reps (but they can meet in a virtual space if they want to), buy anxiety decreases, and decisions are improved using self-service anytime, anywhere.
use3D CPQ attracts the attention of customersmethodsYou've successfully captured your customers' attention with an immersive product configuration experience. Now, your task is to keep your customers' attention. Because if the rest of the sales cycle doesn't live up to expectations, you'll have a hard time retaining customers and your CPQ investment will go down the drain.
Today's buyers demand a smooth, fast, and error-free buying experience from the first time they are exposed to the first use of the product. They need personalization, but they don't need salespeople, and they need a reasonable finished product that meets their needs. Here are five ways 3D CPQ can do it all.
1. Program complex product rules to the backend of the product configurator to ensure that each product can satisfy customers. Misconfigurations will be a thing of the past.
2. Dynamic pricing means no more waiting, and it's always right. 3D CPQ is calculated and displayed in real-time as the user configures the product**. Buyers can optimize products without exceeding budget constraints.
3. CAD and design automation eliminate engineering bottlenecks by automating the most trivial engineering tasks. In addition to this, 3D CPQ automatically generates CAD files, CNC cut sheets, BOMs, and more, resulting in faster delivery of products to buyers.
Product visualization reduces purchase anxiety and enables buyers to make quick decisions. They can clearly see what the finished product will look like, so there are no nasty surprises, resulting in fewer returns and refunds.
5. Integrate with customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems to provide a single source of truth for sales, engineering, and production teams, enabling them to provide excellent personalized customer support and interactions.