Manufacturing sales teams are under constant pressure. And this pressure intensifies when the products are complex, configurable or engineered-to-order and the sales cycle is long and nuanced. AI-guided sales for manufacturers sounds like it can help. But is it too good to be true?
According to the 2025 Built to Sell Report, disconnection across systems and teams makes it challenging for manufacturing sales teams to effectively cross-sell and up-sell products and parts – ultimately diminishing account expansion and Average Order Value (AOV) growth.
Aleran’s latest production release with Suggestive Selling as part of its Sales Order Management feature sets helps solve for the need to grow efficiently by using AI intelligence to make quoting and selling easier to recommend the right products at the right time to the right customer.
So just like not all manufacturers are not the same, neither should AI-guided selling and AI leveraged for manufacturers be a one size fits all.
What is Aleran Suggestive Selling?
Suggestive selling is Aleran Connected Commerce’s new feature that recommends additional products to customers during their shopping experience. It uses data-driven logic to show relevant items and boost sales.
What AI logic does Aleran Suggestive Selling use for suggesting products during the quote or sales order?
Aleran Connected Commerce leverages AI logic in a few key ways:
- Personalization for making the experience feel tailored: Personalization learns from a specific customer’s buying and quoting history. It recommends products based on what this customer has shown interest in before. For example, if a customer regularly buys accessories or laptops, those will appear first for them.
- Frequently Bought Together (FBT)for upselling complementary items with proven demand: It is based on patterns across all customers. It shows products that commonly appear together in the same carts or orders. It also uses strict rules – a product will only be suggested if it has actually appeared together when the current product in a previous cart, order or quote. For example, if many people buy a case when they buy a phone, the case becomes an FBT suggestion for phones.
What AI logic does Aleran Suggestive Selling use for surfacing similar products?
Similarity shows products that are textually or descriptively similar to help customers discover alternatives or substitutes easily. It looks at product descriptions to determine what items are alike. But if a product has no description, similarity won’t work – the product name alone isn’t enough. For example, a “fiction book” may show “novel” or “story collection.” A smartwatch should not appear as similar to a laptop unless descriptions are misleading.
What sales impact can Aleran Suggestive Selling have?
Based on our analysis, we’ve found it can increase average order value by as much as 18%.
Looking Ahead
Manufacturers that adopt AI for quoting, orders, and optimizing and digitizing product content to be more discoverable are setting the pace for the industry. At Aleran, we’re proud to deliver practical AI that works with your ERP, CRM, and product data to create faster, smarter, more connected sales.
Download the Built to Sell Report 2025 to see how manufacturers are already using AI to modernize sales and accelerate growth now.
Let’s Talk
If you are reassessing how you sell, including quoting – or have questions to help assess your requirements, please send me a message at sales@aleran.com.
