Your dealers and reps build the product with the buyer, watch the price move with every option, and send a finished quote before the meeting ends. A sales configurator carries your options, your rules, and each dealer’s prices, so nothing gets quoted that your shop cannot build.
A sales configurator is software a salesperson or a dealer uses to build a product with the buyer in front of them. It prices the build as every option changes, then turns the finished configuration into a quote. It carries the manufacturer's options, rules, and prices, so the quote is valid and priced right the first time.
Every option you sell, every dependency between them, the limits your shop actually works to, and a price on each one. Sales configuration software keeps all of it in one place, so a change to a material price reaches every quote written after it rather than chasing a revised PDF around the network.
This is not a page a buyer browses alone. A dealer or a rep runs it in a showroom, on a job site, or at a kitchen table, with someone ready to sign sitting beside them. That is why a sales configurator is judged on how fast it gets to a number the buyer can act on, and on whether that number is one you can honor.
This page defines the seller's seat. If the underlying category is the open question, start with what a product configurator is, told in plain words.
Written and kept current by the team that builds Dealect, in Mississauga, Canada. Who builds Dealect.
A sales configurator ends at a priced quote the buyer can sign. A product configurator ends at a valid specification, with no price on it. CPQ is the wider loop that adds approvals and the order trail behind both. Which one you need depends on who is holding the screen.
| In a configured deal | Sales configurator | Product configurator | CPQ |
|---|---|---|---|
| The question it answers | What is this buyer getting, and what does it cost? | What can this product be? | What is the right price, and what does the customer sign? |
| Who is driving it | A dealer or a rep, with the buyer beside them | A buyer on a website, or your team defining the product line | Sales operations, plus whoever approves a discount |
| What comes out | A priced, valid configuration and a quote ready to send | A valid specification | A quote, an order, and the approval trail behind it |
| What it reads from | Your rules and the dealer's own price list | Your options and the rules between them | Price books, discount rules, CRM and ERP records |
| Where it stops | At a signed quote, not at a checkout | Short of a price and a document | Short of showing the buyer the build itself |
In practice the three arrive as one screen. The product configurator is the part that knows what can be built. The sales configurator is the part a seller drives in front of a buyer. CPQ software for manufacturing is the name for the whole configure, price, quote loop, once approvals and downstream systems are attached to it. If CPQ is a new term, our what is CPQ guide unpacks it from zero. Choosing between them is usually the wrong question. Which of the three your buyer touches, and whose prices it quotes on, is the right one.
Quoting a product that changes with every order means somebody works the number out by hand, and everyone else waits on them to do it.
Options multiply faster than any list can hold, so the real number sits with whoever knows the product best. A rep standing next to a ready buyer has to ask them, and the answer arrives after the moment has passed.
A material cost moves, an option is discontinued, a surcharge appears. The file everyone quotes from does not move with any of it, and the gap between last quarter's number and this week's comes out of someone's margin.
Nothing checks a hand-written spec against what your shop can actually produce. The combination gets quoted, signed, and caught on the floor, where the only moves left are walking it back or eating it.
Change a size, change a finish, and the quote is rebuilt by hand. The thread grows, the versions pile up, and by the third one nobody is certain which file the buyer is looking at. That pile is what a sales configurator replaces.
Every page on this subject uses the phrase and none of them shows one. Here is a product line broken into its option groups, with the multiplication done out loud.
6
Size and layout, wood, heat source, doors, windows, accessories. The groups our own sauna configurator carries.
24
Four choices in each group. A number a person can hold in their head, and a list that fits on one page.
4,096
The same four choices, multiplied instead of added. 4 × 4 × 4 × 4 × 4 × 4, and every one of them a real quote.
The six groups are the ones our sauna configurator already carries, so you can check them. Four choices in each is the assumption, and it is a modest one for a custom line. Add a seventh group, or a fifth choice anywhere in the six, and the count moves again in a direction a price list cannot follow. That is the whole definition: complex configurable products are not the ones with the most parts, they are the ones whose parts combine.
Run the same multiplication on your own product line. If the answer is bigger than the number of rows on your price list, the gap is being covered by somebody in your office answering the phone. A sales configurator is where that arithmetic is supposed to live instead.
A sales configurator runs the four moves a good rep already makes, and keeps the numbers right at every one of them.
Step 01 · The questions, in selling order
The configurator asks what a salesperson already asks, and in the same order: the size first, then the material, then the options that depend on both. That makes it a guided selling configurator rather than a blank spec form, so a rep who has never memorized your product line still specifies it correctly. Your rules sit behind every choice, and a combination your shop cannot build never becomes a quote.
Step 02 · Every click, the same second
Each option carries its own price, so the total moves the moment the build does. The numbers are the ones you quote by hand today, not a rounded package price. Every dealer works from their own price list and watches their own margin while they build, and your cost price stays on your side.
Step 03 · A document, not a promise to send one
The configuration becomes the quote while the buyer is still in the room. Line items, options, and the total come straight from the build that was just made, so nothing is transcribed and there is no second document to assemble. Used this way, a quote configurator ends the evening spent rebuilding a proposal in a word processor.
Step 04 · From yes to the shop floor
When the buyer signs, the approved specification becomes the order, and then the build sheet and the bill of materials your shop works from. Approved orders can land in your ERP and the lead in your CRM with nothing retyped. Your dealers watch each status change on their own screen instead of calling your office to ask.
A dealer network's first month quoting on Dealect, measured against the months before it.
2 days to10 min
From a dealer's request to a sent quote.
weekly to0
Nothing reaches the shop floor with a wrong spec.
9 to 5 to24/7
Your dealers sell without the office. You just tap approve.
Most lists on this subject run to a dozen or more features and recommend none of them. These are the six a manufacturer is actually choosing between.
One choice requires or rules out another: a heavier frame under a motorised roof, a finish that exists in two widths only. The rule lives in the software instead of a person's memory, so the impossible build is stopped at the option rather than in the shop.
Pricing sits on the options themselves, so the number recalculates on every click rather than at the end. Nobody waits for a callback to learn what a change costs, and no quote goes out at a price that was already out of date when it was written.
Each dealer quotes on their own prices and sees their own margin on each deal. No dealer sees another dealer's numbers, and the cost price you build to never leaves your side. One build carries three different figures at the same time.
An interactive sales configurator shows the product changing as the options are picked, so the buyer approves something they can see rather than a spec sheet they have to imagine. Fewer things get agreed to and then argued about after the deposit.
The document at the end is generated from the configuration, not assembled beside it. Line items, options, and the total are the build itself, which is why the quote can go out in minutes and why what the buyer signs matches what production receives.
Approved orders can land in your ERP and leads in your CRM on their own. The spec is typed once, by the person who configured it, and everything downstream reads that record instead of a transcription of it.
A dealer who cannot see their own margin is guessing, and a dealer who can see your cost price is negotiating with it. Both problems disappear when one configured build carries three separate figures and each party is shown only theirs.
That is the part a shared spreadsheet has never been able to do. It is why a sales configurator built for dealer networks is a different piece of software from one built for a company that only sells direct.
The thing on screen is the thing being priced. The buyer approves a build they can look at rather than a specification they have to imagine, which is the difference between a signature and another week of questions.
A 3D sales configurator adds the render to that same flow, so the model driving the quote is also the one selling it. The whole visual side of this, in one place, is our 3D product configurator page. When that render is joined to the price and the quote document, the category name for it is visual cpq.
High-ticket custom products, sold on your behalf through dealers or distributors.
Reps who quote configured products in the field, in a showroom or at a kitchen table.
Networks whose members each need their own prices and their own margin on every deal.
Puts the logic next to your production data, and usually far away from the people selling.
Suits a sales team quoting a price book, and struggles the moment a build has rules.
Carries the rules and the per-dealer prices itself, and talks to the ERP and the CRM on either side of it.
What Dealect isFor a custom manufacturer of roughly 30 to 200 people selling through dealers, the standalone route is usually the right one. The hard part is the rules and the per-dealer prices, not the record keeping on either side of them. Dealect is that third kind: a sales configurator and a b2b dealer portal in one, connected to the ERP and CRM you already run.
Every page on this subject says a configurator needs your product rules. None of them says what that means on a Tuesday, or what the thing costs.
Shop drawings, spec sheets, and photographs of a finished build are enough, and nearly every custom shop already has all three. CAD helps where it exists and never decides whether this can start. What matters more is that the option list and the rules are the real ones.
A browser, and that is the whole list. Nothing for a dealer to install and no plugin for their IT to approve. It opens on a showroom laptop and on a phone at a buyer's kitchen table over ordinary mobile data.
A sales configurator is priced per manufacturer rather than per seat or per license tier. Dealect is scoped to your product line and your dealer count, then quoted after a 30-minute demo, so the number you hear is for your products rather than a starting point.
The three things that do move the number are how complex your product line is, how many dealers will quote in your portal, and which connections you need on either end. More on what a configurator costs.
A product configurator answers what the product can be. A sales configurator answers what this buyer is getting and what it costs, then produces the quote. The first ends at a valid specification. The second ends at a priced document somebody can sign, on the dealer's own price list.
They overlap. CPQ is the wider category: configure, price, quote, plus the approvals and discount rules a larger sales organization needs. A sales configurator is the configure and price half of that, in the hands of the person actually selling. In one platform they are the same flow under two names.
No. Shop drawings, spec sheets, and photographs of a finished build are enough, and most custom shops already have all three. CAD helps where it exists and is never the blocker. What matters more is that the option list and the rules are the real ones your shop works to.
Yes. Every dealer works from their own price list and watches their own margin while they build. The buyer sees one finished price. Your cost price never leaves your side of the portal, and no dealer sees another dealer's numbers.
Weeks, not months. It starts with one product line rather than everything you sell. You hand over the options, the rules, and the prices, and the configurator gets built around them. Your dealers begin quoting on that line while the rest follows.
It is priced per manufacturer rather than per seat, and scoped to your product line and your dealer count. Dealect quotes it after a 30-minute demo, so you hear your full number on that call. Your dealers never pay for portal access, and there is no self-serve tier.
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