Posted by Kristina Fine, SteelBrick Practice Manager
This is the second installment in a five-part series that looks at the Configure, Price, Quote (CPQ) process and outlines the fundamentals of CPQ and how to get started with a CPQ solution.
You may wonder if your business needs a CPQ solution. If you can answer yes to any of the following situations, your business may need the benefits offered by a CPQ software to continue to grow:
- Is your pricing complicated?
- Do your product lines change frequently?
- Is it difficult to keep your products and pricing updated?
- Does it take too long to process quotes and deliver them to clients?
“More than two-thirds of sales organizations do not have applications to support a range of important sales processes, including channel management, commissions, incentives, objectives, configure price quote, proposals, and quota and territory management.” - Sales Organizations Need Technology Overhaul, Ventana Research.
Businesses that have outgrown the conventional Configure, Price, Quote (CPQ) methods may need to implement CPQ software to boost efficiency and accuracy of their quote processes. Businesses can’t afford unreliable product data, inaccurate or outdated pricing, and errors on quotes.
Product data spreadsheets can become too complex as your business grows making them difficult if not impossible to manage. Spreadsheets require updating that can require confusing new rules and formulas. The new rules and formulas can take time to perfect so they work with the previous rules. Another downside to spreadsheets is the lack of real time data. Sales managers must wait for reports from sales reps for quote information. Implementing a CPQ solution puts all of this information at the fingertips of Sales Reps and their managers.
Conventional methods of configuring a price quote can result in Sales Reps offering inaccurate prices, discounts or promotions. Businesses cannot afford issues that arise from mistakes made in the quoting process or the time it takes to make corrections. Business could be lost due to not appearing proficient and process driven.
The list of benefits that a CPQ solution offers is unlimited. CPQ software optimizes sales growth with data driven price management, which ultimately makes customer interaction consistent and more productive.
Configure
- Accuracy of data needed by Sales Reps
- Reduction in errors
- Improved deal profitability
- Opportunity to increase deal size through up-sell and cross-sell
- Opportunity for increased sales size and number of deals
Price
- Ability to avoid errors due to price changes and expired promotions and discounts
- Control over discounting by Sales Reps
- Profit margin protection
Quote
- Improve time from quote request to sale
- Effective response time to quote requests
- Reduction in quote errors
Further, a CPQ solution may help to solve issues that are the result of slow quote processing, time spent on proposal generation, inaccuracies in quotes, price changes, and lost up-selling and cross-selling opportunities.
Companies that deploy a CPQ solution experience the perfect balance of functionality, ease of use, and affordability. A CPQ solution allows your Sales Reps to create quotes containing consistent pricing that are customer friendly. With features such as product search capabilities, pricing options, defined descriptions and subtotal features, and the ability to edit product items, a CPQ solution ensures that every sales quote contains the required components the first time.
Next week, we will continue our CPQ series by taking a look at: Why a Company Should Invest their Time and Money Into Purchasing a CPQ Solution.