Traditional quoting processes are time-consuming, inefficient, and prone to errors. It can result in missed revenue opportunities and lost customers.
CPQ solutions can provide businesses with the tools to streamline their sales process and boost productivity. However, implementing a new technology can be challenging for many companies. That’s why investing in comprehensive training and ongoing support is vital.
Automated Pricing
The key benefits of CPQ software are that it assists you in automating as much as possible, freeing up your team’s time so they can concentrate on selling to clients rather than configuring and pricing items in the back office.
Some CPQ systems can also help you reduce customer churn by automatically sending renewal quotes to existing clients with discounts consistent with their business relationships. Depending on your chosen system, it can incorporate advanced discounting rules, such as loyalty and volume discounts.
In addition to reducing costs, a good CPQ solution will offer sales managers guardrails to improve the overall selling process, such as shortening quote delivery times and preventing rogue discounting. It will also enable you to generate easy sales proposals to customize, track, and provide eSignature capability. In this way, your company can deliver professional and accurate quotes to drive sales. However, you must ensure that your team has the skills and capabilities to use this technology appropriately, or it can be counterproductive.
Automated Configuration
Sales representatives must be able to generate accurate estimates for each potential customer rapidly when using a product that supports numerous combinations of customization and pricing structures. If the quote is correct, the sale will succeed, and the business could lose significant money. CPQ software makes this process faster, more accurate, and less cumbersome, so companies can promptly provide customers with the necessary information.
The configuration, price, and quoting (CPQ) process is necessary for businesses that sell complex products or solutions that are customizable by their buyers. For example, technology solutions and equipment like electronic components and machinery benefit from a CPQ system because the cost of the products will vary depending on which the buyer selects options. CPQ software can make selling these customized products efficient and accurate, allowing sales representatives to spend more time closing deals and improving customer satisfaction. In addition, CPQ systems can help businesses track product inventory and production schedules to improve the supply chain and reduce the lag time between order placement and fulfillment.
Automated Quoting
For companies with an extensive product range, it can take a lot of work to manage the pricing of each configuration. CPQ software helps sales teams avoid making errors and losing customers due to long quote turnaround times.
It is a significant benefit that saves sales reps and managers time and ensures quotes are accurate the first time. Additionally, automation reduces the manual work needed to create each quote, allowing for a more professional look and feel in all documentation.
CPQ provides guardrails to increase efficiency and margins by shortening the sales cycle, minimizing rogue discounting, and integrating company policy across the revenue lifecycle. It can also facilitate guided selling for B2B clients through self-service portals with price optimization, upsell, and cross-sell suggestions.
While some argue that CPQ isn’t necessary for smaller organizations with more limited product lines, the truth is that it’s easier to automate a complex sales process with the help of software. If you’re in the market for a CPQ solution, choose a partner that can meet all your business needs and grow with you.
Automated Order Processing
Companies need to have the right tools in place to handle their sales process from start to finish. But adding new software to the mix isn’t a decision that’s made lightly, especially when it’s a solution geared toward generating accurate price quotes for complex products.
CPQ is designed to automate the entire quote-to-order lifecycle, allowing sales teams to create and deliver high-quality proposals for their customers quickly. With CPQ, it’s possible to reduce product configuration errors, eliminate the back-and-forth between sales and customers, and deliver accurate quotes to meet sales forecasts.
With a CPQ system in place, it’s also possible to standardize pricing structures and eliminate rogue discounting. Further, CPQ solutions enable the sale of complex, multi-tiered products and services with different pricing models such as one-time, subscription, and usage-based. The right CPQ solution can also offer nested bundles, enabling the sale of multiple products and services on a single quote. And to complete the order process, CPQ systems can quickly generate contracts for eSignature and automated fulfillment to expedite revenue generation.
Automated Reporting
While some business leaders are hesitant to embrace technology because they feel it threatens their jobs, the truth is that many tasks can be automated. It frees up human resources to focus on creative or complex activities. When manual processes are handled by software, they produce more consistent results, making them more accurate.
A well-designed CPQ system helps sales reps avoid pricing errors that cost companies time and money. Customers are likelier to trust businesses that charge fair and reasonable product prices. However, they will quickly stop doing business with a company that makes frequent mistakes and takes too long to deliver a quote.
CPQ eliminates the bottlenecks in traditional quoting and leads to faster deals and revenue realization. It does this by reducing the sales cycle and automating the entire process. It also ensures that quotes are configured accurately and includes precise pricing and collaterals. It allows sales teams to prepare more accurate quotation documents and submit them faster for approval. It allows them to meet customer expectations and grow their business.