The sales process isn’t 100% selling. Sales reps spend nearly half of their time writing proposals, generating quotes, and seeking approvals before closing deals. In this regard, the use of conventional quote configuration methods can be a bummer. The process becomes more of a hassle since your sales reps have to perform a manual quotes review. This is when a Configure, Price, Quote (CPQ) tool can come in. This tool can help your sales team overcome the usual hurdles to ensure they close more deals in a shorter time.
If you’re after further information on how a CPQ tool can help your business, this article offers insights on what CPQ is, how it works, and the benefits.
What is CPQ?
So, exactly what is what is CPQ? Configure, Price, Quote, otherwise known as CPQ, is software that speeds up the sales process. This ultimately makes for an efficient operation and, of course, increases productivity. Because it works in tandem with customer relationship management platforms (CRM platform), one can also refer to CPQ as an extension of CRM.
Perhaps, you’ve heard the saying, “Don’t just work hard, work smart,” CPQ software will put that saying into reality. It eliminates all the cumbersome Microsoft excel work and synchronizes your sales operation. It does this using an automated system that ensures zero error quotes are generated and sent to your prospects.
How does CPQ work?
When a sales rep needs to send quotes to customers, they have to go through spreadsheets if they’re equipped with legacy configuration. On the other hand, the CPQ tool uses an established programmed protocol with all possible configurations, discounts, prices, etc. In other words, the process becomes more straightforward. This is because CPQ uses a computer algorithm to walk your sales team through the sales process to produce an accurate quote.
What’s more, if each quote needs to be approved first, the generated sales quotes automatically go through a workflow to the approving parting. This way, your entire operation becomes shorter, reducing customer’s wait time.
Benefits of CPQ Software
Here are a few benefits of using CPQ software.
- It offers a shortened sales process.
One of the most apparent advantages of the CPQ solution is the shorter sales cycle it offers. Thanks to pre-programmed configurations, quotes are automatically generated. This speeds up the work and leads to a shorter salary cycle.
- It improves productivity.
Since your sales team will no longer need to crawl through excel spreadsheets before customers can have a quote, productivity will naturally start to hit the roof. Your team can quickly identify the upsell and cross-sell options, making it easy for them to meet their targets. Ideally, your team becomes sales superstars.
- It increases efficiency.
As mentioned earlier, sales reps spend nearly half the time of a sales process negotiating, generating quotes, seeking approvals, etc. However, with CPQ, your team no longer has to focus on manual quoting and proposal generation. Invariably, there’s more time to sell since manual processes become reduced in sales cycles.
- It reduces your teams’ error rate.
Errors in quote generation are one of the most common issues with legacy quotes. In fact, mistakes can cause underpricing or overpricing. Either way, the implications are customer dissatisfaction and a waste of precious time. However, CPQ software is equipped with programmed rules that prevent your sales rep from initiating quotes outside of your organization’s sales process and policy. Altogether, you’ll circumvent the possibility of leaving a poor impression with your customers, which usually comes with sending a wrong price quote.
- It increases the lead conversion rate.
Look at it this way. Let’s say a customer visits your website and enquires about a service. They can quickly advance to the checkout page—all in a matter of minutes—thanks to the CPQ solution. Trust us; your conversion rates have the potential to shoot up with such a technology. Since this is what you’ll get with CPQ, it’s not an investment you’d like to pass on, especially if you have too many inquiries.