Sales Process

Many sales organizations need help with delivering timely quotes. These often arise when reps want to offer customers configurations, prices, or discounts that aren’t allowed by the company.

In addition, human error can lead to inaccurate quotes. It may upset the customer and create future negotiating challenges. A CPQ solution can help avoid these issues.

Personalized Quotes

Buyers often want highly personalized, tailored products in a world where one-size-fits-all products are less common. It is good news for them, but it can be challenging for sales teams to create a quote that satisfies a buyer’s needs accurately.

CPQ software helps companies solve this issue. Integrating a visual product configurator with the CRM platform that sales teams use makes configuring and pricing a product more efficient and intuitive for everyone involved. When paired with a 3D augmented reality component, CPQ can offer buyers a whole virtual experience that allows them to spin and inspect their products from all angles. It gives buyers the confidence that they are making the right choices and will receive a product that will meet their exact specifications when it arrives.

The software also makes it easier for salespeople to identify cross-sells and up-sells. The system will recommend products that will likely appeal to your buyers by analyzing previous purchases. It helps to boost average order values (AOV) for your business.

In addition, the software can prevent salespeople from quoting prices that violate your company’s policies. The system will automatically flag any discounts over a certain threshold and route them to the appropriate manager for review. It reduces the risk of a discount-related compliance issue that could delay or even derail a sale.

Time Savings

A CPQ system can compute billions of possible configurations instantly, so salespeople spend more time serving customers and less time researching to find what they need. Rather than digging through spreadsheets and retyping information, a salesperson can create an accurate quote with just one button click. It allows them to respond to customers quickly and move on to the negotiation stage faster.

When a CPQ solution is in place, pricing rules are established and preprogrammed so that salespeople can offer valid discounts without fear of over-inflating prices and creating a negative customer experience. It also helps them avoid conflicts with management by ensuring that any discount offered is within the limits of the company’s policies and procedures.

While many consider CPQ complex, configurable products for business-to-business customers, retail consumers often use the concept. For example, when you customize a coffee order in a Starbucks store, the system configures the different options (like type and beverage size). It determines the price based on an algorithm.

CPQ solutions can be integrated into the same business tools that other departments use, making it easier for all teams to work together. It can help speed up turning quotes into orders, recognizing revenue, and shipping merchandise.

Accurate Pricing

Creating accurate sales quotes is an ongoing challenge for businesses that offer various product configurations. Even when products are configured to standard specifications with slight variation, a complex quote can contain hundreds or thousands of items in the form of features, options, and option sets (PCF levels). To calculate billions of possible combinations and guarantee that all price information is up-to-date, the CPQ Configurator solution uses a robust and scalable configuration platform called Tacton.com.

Then, the CPQ solution delivers a branded, professional quote document to each customer and sales rep. This document includes the configured product with all associated options and information, including pricing, terms, conditions, discounts, and other special offers. CPQ solutions also include an integrated approval workflow so critical stakeholders can be in the loop on all quotes before they are sent to customers.

Salespeople can’t focus on selling if they spend 70% of their time on administrative tasks like generating sales quotes and sending customer proposals. By removing the administrative burden from the sales process, CPQ solutions allow salespeople to focus on delivering value to customers and bringing in revenue. By integrating the CPQ Configurator with a robust CRM, sales teams can work together more effectively and streamline their entire selling process. It makes it easy for them to deliver a personalized, accurate experience for every customer.

Integrations

A CPQ configurator can connect with other systems within your company, including PLM, ERP, CRM, and CAD software. It can help ensure that information is accurate and consistent across departments. It also helps reduce data siloes, which can lead to misinformation and inefficient workflows. The system can use integrations to update and send data from one platform to another automatically. It can save time and resources for your team.

B2B buyers are increasingly demanding highly specialized and customized products. It can complicate pricing. A CPQ tool can enable you to set up pricing rules that reflect the customer’s requirements and the value of the deliverable. These include dynamic pricing, rate-based pricing (commonly used for service-based deals), and value-based pricing.

With a CPQ system, you can also configure and view 3D product visualizations in real-time, download 3D CAD models in multiple formats and 2D drawings, and display configured products in augmented reality. It can help buyers fully experience your products to ensure they’ll get what they want when the delivery arrives.

To be effective, sales teams need access to a wide variety of information about the products they are selling. However, if all of this information is spread across various platforms and systems, it can be challenging to find what you need when needed. A CPQ solution can unify configuration, pricing, and quoting into a single application accessible to your team.