6 Signs That Tell You When It is the Right Time to Use CPQ

73% of sales firms say that the most common cause behind lost deals is price, according to the Aberdeen Group. Therefore, one must very careful when providing price quotes for their products and services.

Configure Price Quote or CPQ is a software, which aids businesses in defining sales quotes for their prospects. In certain industries, having fixed pricing is not a possibility because pricing could be influenced by a number of factors, such as geo-specific conditions, impact of competition. Customized products and services are equally tough to price. However, with CPQ software, the process becomes simplified and smart, and companies are able to create optimized price quotes.

As sales leaders, you might have been just fed up of the traditional process of crafting price quotes for a product or service. But, how do you know when is the time to stop and find an all new way to fix things and streamline the pricing and quoting process? Read on to learn the 6 major signs that are clearly telling you that it’s time to switch to CPQ.

1. Dependence on one/few person(s) for every quote review and approval

If your team has only a limited number of people to decide sales quotes and ensure accuracy of product configuration, it’s the first sign that you need to think about an alternative solution. Since, your ability to scale is now dependent on a sure shot bottleneck, which can easily be automated using software. What you need is a long-term sustainable solution – CPQ that automates and accelerates the process of price quoting while promising accuracy.

2. Inaccuracy of sales quotes

No matter if your pricing is inaccurate or the configuration is not up to the mark, sending wrong price quotes to your customers can be damaging to your business. If it’s a new customer you are dealing with, you would not want to start off with a negative experience as a result of poorly quoted price.

3. Less-than-expected revenue

Even if you think you are managing your price quote process well, you might not be able to scale your business and have agility because of the slow manual processes. You need automated process that could speed up your business and help you grow, which can be done by CPQ. This is applicable for organizations of all sizes. The increase in the number of quality sales quotes submitted to customers could be directly proportional to the growth of your business. With CPQ, you can easily ensure significantly increased number of sales quotes.

4. Low sales efficiency

If you’re still using MS-Word or Excel to craft your price quotes, it’s high-time you move ahead of your competitors and in fact, stand out. Creating quotes with tools like Word and Excel consumes a lot of your time while leaving a lot of room for errors. CPQ can do it for you flawlessly, accurately, and quickly.

5. Less focus on effective sales

The onus to create quotes anytime, anywhere, and on any device remains on the shoulders of sales teams. While you as an organization may think that it is their job, you must lighten their load by taking the quoting job from them. They actually have a lot of things to focus on. By giving them CPQ, you will help them be more efficient and convert more leads into customers. To make them even more efficient, give mobile CPQ.

6. Need for improved sales execution strategies

Technology was always meant to add to your productivity while ensuring more precision. Implementing the CPQ technology, you will surely make processes quicker, better and more result-oriented in terms of creating sales success. Bonus Tip: Integrating the Configure Price Quote technology with Salesforce Sales Cloud

If your sales team lives in Salesforce, merely automating your proposal pricing and quoting process is not enough. A much better solution to making your sales reps more productive and profitable is to integrate your CPQ software with Salesforce Sales Cloud.

Final Word

The six reasons why you need CPQ have already directed many organizations toward the software, helping them improve their process to craft quotes, increase their revenue as well as build sales efficiency. A 2016 Aberdeen Group report uncovered that some among the leading users of CPQ witnessed higher revenue YoY by five folds along with a saving of $1 million in sales rep replacement costs over a decade.

Want to leverage CPQ for your business? Contact us.