CPQ – Why Do You Need It?

According to the Aberdeen Group, the sales cycle can see a 28% reduction with CPQ, thereby positively impacting sales rep productivity.

Sales reps have to multi-task – right from persuading customers to buy their product or service to finally sealing the deal. One of the most important steps is to decide on an accurate sales quote without inefficiencies and errors.

Given the complexities of enterprise sales, manual methodologies such as using excel or word for a price quote don’t suffice. CPQ was launched as a software in order to tackle this problem head-on. Let’s dive in to know more about this technology and whether you really need it.

What is CPQ?

Configure Price Quote or CPQ technology can help break the cycle of sales quote uncertainty by delivering stability and improvements in sales profitability and performance. The right price of products depends on different factors such as:

• Costs associated with production
• Local economic factors
• Competition

CPQ software tries to address this by allowing companies to come up with accurate price quotes sans errors. With built-in analytics, your reps can discount smarter in order to stay ahead of the competition no matter how complex your business becomes.

Benefits of CPQ

Speed deal cycles

Direct reps to the best products and pricing for customers by shortening deal cycle. Eradicate delays caused due to approval backlogs, manual errors or outdated pricing and product information.

Increase deal size

Sales reps can increase deal size with the help of cross-sell and up-sell recommendations while configuring products that align to the preference of customers.

Automate sales

Efficiently manage the product, pricing and proposal so that every price quote is accurate.
Analyze Sales Performance: Get visibility into real time activities of your sales reps with analytics. Meet sales goals by tracking product & pricing trends.

Accelerate business quotes

CPQ makes the journey from quote-to-contract much easier by connecting contract and sales process, so you can win deals faster and sell more.

Why do you need CPQ?

CPQ must be adapted when:

• Your sales reps still use conventional methods of configuring products to create price quotes
• Your organization offers a wide range of products/services
• Your organization is large with broad product ranges
• It’s tough to keep track of external factors, for instance, special offers from competitors

Top CPQ Providers

SteelBrick

Giving sales reps the ability to make deals in a lesser time by automating the lead-to-cash process, SteelBrick, has stellar features like user-defined discount schedules, quote term editor and real-time price rules in configuration.

Apttus

The only full suite of CPQ-CLM-Billing tools that is native to the Salesforce platform, Apttus can be used either in conjunction with the Excel plugin toolkits, contract management and guided selling.

Gartner predicts that CPQ will continue to be a popular enterprise technology and will see an annual growth of 20% by 2020. However, when deciding to invest in CPQ, you need to weigh up the potential benefits of the software against the costs. If your product line is relatively simple and your business is small, then it may not be worth it to purchase CPQ.

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