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Any well-versed sales professional understands that coming up with the right price is a complicated endeavor. This is because the price of a product or service often depends on several factors (especially if the offering is customizable and has different upgrade and add-on options). The wrong price could easily eliminate a lucrative deal and alienate your business as a professional and competitive choice in the space.
This is where CPQ software comes into play. In a nutshell, CPQ software allows businesses to easily generate sales quotes for prospective clients. If you answer yes to any of the following questions, CPQ software is right for you:
- Do your sales reps consistently run into issues producing accurate price quotes within a reasonable time frame?
- Do you have multiple product or services offerings?
- Is the quote generation process time-consuming?
- Would a more automated quote generation tool help save time and increase sales?
- Could your sales reps benefit from spending more time on developing real relationships with your clients?
- Does your sales team use outdated technology to generate quotes?
- Are spreadsheets slowing down your team?
According to Forbes, cloud-based CPQ software was considered one of the hottest enterprise trends of 2016, due to a variety of factors. A Gartner study found that between 2014 and 2015, the CPQ market saw a 20% year-over-year increase, and was worth $570 million by 2015. Gartner expects that trend to continue through 2020.
Unsure of what the software functionally stands for? It’s simple. CPQ is an acronym for Configure, Price, and Quote. The configuration aspect of the software takes into consideration the unique combination of your product offerings by eliminating the “one-size-fits-all” model. By configuring quotes, you’re able to speed up the sales process and work on other deals.
The Pricing portion allows businesses to set any number of pricing factors to come up with the best possible options for clients. Product pricing management is crucial to the business, and the ability to quickly provide prospects with an accurate and fair price can tip the odds of a sale in your favor. With CPQ software, you can manage those offerings and factor in the pricing and promotional activity of your competitors to help you stay ahead. It allows users to seamlessly set up discounts, bundle pricing, special pricing, volume pricing, and much more.
And finally, the Quote element ties it all together by spitting out the most accurate quote based on the chosen factors.Sales reps who don’t have the resources or aren’t aware of the benefits of CPQ software are often stuck in a vortex of long, complicated spreadsheets. Providing quick responses to your clients helps you appear professional and improves the customer service experience. Price changes can also be quickly implemented, regardless of the location.
Whether you’re a global business or a local brand looking to grow, you can benefit from this tool. Either way, you don’t want to spend too much time manually calculating prices on a client-to-client basis. It’s a time-consuming, labor intensive, and careful process, and you could easily lose clients during the wait.
Another key feature of CPQ software is its ability to integrate with a CRM like Salesforce. Together, these tools provide an comprehensive suite that help businesses manage all aspects of product and customer behavior. With this integration, the CPQ essentially acts as another tab within the customer relationship management platform. This high-level overview helps sales reps manage all aspects of the cycle under one roof and make better sales forecasting decisions.
