You can always hire better salespeople. Or provide better training. But you should be doing these things already. No, if you want to boost your sales figures, you need the right technology on your side. You need a configure price quote solution.
Configure price quote solutions (CPQ) can boost your win rate by streamlining your sales process, improving the customer experience, and supercharging your sales team’s performance. Reps can configure complex products quicker, create quotes with fewer mistakes, and close deals faster than ever.
In this blog post, we’ll explore what configure price quote solutions are, what features to look for, and how CPQ solutions can directly impact your win rate and deal size. So read on to improve your sales performance and start generating more profit for your business.
What Are Configure Price Quote Solutions?
Configure price quote solutions are pieces of software that help automate three crucial steps in your sales cycle: configuring a product, calculating prices, and generating the quotes, proposals, and estimates your customer needs to part with their money.
Let’s take these steps in turn.
Step 1. Configuring the Product
The number of possible permutations can be overwhelming when dealing with complicated products that offer countless configuration options. A change in one of those options might affect other selectable features; consequently, it becomes virtually impossible for sales representatives to keep track of all product details and avoid errors.
CPQ solutions take your engineering knowledge and reuse it to configure products automatically. The software removes the burden of configuring intricate products away from salespeople and manages it on its own.
Epicor CPQ Brochure
The way that companies quote, sell, design and manufacture products has fundamentally changed. Epicor CPQ is different too, and this brochure distinguishes it from other CPQ solutions.
Users can configure products using CPQ via various methods. But the highest quality CPQ tools come with visual product configurators, which salespeople and end customers can use to design their desired products. Instead of spending time on puzzling part numbers and illustrations, users can view 3D models of their choices and quickly scroll through all available options.
Visuals give customers a better idea of your product and how they can best optimize it for their purposes. When customers can view the end result, they’re more confident in their purchase decision and have a better chance of getting approval from a buying committee if needed.
Because humans process visual information literally tens of thousands of times faster than text, it stands to reason that the more visual clarity the customer gets, the deeper their understanding and the more likely they are to purchase. That’s why the most robust CPQ tools, like Epicor CPQ, feature fully immersive visual technologies like augmented and virtual reality.
With augmented reality, customers can see their products in situ by using their cell phone or tablet to overlay their product onto the real-world environment. Virtual reality transports customers into a completely immersive 3D world where they can view and even “use” products as if they were physically in front of them.
Step 2. Quoting Prices
CPQ quoting tools calculate prices in real-time as users configure products–every change they make is instantly reflected in the price. This responsiveness is great for customers. They can make more informed configuration choices and stay within their budget.
Customers don’t have to wait for a sales rep to “get back to you with a price” each time. Moreover, letting customers play around with upgrades that are just out of reach budget-wise encourages them to splurge a bit more on those premium features.
With a CPQ quoting tool, your sales team can use advanced pricing rules to develop the most profitable deal tailored to each customer’s needs. You don’t have to stick to cost-plus pricing; CPQ can consider a wide range of variables to maximize margin. Variables include:
- Customer purchase and price history.
- Discounts and promotions.
- Real-time inventory levels.
- Even competitors’ prices.
Step 3. Generating Documents
Step 3–auto-generating quotes–is the most straightforward of the three. Still, it yields some of the biggest wins for companies. It’s a massive time-saver. Sales reps who would ordinarily spend tedious hours creating quotes, proposals, and estimates manually can quickly generate an array of documents with just one click. Customers can order without delay, and salespeople can devote more energy to closing more deals.
How the Best CPQ Software Helps You Win More Deals
Epicor CPQ increases win rate by 40% and deal size by 105%. Here’s how.
Streamlined Sales Process
CPQ automates the creation of quotes, proposals, and other sales documents, allowing sales reps to focus on other activities, such as prospecting and closing deals. Automation can help sales reps close more deals in less time, increasing overall productivity and revenue.
Improved Accuracy
CPQ ensures quotes and proposals are accurate and consistent. Real-time validation helps reduce the risk of errors and misunderstandings and improves the overall quality of the sales process.
Enhanced Customer Experience
CPQ improves the customer experience by providing a more intuitive and user-friendly interface for configuring complex products and reviewing quotes and proposals. Ease of use can increase customer satisfaction and make it easier for customers to do business with your company.
Enhanced Collaboration
CPQ creates a single centralized repository for all of your sales and product data. Having a single source of truth can help facilitate collaboration between sales reps and other departments, such as finance, marketing, and engineering. Collaboration ensures all necessary information is included in quotes and proposals.
Continuous Sales Improvement
CPQ helps sales reps and managers better forecast and improve future performance by providing detailed data on past sales and the factors that contributed to them. The sales team can identify trends, spot signs of potential weakness, and make more accurate predictions about future revenue.
Improved Cross-Selling and Upselling
CPQ help sales reps identify opportunities for cross-selling and upselling by presenting customers with relevant product recommendations based on their needs and preferences. This can increase deal size and customer satisfaction.
Intelligent Pricing Strategies
CPQ can help sales reps and managers better understand the factors influencing pricing and how to optimize prices based on market conditions and other factors.
Enhanced Negotiations
CPQ can help sales reps negotiate deals better by giving them real-time access to detailed product data. Reps can quickly and easily create and modify quotes and proposals, more effectively address customer objections, and secure better terms for their deals.
In Summary
Configure price quote solutions are software tools that help automate the process of configuring, pricing, and quoting products for customers. These solutions streamline the sales process and improve the customer experience. They also boost sales teams’ performance by allowing them to configure complex products quickly, create quotes with fewer mistakes, and close deals faster.
CPQ solutions elevate the customer experience by providing visual product configurators and immersive technologies like augmented and virtual reality. These technologies allow customers to better understand and visualize the products they are considering purchasing, making them more likely to buy from you over competitors.