Personalization in Sales: Lifting Revenue By 15% With CPQ

Personalization in sales and marketing stands among the few strategies with demonstrable, quantifiable financial impact. According to McKinsey & Co, personalization can:

• Reduce customer acquisition costs by 50%
• Lift revenues by 5 to 15%
• Increase marketing ROI by 10 to 30%

These impacts translate directly to customer expectations and customer behavior. 71% of customers expect companies to deliver personalized interactions. And 76% get frustrated when this doesn’t happen.

Despite these compelling statistics, many B2B companies struggle to implement personalization efforts at scale. Let’s examine how personalization strategies have evolved to meet today’s demands.

Old School Personalization

Traditionally, B2B companies took a more limited and manual approach to sales personalization. At least, compared to today’s data-driven methods.

Account-based marketing (ABM) formed the cornerstone of these efforts, with sales teams investing significant time researching key accounts to create customized sales pitches and materials for specific clients. This approach relied heavily on personal relationships, as account executives would cultivate connections with key decision-makers, leveraging their knowledge of customer preferences to tailor their personalized approach accordingly.

Customer segmentation by industry and company size worked in tandem as foundational personalization strategies. Companies would develop distinct marketing materials and sales outreach based on broad industry categories, while simultaneously adjusting their offerings based on whether a prospect was an enterprise, mid-market, or small business customer. This often resulted in tiered service models, with dedicated account managers reserved for larger clients who received premium attention.

While these traditional approaches recognized personalization’s importance, they were inherently limited by their manual nature, making them difficult to scale and often resulting in inconsistent customer experiences across different touchpoints in the customer journey.

As technology like CPQ software has evolved, so too have the possibilities for more sophisticated, scalable personalization. How B2B companies approach customization and customer engagement has utterly transformed, as we’ll discuss in the next section.

How Visual CPQ Software Fuels Personalization

Visual CPQ (Configure, Price, Quote) solutions significantly improve traditional B2B personalization approaches in several key ways:

1. Interactive product configuration: Instead of static presentations, customers can interact with 3D product models, visualizing customizations in real-time. They can see their personalized product with their chosen specifications, colors, and branding, creating stronger emotional connection to the purchase.
2. Guided selling: Visual CPQ can incorporate intelligent personalized recommendations based on individual customer needs, industry, and previous purchases, creating a more personalized experience than generic industry segmentation.
3. Customer-specific pricing: Price updates happen dynamically as customers add features or make changes, providing immediate transparency rather than waiting for a sales rep to recalculate quotes.
4. Self-service capabilities: Buyers can navigate through options at their own pace, eliminating the friction often found in traditional sales-led processes. The self-guided CPQ workflow empowers customers to chart their own path, exploring configurations and pricing in a way that aligns with their unique decision-making style and timeline.
5. Integration with customer data: Modern visual CPQ systems connect with CRM and other systems to incorporate historical purchase data and preferences, creating truly personalized experiences beyond what manual account managers could provide.
6. Scalable personalization: Unlike manual processes that were reserved for top accounts, visual CPQ democratizes personalization across the entire customer base.

By combining visual engagement with data-driven personalization and removing manual bottlenecks, visual CPQ is far more effective than traditional B2B personalization strategies.

Measurable Benefits of Visual CPQ for B2B Personalization

The implementation of visual CPQ solutions delivers measurable improvements that align with the personalization statistics highlighted by McKinsey & Co. At Epicor CPQ, our research suggests advanced CPQ software boosts average conversion rates by 40%, sales cycle speed by 35%, and deal size by 105%.

For B2B organizations, the benefits manifest across several key dimensions:

Revenue Performance: Visual CPQ solutions typically lead to higher average order values as buyers discover compatible options and add-ons during the interactive configuration process. The streamlined approach also reduces quote generation time, in some cases transforming what was previously a weeks-long sales process into one that takes hours or even minutes. This acceleration of the sales cycle, combined with the engaging visual experience, frequently results in improved conversion rates compared to traditional methods.

Customer Experience Enhancement: 71% of customers expect personalized interactions, and visual CPQ directly addresses this expectation. The self-service configuration capabilities reduce the communication cycles between buyers and sellers, while the visual validation features help customers feel more confident about complex purchases. This confidence is particularly valuable in B2B contexts where purchasing decisions often involve significant investments and multiple stakeholders.

Dynamic Pricing: Real-time pricing transparency eliminates surprises late in the sales process, building trust that supports long-term relationship development and customer loyalty. Additionally, the emotional connection created when customers can visualize their exact configured product mirrors the personalization approaches that have proven successful in B2C environments.

Operational Efficiency: Similar to how personalization can reduce customer acquisition costs by up to 50%, CPQ improves operational metrics through three mechanisms.

• The rules-based configuration prevents ordering errors that can be costly to correct later in the fulfillment process.
• Sales teams benefit from reduced training requirements as the intuitive visual tools flatten the learning curve for complex product portfolios.
• Manufacturing efficiency improves through more accurate specifications, and sales resources can be reallocated from manual configuration tasks to more valuable consultative selling activities—effectively allowing companies to scale their personalization efforts without proportional increases in headcount.

Omnichannel Consistency: One limitation of traditional personalization approaches was their inconsistent application across channels and customer segments. Visual CPQ addresses this challenge by extending personalization capabilities beyond top accounts to the entire customer base. The centralized product rules enable consistent buying experiences across web, mobile, sales meetings, and partner channels, while still allowing for localized pricing and options for different markets.

Conclusion

As companies seek competitive advantage through personalization strategies, Visual CPQ provides a technological foundation that bridges the gap between customer expectations and operational realities. Unlike traditional approaches that were limited by their manual nature, CPQ solutions enable personalization that scales efficiently across the organization, delivering the experiences customers increasingly demand while providing the measurable business outcomes executives require.