Improve Sales Efficiency in 5 Steps

Picture this: You’ve just met your ideal customer. They’re eager, flush with budget, and your product is the perfect fit. 

Fast-forward a few weeks, and suddenly, you’re staring at an empty inbox, wondering where it all went wrong. 

Sound familiar?

This scenario is all too common when sales efficiency falters. But it doesn’t have to be your reality. In this article, we’ll explore five crucial steps to supercharge your sales process and close deals before your competitors get a look in. 

These strategies aim to do more than just generate revenue. They’ll help you increase sales productivity, enhance customer experience, strengthen loyalty, and elevate your brand’s reputation.

Let’s begin.

1. Captivate Your Audience with Engaging Visuals

“A picture is worth a thousand words” has never been more relevant in sales. In a world of shrinking attention spans, the ability to quickly communicate complex ideas and showcase products in action is invaluable. 

Some studies suggest that the average human attention span has dropped from 12 seconds in 2000 to just 8 seconds in 2020. Visual CPQ (configure, price, quote) solutions offer a game-changing approach to this challenge.

Instead of relying on static product catalogs or lengthy text descriptions, you can now present your offerings in stunning 3D detail. Prospects can interact with a virtual representation of your product, rotating it, zooming in on specific features, and customizing it in real-time. 

This level of engagement not only helps your customers better understand what they’re buying but also significantly reduces the time needed to explain product details. 

Visual representations can help overcome language barriers and technical jargon that might otherwise slow down the sales process. By showing rather than telling, you can ensure that your message resonates clearly with decision-makers across various departments.

Remember, in the B2B world, your buyer often needs to justify their choice to multiple stakeholders. A visuele configuratie doesn’t just sell a product; it gives your champion the tools they need to sell internally. It’s not just a sales tool; it’s a weapon in the hands of your advocates.

In my experience implementing CPQ-oplossingen, I’ve seen a clear trend: companies that embrace visual configuration see, on average, a 40% increase in quote-to-order conversion rates. This isn’t just about pretty pictures––it’s about giving customers the confidence to make complex purchasing decisions.

How to make the most of engaging visuals in your sales process:

1. Leverage augmented en virtual reality to take customer engagement and sales effectiveness to the next level.
2. Use interactive product configurators during sales presentations to allow prospects to explore options and see real-time changes.
3. Incorporate visual elements into your proposals and quotes to reinforce the value proposition and remind customers of the key features.
4. Use visual configuration in sales training to improve information retention and accelerate sales onboarding.
5. Embed visual configurators on your website to let customers explore and customize products independently (see next section.)

2. Automate Sales with Self-Service eCommerce Tools

Building on the power of visual engagement, the next step in improving your sales efficiency ratio is harnessing the full potential of B2B e-commerce. (Note: the B2B eCommerce market is projected to reach almost $48 billion by 2030.) A robust online platform integrated with your visual CPQ solution can dramatically expand your online presence and streamline your customers’ buying process.

Epicor CPQ offers the ability to embed visual configurators directly into your website, transforming it into a powerful, always-on sales tool. This capability allows potential customers to explore, customize, and even purchase complex products at their convenience without the need for direct interaction with your sales team. 

The result? A significant reduction in the sales cycle length and an increase in customer satisfaction.

Key benefits of embedded configurators include:

• Customer Alignment: Meets modern B2B buyer preferences, with 83% favoring website ordering en 90% researching 2-7 sites before purchasing.
• Self-Service Configuration: Customers can independently configure products to their exact specifications.
• Begeleide verkoop: Built-in rules ensure that customers can only make technically feasible combinations, minimizing errors.
• Consultative Selling: When customers can handle the basics themselves, your sales team can focus on being true solution architects rather than order takers.
• Millennial/Gen-Z Appeal: Addresses the needs of younger B2B buyers, who make up 71% of the market (born after 1980).

Pro Tip: You can use Epicor CPQ to capture leads and track customer preferences, even if they don’t complete a purchase immediately. This feature can streamline your sales funnel and reduce customer acquisition costs.

3. Streamline Pricing with Dynamic, Automated Workflows

Complex pricing structures and manual quote calculations can be significant bottlenecks in the sales process. By implementing dynamisch prijzen workflows, you can automate these complicated processes, allowing your sales team to generate accurate quotes quickly and confidently.

A visual CPQ solution with dynamic pricing capabilities transforms how your team handles pricing challenges. Instead of relying on outdated spreadsheets or time-consuming manual calculations, your sales professionals can leverage a system that automatically applies the correct pricing rules, discounts, and promotions based on the specific configuration a customer has chosen.

Deze verkoop automatisering brings several key advantages:

• Consistency in applying pricing policies across all quotes.
• Flexibility to quickly update pricing and pricing rules company-wide.
• Improved accuracy by reducing human error in calculations.
• Significantly faster quote generation, accelerating the sales cycle.

For companies dealing with global markets, a robust dynamic pricing system can also automatically handle currency conversions and location-specific pricing rules. 

To make the most of dynamic pricing workflows:

1. Regularly review and update your pricing rules to align with your sales strategy. Always focus on value-based pricing.
2. Leverage a solution like Epicor CPQ, which can monitor live market conditions and competitor prices and work them into calculations.
3. Train your sales team to understand the logic behind your dynamic pricing system. This will enable them to confidently explain and justify prices to customers.

Pro Tip: Don’t overcomplicate your pricing rules. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should. Remember, the goal is clarity and speed.

4. Accelerate Closing with Automated Quote Generation

With your audience captivated, your reach expanded, and your pricing optimized, the next crucial step is to convert these efforts into tangible results. Automated quote generation transforms the final stages of your sales process into a smooth, efficient experience for both your team and your customers.

A visual CPQ solution with powerful quote generation capabilities allows your sales rep to create comprehensive, accurate, and visually appealing quotes with just a few clicks. This automation:

• Eliminates manual data entry errors and reduces quote creation time.
• Ensures consistent branding across all quotes.
• Includes comprehensive information such as product images, technical specifications, and terms and conditions.

Advanced quote generation systems can also include interactive elements, allowing customers to accept quotes, request changes, or e-sign documents directly. Additionally, they can automatically suggest upsell and cross-sell opportunities, potentially increasing deal sizes without additional effort from your sales team.

To maximize the impact of your generated sales quotes:

1. Customize your quote templates to include compelling calls-to-action and clear next steps for the customer.
2. Append 3D renderings to quotes to improve your win rate and stand out as a digital leader in your space. 
3. Implement a follow-up system that automatically reminds sales reps to check in with customers after sending a quote.

Pro Tip: The most successful companies I work with use quotes as strategic marketing assets, not transactional documents. Remember, in complex B2B sales, your quote might be circulated to 6-10 decision-makers who weren’t involved in the initial conversations. Stand out and boost win rates with engaging 3D visuals.

5. Boost Sales-to-Production Efficiency with Automated Technical Documentation

The final step in optimizing your sales efficiency tackles a significant hurdle many companies face: the need for custom engineering before even providing a quote. This pre-quote engineering process creates a significant bottleneck, slowing sales and potentially losing deals to faster competitors.

A comprehensive visual CPQ solution can revolutionize this process by automating the generation of technical documentation at the configuration stage. This means:

• Eliminating the need for engineers to review and approve every custom request before quoting.
• Automatically generating accurate CAD files and Bills of Materials (BOMs) based on customer configurations.
• Providing instant technical validation, ensuring only manufacturable products are quoted.
• Creating production-ready documentation simultaneously with the quote.

By automating these technical aspects, you can slash the time from initial inquiry to quote from weeks to seconds. This not only accelerates your sales cycle but also allows you to serve customers faster, giving you a significant competitive edge in time-sensitive deals.

To make the most of this automated approach, use the time saved by your engineering team to focus on innovation and product development. Free your hard-to-hire technical experts from the drudgery of transactional work and watch retention increase.

Putting It All Together with CPQ

To understand these efficiency-boosting strategies in context, let’s look at Van Wijnen, a Dutch housing developer that has transformed its operations using Epicor CPQ. Their journey perfectly illustrates how implementing these steps can lead to remarkable improvements in sales efficiency and overall sales performance.

Captivating Audience with Engaging Visuals

Van Wijnen leveraged Epicor CPQ’s advanced 3D visualization capabilities to offer customers an immersive experience. Customers can now visualize their desired configurations in granular detail, from entire housing projects down to individual bathroom tiles. This level of visual engagement has significantly enhanced customer satisfaction and streamlined the decision-making process.

Automating Sales with Self-Service Tools

Van Wijnen has yet to fully leverage eCommerce due to the scale of their projects. Although 70% of decision-makers are prepared to spend up to $500,000 in a single ecommerce transaction, Van Wijnen sells entire neighborhoods of new homes, which falls outside the typical scope of eCommerce. Nevertheless, Epicor CPQ’s customer-facing portal allows buyers to visualize orders in granular detail, enhancing decision-making and accelerating the sales cycle.

Streamlining Pricing with Dynamic Workflows

Epicor CPQ integrates seamlessly with Van Wijnen’s central technical system, which contains the company’s product rules, thereby automating its pricing process. This integration ensures that all quotes are accurate and up-to-date, eliminating time-consuming manual calculations and reducing errors. For companies not using a separate pricing engine (the majority), Epicor CPQ offers the flexibility to create pricing rules directly within the system using a low-code approach.

Accelerating Closing with Automated Quote Generation

Van Wijnen’s sales lead times have been cut by 50% thanks to Epicor CPQ’s automated quote generation. What once took months now takes just a couple of hours, with all necessary documents automatically compiled and generated.

Boosting Sales-to-Production Efficiency

Perhaps most impressively, Van Wijnen has created a seamless “file-to-factory” process. The digital twin created in Epicor CPQ is sent directly to their highly automated factory, enabling them to build 2,400 houses and apartments within a year, each assembled in just a single day.

Samengevat

Visual CPQ isn’t just another sales tool—it’s a one-stop shop for B2B transactions. By fusing 3D visualization, automated pricing, and instant technical documentation, you can build a sales team fit for the digital age while boosting efficiency in the engineering department and factory. 

As millennials and Gen Z climb the corporate ladder, expecting Amazon-like experiences in their B2B purchases, companies slow to adopt these technologies risk falling behind a pack of digital leaders. 

FAQ

What is sales efficiency?

Sales efficiency measures how well your company generates revenue through its sales activities, i.e., how many dollars it makes per dollar spent on sales and marketing.

What is ideal sales efficiency?

A sales efficiency ratio of 1.0 or higher is considered ideal. This means your company generates at least $1 in revenue for every $1 spent on sales and marketing. The sales efficiency formula is:

Sales Efficiency = Annual Revenue  / Total Sales and Marketing Spend

How do you calculate sales effectiveness?

There’s no one agreed-upon formula for measuring sales effectiveness––it depends upon your sales goals. Typical metrics include conversion rates, revenue generated, and deals closed against targets measured against inputs like resources invested.

How do you increase sales efficiency?

To increase sales efficiency, optimize sales processes, leverage technology, and align sales and marketing efforts. Visual Product configuratie, automated quoting, and switching from high-touch sales to self-serve methods can all boost efficiency.

What are the KPIs in sales efficiency?

Critical KPIs for sales efficiency include Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC), Customer Lifetime Value (CLV), sales cycle length, conversion rates, win rate, deal size, and revenue per sales rep. Improving these will bolster your organization’s bottom line.

What is the difference between sales efficiency and effectiveness?

Sales efficiency refers to how well a sales team uses its resources to generate revenue. Sales effectiveness is about how well the sales strategies and tactics work in closing deals and meeting targets.

How do you use KPIs to increase sales?

To use KPIs to increase sales, regularly track and analyze relevant metrics, set clear goals based on these KPIs, and adjust strategies based on the insights gained.