Making the journey shorter
How CPQ helps
Customers rarely want a long, drawn-out sales cycle,
and sales reps never do. It’s in everyone’s best
interest to give customers complete and accurate
decision making information as quickly as possible.
One reason for the popularity of online shopping is
that it gives customers rapid access to key buying
information, including price, features, and other
customers’ opinions, through highly responsive
software. The same qualities hold true for B2B and
complex B2C sales; but it’s more challenging to
provide that information in a complex sales
environment.
The key to closing complex sales faster is being able
to generate prompt, error-free quotes without making
the customer feel pressured. It’s a dance in which you
set the tempo by responding quickly, accurately, and
supportively to advance the interests of your prospect
or customer.
Even though sales that involve quoting and
configuration can’t close as quickly as an Amazon®
purchase, it’s possible to accelerate the sales journey
and minimize unnecessary obstacles. A
well-designed, technology-driven sales process
supported by effective configure-price-quote (CPQ)
software can turn leads into sales more quickly and
more frequently than an ad hoc, manual process.
Research shows that this approach yields concrete
results such as:
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10% higher sales
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30% higher deal sizes
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25% higher win rates
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30% more reps making quota1
By shortening the distance from engagement to
conversion, CPQ helps create a more successful and
productive sales process.
Customer experience Industry Perspectives
There are several important ways that CPQ
technology improves sales performance:
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Less friction—The quoting process requires you to
gather information from multiple sources,
calculating prices and quantities, with options and
parts, and considering multiple details. If you have
to handle that process manually, there’s no way to
avoid delays. But when you have an automated
process, quoting requires less work and happens
faster.
More responsive to buyer
motivations—According to a recent report by
Forrester, “Emotion was the number one factor in
customer loyalty across 17 of the 18 industries that
were studied.”2 By allowing greater customer
involvement in the configuration process with CPQ
systems that give quick visual feedback and a wide
choice of options, you engender a sense of
ownership by the prospect that tends to lead to a
faster sale and long-term customer loyalty.
Let sales reps focus on what they do
best—People who master the art and science of
selling have far more valuable ways to spend their
time than doing paperwork to prepare quotes. It
can cost between $75,000 and $90,000 to
replace a telesales employee, and up to $300,000
to replace people in top sales positions.3 By
streamlining the process of pricing and quoting,
you free up sales executives to do what they do
best and improve your odds of retaining top talent.
The results
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A faster quoting process not only increases sales by
processing more transactions, it also often leads to a
higher sales closing rate, or “batting average,” for a
variety of reasons you might not expect.
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Faster, more accurate RFP responses—Nobody
enjoys the drudgery of preparing RFP responses,
but a quick, complete response to an RFP
improves your odds of getting the business. With
CPQ, you can make RFP responses systematic by
drawing on the elements of previous RFP
responses that you’ve already saved in your CPQ
system.
Structured price negotiations—Product
configuration and customization can often be a
useful tool for price negotiation, in situations where
you can omit some features to reduce a price or
add features to justify a higher price. CPQ software
not only speeds and simplifies the sales and
ordering process, it effectively structures the
negotiation so that you maintain suitable profit
margins on the sale. You also help sales reps see
when it’s time to walk away from a lowball offer.
Better use of “tribal knowledge” for competitive
advantage—As time goes on, people in your
organization may start to notice that certain options
and choices drive more sales or higher prices.
When you’ve structured all quotes through your
CPQ solution, that information becomes part of the
collective knowledge of the organization and
becomes easy to repeat and exploit.
Customer experience Industry Perspectives
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Fewer “no decision” sales losses—Some sales
objections can be answered by modifying the
terms of the offer. Others can’t be answered
because the objection isn’t serious. When it’s easy
to modify a quote to answer an objection, your
sales reps have a way to evaluate whether a
prospect is likely to make a purchase, or whether
they’re stringing you along.
Track buyer behavior—Marketers have long
known the value of automated tracking of the
customer journey, but sales reps haven’t had an
equally effective way of tracking and evaluating the
route a prospect takes on the path to becoming a
customer. Advanced CPQ solutions give your sales
team a way to follow every inquiry, message,
request, change, and objection from every
customer, and compare the status of a current
prospect with information about those who have
purchased before. That gives your sales reps and
sales managers critical information about which
sales are ready to close soon, and which ones
need an extra push across the finish line.
While many view CPQ technology as a tool for
improving the quality and accuracy in the
manufacturing of complex products, it’s also an
exceptionally powerful sales tool. By making CPQ
capabilities central to your sales process, you give
your sales reps an enormous competitive advantage
and a quicker path from engagement to conversion in
your customer’s journey.
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