The business world has enough acronyms and abbreviations already, am I right? There’s CRM, ERP, KPI, ROI, API, [insert your favorite acronym here]. Let’s just throw another one in the mix: CPQ.
What the heck does that stand for?
CPQ is short for Configure Price Quote software. Different versions of CPQ software have been around for decades but it hasn’t been until more recently that it became accessible for all business large and small.
And why would you need CPQ software?
Listen, you want your team getting face-time with customers and doing what they’re superstars at, right? Unless they’re magicians or unless you already have a CPQ solution, we’re guessing they’ve been spending loads of time manually creating each quote.
On top of that, without a uniform system in place, sales reps often have problems finding and using up-to-date forms and literature for their quotes because they can all live in different locations across your network. And then there’s your approval process.
The people who need to approve quotes are often busy and backlogs build up, slowing down your sales reps. You may also struggle with consistent pricing and discounts because of a complex approval process or cumbersome price books. And all of that slows down your revenue streams and means you miss customers your competitors are getting. Get the picture?
If you’re starting to see the problem, let’s talk more about how the Salesforce CPQ can help. For starters, a good CPQ means most of the quote creation process is automated. Sales reps answer a series of questions and the software creates the quote based on the information they input. Quotes can be made in terms of minutes instead of hours.
Then, the Salesforce CPQ has a built-in automated approval process. Sales reps can follow different paths in the sales process. The software guides them and reminds them of products they need to add to complete a bundle and alerts them when they’ve added a product that doesn’t fit.
They can also use custom discounts to offer automatic partner discounts or pricing to qualifying customers. And because the whole system is part of the Salesforce platform, customer data stays in one location throughout their lifecycle and doesn’t need to be manually updated in different software.
Your sales team can also customize quotes and invoices so the look is uniform and customers experience a unified brand journey. A faster, more customer-focused sales team With a faster quote process, sales reps get more time with customers. And we’re not talking minutes here, we’re talking hours of time during their work week where they can now build relationships instead of performing pesky administrative tasks.
In the end, that’s going to look like a stronger business for you and satisfied customers along the way.
How fast is your quote process? We can help make it faster.