5 ways to harness the power + potential of a CPQ solution
How can you get the most out of a CPQ solution in the fast-changing world of B2B sales? Keep these five steps in mind.
In an era where so much worth is placed on shiny new things, we tend to forget what works best. For the business-to-business (B2B) sphere, buying isn’t exactly a glamorous or exhilarating process, but it’s certainly one of the most important. Similarly, configure, price, and quote (CPQ) technology may not be the flashiest, but it’s a powerhouse.
Today, businesses are finding success by leveraging CPQ benefits to streamline buying + selling for everyone involved, every step of the way.
CPQ benefits: At the heart of business
Businesses with some of the greatest staying power have created resilience by prioritizing customer retention over customer acquisition. They’ve done this by using CPQ technologies to improve the customer experience.
Creating effective CX isn’t without its challenges, though, especially when that experience relies on players across the B2B value chain.
Sourajit Ghosh, a chief expert in presales at SAP, described the modern CPQ model as a triangle. At each corner of the triangle sits the sellers, manufacturers, and customers.
“CPQ sits at the heart of it,” he said. “[CPQ] is bringing these three worlds together and orchestrating and modeling and allowing the supply chain of buying, selling, and manufacturing to work with each other. And that’s kind of the new way of looking at CPQ.”
Your business has a lot to gain by looking at CPQ differently. Consider these key benefits of modern CPQ for the buying and selling experience:
- Faster results
- Better accuracy
- Personalized customer experience
- Price optimization
CPQ benefits the need for speed
Leading enterprises strive to be as nimble as startups, and innovative startups need the robustness of large enterprises. To get there, your business can take advantage of CPQ to orchestrate approval structures and price negotiations – at a speed that keeps everyone happy.
Customers and employees today expect speed and faster results in everything they do. From the response times of your UIs to the time it takes to deliver a quote, you need to enable speed across the entire experience.
Speed, in addition to the overall ease of your CPQ process, can even be the determining factor in whether a customer sticks with your business. If your quote process is slow and cumbersome, and your sales reps are confused or unprepared, you risk losing the customer to the competition.
Keep customers for life with accurate quotes
Another big benefit of CPQ is accuracy. CPQ software automates the quote process, guiding customers to order only what can be manufactured and delivered. It helps guide sales reps to the right products, so they can deliver a solution that’s the best fit for a customer’s needs.
Errors in quotes can extend the buying process beyond days to week, frustrating the buyer. Inaccurate quotes can cost you money – and customers. CPQ can help your business create complex, accurate approvals that fold in channels, partners, and dealers with ease.
Buying a CPQ solution: Top 5 Things to Consider
Buying a CPQ solution? Here are five things you should know before you make the purchase.
Stand out from the crowd through personalization
Little things can make all the difference, and small details can help differentiate you in a crowded market.
CPQ solutions with features such as e-signatures can enhance customers’ and partners’ experiences with your business more than you may realize.
Another CPQ benefit: Customers and partners can have specific pricing and catalogs tailored just for them. This further helps streamline the B2B buying process and improves CX.
AI supercharges CPQ benefits
Artificial intelligence takes the power of CPQ even further by automating repetitive tasks and helping sales reps make smart decisions.
- Price optimization: Pricing is highly manual, tedious, and prone to error. AI crunches all the sales data about your customers, including the location, size, revenue, and number of customers, to provide a data-based recommendation that’s likely to seal the deal.
- Upsell and cross-sell guidance: Take advantage of opportunities based on your customer’s preferences and past purchases. For instance, if a proposal includes a 13-inch laptop, but a customer’s purchase history indicates a preference for a 15-inch laptop, the AI-enabled CPQ will recommend replacing the smaller item with the bigger one.
- Configuration recommendations: Intelligent CPQ can eliminate the guesswork of configurations by streamlining and automating the process.
- Approval automation: How much faster could you work if you had an accurate estimate of the chances that a quote will be approved? With AI, CPQ can are inform you of those odds, and AI can even make a recommendation on what to change to increase the chances of approval.
