One common challenge many retailers face is market dynamism and its effects on purchases and sales. Dynamism is often caused by a shift in trends, which ultimately affects your customers’ needs and wants. Due to the ever-changing dynamics of the market, customers always have different expectations. Sadly, when these expectations aren’t met, many move on to competitors for a better offer.
For this reason and more, many companies are trying to meet the modern demands of the new age via configure, price, and quote software, often referred to as CPQ software. We discuss this concept in detail in the following paragraphs and look at some of its benefits for your business.
What is CPQ, and how does it work?
To help even the most non-technical person understand what CPQ software is, let’s imagine you’re going to purchase a car. You’ve been looking around a specific showroom for the perfect car that matches your personality and, of course, pockets. All through your search, you were encouraged to go for a test drive, which you agreed to.
Visibly pleased and ready to make a decision, you begin discussing pricing while also considering the most suitable insurance coverage you’ll need, as well as the accessories and car color. The salesperson is persistent, often selling some accessories as necessities and other additional services and goods to prevent you from moving to the next best showroom. Although this strategy is the norm when selling cars, many companies (especially those that operate online) have shifted from traditional selling techniques to using CPQ systems.
A typical CPQ system takes your credit score and factors in all accessories and car features you desire to give you accurate price quotes in half the time it took the salesman to coax you into going for a test drive. The CPQ software program helps you compile necessary variables and options into a single entity, allowing you to generate accurate quotes for your services and products with the main goal of bringing in more revenue.
What are the benefits of CPQ software?
Listed below are a few benefits of having efficient CPQ software.
Time-Saving: With help from your CPQ tool, many B2B organizations get to optimize their sales efficiently by getting their staff to work smarter with their time. CPQ takes up tasks that usually waste the time of your human resources. The application of sales functionality in your business helps improve your efficiency with other time-bound processes, which in turn help determine your sales outcomes. The more time-wasting is eliminated in your organization, the more likely your business will gain a continuous revenue stream rather than random, one-time purchases.
Increased Quote Productivity: When any CPQ software is adopted into a business process, it helps boost your quoting productivity. An increased quote efficiency often means that your customers are allowed, by the software, to customize their products and receive real-time, accurate price quotations at any point in the transaction stage. Increased quote efficiency isn’t only for prices but also for the generation of contracts, proposals, and many more.
Enhanced Transparency: The automation of your quoting system increases your transparency with customers. With this software, you need not go back and forth on your price quotations, and comparison of prices is also made fairly easy, accelerating your overall sales process. One great thing about CPQ software is that it can record all sales calls. This means you and your staff can always refer to calls to fully address all questions and queries posed by customers. This helps prevent banter and constant confusion, affecting the total customer experience.
Larger Profits: When your CPQ solution is integrated with a CRM platform, you’re bound to make even larger revenue because your customers will have a single streamlined platform where they get to choose pricing and other essential service features on the go.
All in all, CPQ is an innovative system that helps improve customer experience and a business’s internal processes.
