When there is a lot of competition in business, the winning idea isn’t always the best. As the pace of business picks up, being the first to meet customers’ wants has become more critical and often makes a difference.
Of all the good reasons a company might not need a Configure Price Quote (CPQ) solution, these are the more important ones.
Here are the five biggest myths about CPQ and why you should not believe them.
1. My sales team will never use it
Myth
Adoption is the most essential thing to consider when putting in place a new sales solution. You can’t get anything out of it if your sales team doesn’t use it.
- There are several reasons why sellers might not use a new method:
- They are fed up with being given new tools all the time.
- They think that the primary purpose of these tools is to help management.
- Their sales tech stack is already too big and not connected well enough.
The truth
There is a real fear that adoption won’t work out. But if you choose the right CPQ option for your business, your sales team will not only use the new method but also promote it. A flexible CPQ system with many easy-to-use configuration options for all kinds of quoting and pre-quote tasks can help you avoid adoption failure. This cuts down on the time your salespeople need to spend making quotes and, in the long run, means less paperwork for them to do, so they can focus on what they do best: selling.
If set up correctly, a good CPQ solution can help sales teams do their jobs better and improve the entire customer experience. In addition, it can make selling easier, boost output, and even open up new ways to make money.
2. It will make my sales team’s job harder.
Myth
It’s natural for salespeople to think that a CPQ will make their jobs harder. And who could blame a sales boss for thinking that, given what they know about their team?
The truth
Likely, your sales team is already working hard to set up solutions and make sales quotes that look like professionals wrote them. They either use a tool to set up the correct goods or do it by hand, and they write their proposals with a different tool, like Word. After putting it all together, they’ll still have to enter everything into the CRM.
Approval workflows standardize and streamline sales processes, get rid of silos between parties, and improve internal communication. All of this is possible with a good CPQ. This ensures sales plans get the business, legal, financial, and technical reviews they need as quickly as possible before they are sent to customers.
Order entry mistakes can ruin any deal, but this cuts or even removes them completely. And if you want to close deals, you need to know how to make the approval process as efficient as possible.
3. We don’t need a CPQ because our bids and build plans are already accessible.
Myth
Microsoft Word and Excel are just two programs that make it easy for salespeople to make quotes. Why spend money on a quoting system when our business doesn’t need that much practical complexity?
The truth
Most likely, you don’t need the “C” (Configure) or the “P” (Price) in CPQ. But what about the “Q”? Doesn’t it make sense for your company to put out a constant, professional quote? Someone looks over the quotes that salespeople make, right? Are they fully aware of how prices work? Do they follow the rules for your company’s brand? Do they show the level of professionalism that your company wants to show? Have they been given the technical and business approvals before they are sent to customers?
You must price your products right, even if setting them up is easy. You can have a proposal priced and made immediately, or you can take some time in Word to make your quote by hand. It’s a simple choice. Automation not only saves time but also makes sure that your team sends out proposals on time that are uniform, free of mistakes, and professional.
4. The problems we have can’t be solved with a CPQ
Myth
There are a lot of companies with highly complex pricing and configuration plans. They might have tiered pricing, multiple levels of discounts, many different pricing factors, and complicated relationships between products and quantities that need a lot of math. It’s easy to see why someone might think a CPQ couldn’t cover these situations.
The truth
Yes, there are a lot of complicated setups out there. It’s still true that many businesses think their setups are more complicated than they are. It’s not necessarily impossible to automate an answer just because it needs many of the things we just discussed. No matter how complicated your setups are, CPQ starts with a “C.” The technology is made to configure, no matter how easy or complicated the task is.
When it comes down to it, the ability of the solution to model your goods and prices determines whether CPQ or a specific CPQ vendor is right for you. Some CPQ solutions can give you a proof of concept in just one or two days. This way, you can eliminate the doubts and risks and see if a CPQ solution would work for you. It would help if you didn’t write off CPQ until you’ve looked it over.
5. CPQ is excellent, but we don’t have enough resources to set it up and run it.
Myth
In the past, CPQs have needed many resources to set up and run. It wasn’t unusual for businesses, especially big ones, to have a dedicated team of CPQ administrators. A team is still needed to maintain many of these old CPQ systems.
The truth
When CPQ first came out, a lot of things were different. Today, CPQ integration is a must for B2B, and many of them come with many advanced features already built in. These solutions are enterprise apps that run in the cloud. To set them up, you only need to log in and change the settings to match your business rules, goods, and prices. Even more helpful, these flexible CPQs can easily connect to and work as a module within your current CRM platform, so you don’t need to know anything about technology to set them up and handle them.
A lot of CPQ systems are made so that they can be easily maintained by people in Sales Operations instead of IT. They use simple user interfaces with tables and basic rule structures that let business users make changes immediately. CPQ teams will not be around for much longer.
Conclusion
It’s more than just a sales tool because it was made for business people and used by them. It makes complex flexible processes possible by giving deal management flexibility, speed, openness, and teamwork so sales leaders can make good choices that have a significant effect.
