Since you already have a CRM system, why do you need a CPQ system that works with it?

It’s “common sense” that businesses with more than 11 employees should use Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software. CRM is expected to bring in more than $40 billion in sales in 2018. It is the fastest-growing software market.

Still, the CRM can’t handle every part of the sales process alone. Different groups of people also have different needs. For example, managers use CRM for its reports and accountability features, while salespeople want tools to make their jobs easier and faster. But those sellers don’t always get what they want. When it comes to the bottom of the sales funnel—the part of configuration, pricing, and negotiation—this problem becomes even more critical to the business. Many deals are lost because of slow responses and methods that don’t work well.

In many of the businesses we talk to, sales teams still use tools they must use by hand. Some of these businesses use Salesforce or other CRMs, but they still use “good old” MS Excel and Word when it comes to quotes and bids.

When companies have a quoting process that isn’t linked to anything else, it slows down the sales cycle and costs them business; all the work they put into using a CRM solution to make things more efficient is for nothing. When this happens, a CPQ system can make all the difference.

Inefficient ways of quoting are hurting your business.

Workflows that don’t work well can be bad for sales teams of any size. Because the issue is so widespread, the Aberdeen Group studied it, looking at how companies can save time and money by using CPQ options. First, they discovered that companies with the best processes make 10% fewer versions of the average sales proposal. This saves considerable time and reduces mistakes and delays in the proposal process. Aberdeen also found that companies that used a CPQ solution saw their lead conversion rate increase by 3.6% annually and their customer renewal rate increase by 3.9%. Companies that didn’t use a CPQ solution saw slight drops in both areas.

Aside from making things more efficient, the Aberdeen report found that companies that use CPQ see their business success improve year over year compared to companies that don’t use CPQ:

• Year over year, businesses that use CPQ can grow their sales 48% faster than companies that don’t use CPQ.
• This means that CPQ users can increase their profits 57% faster than non-users, year over year.
• Year over year, CPQ users shorten their sales cycle 13 times more than non-users.
• CPQ users keep sales reps three times longer than non-users, while non-users lose sales reps.

Knowing how CPQ solutions can help with sales effectiveness

It’s harder for businesses to get new customers when they take too long to send a quote or a sales plan that isn’t well put together or when quotes have mistakes in the pricing or configuration. CPQ products help businesses stay away from this issue. Simply put, they make proposals easier by including configuration wizards, proposal templates, real-time collaboration, automatic price updates, and automated review workflows.

The Aberdeen Group says that using a CPQ system to improve sales workflows can save a lot of time and effort:

Companies can ensure that all interactions with customers and prospects are top-notch by adding a CPQ solution directly to their existing CRM processes. This is especially important when interactions are most crucial at the end of the sales cycle.

CPQ Integration to Boost Adoption Rates

In one of our earlier blog posts, we asked why some sales training projects fail. That post talked about how it all comes down to usage rates or making sure that the solutions you build are ones that your sales team will use. As anyone who has tried and failed to make their reps use new software knows, it doesn’t go over very well.

Instead, connect your CPQ system to your CRM system, which they already use (which you probably worked hard to make work). Instead of switching between tools, which slows down work, sellers can use powerful quoting tools built into the CRM system without changing how the company does business.

Conclusion

• Companies that buy CRM solutions know how important it is to use software tools to help their sales teams work more efficiently. The next step to getting peak efficiency is to add a CPQ solution.