Putting a CPQ solution to work reveals real-world benefits

People prefer simple interactions with businesses, yet they want all of the latest features and capabilities in the products and services they buy. That leaves companies with a dilemma: how to sell highly complex offerings in the easiest, most transparent way. And it’s why more of them are turning to a CPQ solution.

Products are becoming increasingly complex. Selling goods with various configurations and options helps you stay competitive, and your pricing strategy reflects this complexity.

But your B2B customers aren’t thinking about that. Each time they buy from you, they expect top-notch customer experience – including rapid quotes, accurate pricing, and granular configurations that precisely reflect their order.

To balance product and pricing complexity with customer expectations, leading companies are transforming their quoting process. They’re delivering outstanding buying and selling experiences that satisfy customers – and increase sales efficiency.

CPQ solution: The time to change sales is now

There’s no doubt that change is overdue in selling processes, for the benefit of both buyers and sellers. A recent report showed that 77% of B2B buyers qualified their latest purchase as very complex or difficult.

Your sales personnel are struggling with these processes, too. In many organizations, sales reps spend up to two-thirds of their time on non-sales tasks such as creating quotes. Is that really where your best sellers should be focused?

Facing these dual challenges, many companies have decided to modernize their approach to sales using CPQ and seeing real benefits:

1. Fast, accurate quotes
2. Precise configurations
3. Improved efficiency with standard processes and discount management
4. Better sales experience and customer experience
5. More revenue

Simplifying the selling process with CPQ 

After a divestiture from its parent company, an enterprise media and technical services company based in the US found its sales teams frustrated with too much paper shuffling and overly long sales cycles.

Selling an assortment of live and on-demand, mobile, and multiscreen media products to service providers, operators, content owners, and broadcasters was complex and time-consuming. According to Kathryn Butterfuss, an SAP S/4HANA evangelist at SAP who worked for the company, longer sales cycles even delayed revenues.

“Sales reps wanted to be able to create a quote in front of a customer, revise it as necessary, and provide it in real time,” she says.

With an advanced CPQ solution, the company simplified the selling process for both customers and sales reps. The CPQ provides real-time accurate data, including a bill of materials, helping sales reps create precisely the product that customers want.

Using integration from the tool to their ERP system, sales reps can gain insight into product lead times and accurately estimate delivery dates.

This integration also simplified a legacy five-tier sales approval method. Using automatically calculated profit margins for each deal, the solution automatically processes 80% of the company’s proposed deals. Now, only the largest deals must be manually reviewed.

Accurate quotes = sales efficiency & better margins

Companies also are using modern CPQ tools to replace a slate of nonintegrated, manual systems that salespeople use to support selling activities.

Sales reps at Straumann Group, a Swiss company that develops, manufactures, and supplies products that support esthetic dentistry, relied almost exclusively on spreadsheets. Lacking any company-approved tools, the sales team tracked stock-keeping numbers and prices for more than 20,000 items.

Yet those files were often outdated, causing reps to promise inaccurate prices to their customers, the doctors. Once a quote was approved, the sales team had little transparency into its status.

Advanced CPQ technology led to more accurate promotions and pricing, greater transparency into orders and delivery, and more standardization. The solution also changed the way Straumann Group conducts its sales processes.

“Now, sales reps can have discussions with customers and tailor offers within the boundary of a discount,” says Michele Sassano, VP of marketing for the digital business unit of Straumann Group. “We can track new KPIs that refine the sales process to better serve customers. Right now, we are measuring how long it takes for a customer to react to an offer and how long each approval takes, for example.”

The CPQ solution is also making life better for sales reps. Standardized processes, including discount management, increased efficiency, saving workers six to seven days per year.

“That’s one week of additional time that a rep can spend selling more or better managing the customer,” says Sassano. What’s more, he estimates that the new discount management approach improved the company’s gross margin by 3%.

Involve sellers early on for a smooth CPQ rollout

Companies that successfully deployed CPQ solutions are happy to share their advice about engaging sellers in the technology roll-out.

Instead of making it mandatory to use the solution, Straumann Group invited its sales team to become co-creators of the tool.

“We built the tools with the sales rep for the sales rep,” says Sassano. “By inviting them to provide feedback on the tool before go-live, we increased their engagement with the CPQ technology. It also let us roll out the solution quickly and in an agile way.”

Butterfuss agrees. “Bring in the sales force early and often,” she says. “Not just the change agents, but the actual sales force.”

Having sales reps engage with the technology makes implementation much smoother for everyone. “The sales team brings forward new ideas and thoughts about how they can use the solution,” she says. “Implementing these suggestions also results in a very high level of adoption of the CPQ tool.”

That’s undoubtedly a win for both sales and your customers.