CPQ is more than a tool for your customers.  Setting yourself apart from the competition by giving your customer a 3D diagram of a product, with a complete list of specifications is really cool.  What’s even cooler than “wowing” a customer?  Providing the right price and the right tools for your sales reps.

Sales reps often go into deals and negotiations with customers with less information than the customer has.  There are so many questions that a sales rep must answer in a negotiation.  What truly is the customer’s top dollar?  When will I know I have reached the sweet spot, without the customer pushing for additional discounting?  What are my competitors doing?  All of these questions are a routine parts of the negotiation dance.  Hopefully, your sales team has some experience and instincts that they use in negotiations.  What would be better than hope?  Knowledge.

Hope is defined as:  a chance that something desirable will happen or be possible. (Encarta dictionary)

Knowledge is defined as:  general awareness or possession of information, facts, ideas, truths, or principles (Encarta dictionary)

What if you combined the two?  Hope and knowledge.  Now, you have a sales rep that is armed and positive of their position. Achieving this sort of transcendent state seems like a pipe dream. 

There are many things that masquerade as this kind of confidence.  Ego, arrogance, optimism.  People can project all of these things, but what if your sales team actually came into negotiations calm, cool, and collected, without pretense.

CPQ (Configure, Price, Quote) is the tool that can provide some additional assurance to your sales team.

Here’s how:

1.        Pricing Guidance – Providing your sales team with a pricing guideline that not only considers the customer’s parameters, but considers your profitability, will give the sales rep a range for negotiations.  It also lets the rep know how much give they have without putting profitability at stake.

2.       Data Driven Pricing – Providing reps with solid pricing guidance backed by data will help them to be confident in the pricing that they are offering.  Less time quibbling over discounts and more time spent on discussing the value of the product.

3.       Configuration combined with pricing guidance – The ability to configure a product to a customer’s specifications and provide pricing quickly and easily is a key part of the sales cycle.  Having the ability to configure and utilize data driven pricing all at once is critical.  Sales reps can be confident not only is having the right product for the customer, but also a price that will fit in the customer’s budget.

4.       Trust – Building trust in any relationship is tricky, especially when you are trying to sell a product.  That typically creates mistrust.  However, the tools that can be utilized with CPQ will help keep your message and pricing clear and consistent.  This will let customers know that you are consistent.

5.       Revenue – The data driven pricing within CPQ segments and provides industry specific information that addresses buying habits, products, and potential budgets.  These tools can be used to identify potential revenue opportunities.

CPQ is quickly differentiating itself as the ultimate sales tool.  It provides benefit not only to your customers, but to your sales team as well.  With its deep functionality within the sales cycle, it is the newest must have sales tool.

Learn more at www.cpq-configurepricequote.com