In the last 40 years, B2B sales have undergone many significant changes. However, a study shows that the average sales process now takes 22% longer than five years ago.
People who work in sales today must deal with complicated goods and pricing models. So, people in charge of sales, revenue, and operations need to spend money on technology that makes the sales process smoother so that reps can meet their goals and helpfully connect with customers.
Most businesses buy sales tools and platforms that make sales processes easier and faster so they can do digital selling and give their sales reps a better experience. CPQ is one of these essential pieces of software.
Whether you’ve already added a CPQ to your sales tech stack, you should know what it can do for you and how it can help you grow your business, make more money, and make your sales processes more efficient.
We had the pleasure of having Frank Sohn, President and CEO of Novus CPQ Consulting Inc. and host of the CPQ Podcast, on the RevAmp Podcast this week.
He has been a CPQ consultant for almost thirty years, making him a great guest to talk about how vital CPQ is and how it has changed the strategy and tactics of B2B sales.
This blog post will discuss the wealth of information Frank brought to the show to show how vital CPQ is for combining different sales processes into a single sales action.
How CPQ came to be
This type of CPQ first appeared in the 1980s and was known as a “configurator” at the time. It helped sales reps keep track of what customers wanted, and by the late 1980s, it had improved and could work with early CRMs. In the 1990s, many businesses had an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, a user interface, and a tool for configuring products.
All of these tools would work together to give you some price options. But Frank said that even though they could help with some price problems, they were often hard to understand and use.
In the early 1990s, businesses started to automate some of the challenging jobs that used to be done by people. At this point, configurators were increasingly used in the selling process.
Throughout the 2000s, many small to medium-sized sales teams sought solutions to problems with the quote-to-cash cycle. By 2010, the CPQ idea had gotten much attention and was increasingly used in sales processes.
These days, CPQ systems can do much more and are much more advanced. Newer systems come with pricing engines, proposal generators, quoting systems, rules or constraint engines, and even workflows for approval and permission. The solution has grown to cover many businesses, and technological improvements are helping sales teams increase sales.
What does the CPQ app do?
What does CPQ mean? Most likely, you already know since you’re reading this. That said, CPQ stands for “configure price quote” for those who don’t know. CPQ software helps sales reps give correct prices and product configurations to prospects, meet buyers’ needs, and close deals on the terms that were agreed upon.
CPQ tools have price management features that let sales reps pick from different products, packages, and services and give authorized discounts. With a complete, top-notch CPQ, sales reps can instantly make error-free, on-brand legal quotes and include sales and marketing materials tailored to buyers’ needs.
The good things about CPQ
These CPQ features work together to help businesses speed up the sales process, cut down on manual administrative work, give potential customers more accurate quotes, and make the experience better for both buyers and sellers.
If we asked Frank what the advantages of CPQ were, he said, “You’re making what a sales rep does well available to everyone and letting them do it again and again.” It helps you standardize methods and make them easy for many people to access. This way, your reps can learn from and copy the methods of your best workers, which leads to more success.
He said that as sales tools change to meet the market’s needs today, it has become clear that customers want things to be customized to fit their needs. This can be done with the help of a CPQ, which lets you change prices and product details to fit each customer’s wants.
CPQ is becoming an even more essential sales tool for businesses, and integrating it with CRM software can make it even better. The sales and revenue teams can now better keep track of customers, opportunities, and deals; make quotes, proposals, and contracts more correctly and quickly; and speed up the whole sales cycle by automating internal approvals.
The ways that CPQ helps keep sales reps
People are still leaving jobs, affecting businesses of all kinds and types. We asked Frank what he thought about how sales technologies affect keeping employees. He says that CPQ has come a long way. Giving salespeople more power and getting rid of some problems makes their job more accessible and makes the sales process go more smoothly. Of course, people who are happy on the team are more likely to be loyal to the team.
Helping your workers improve their skills is a great way to boost their sales and keep good employees. They can focus on active selling instead of dull, time-consuming jobs they must do by hand with sales tools like CPQ. According to research, salespeople only sell things 35% of the time. However, workers are happier and more productive when they have more time to focus on that critical part of their job and build better customer relationships.
What you need to know about CPQ
Frank was a great guest on the RevAmp Podcast. His in-depth understanding and first-hand account of how CPQ has changed over time made for a fascinating interview!
There are hundreds of sales tools out there, and each one is made to help with a different part or stage of the B2B sales process. CPQ has become an essential tool for sales teams that must help their reps deal with complicated prices and products while smoothing the sales process.
You can get a better handle on your sales operations and make more money by using an automated and configurable system that makes administrative tasks more accessible and gives salespeople the tools they need to do their best, fastest, and most accurate work.
