CONFIGURE PRICE QUOTE(CPQ) BASICS By Pam Baker

CPQ Basics

Benefi ts of CPQ

Confi gure-Price-Quote (CPQ) solutions are designed to rapidly and accurately close the gap between fi nding a qualifi ed lead and closing the sale. When the pricing and quoting processes are bogged down and delayed, sales can be lost to a competitor that responds faster. When pricing and quoting forms are rapidly thrown together in the rush to close the sale, the company can actually lose money on the resulting deal or lose the deal to a competitor who comes in with a better quote.

These problems in traditional pricing and quoting methods are not new to salespeople. Most have lost a considerable amount of money in commissions to this sad state of a� airs.

CPQ applications remedy those problems for both the company and its salespeople. They deliver automated pricing and quoting, which means the process is very fast. Rather than leafi ng through catalogs and pricing books to manually assemble quotes, sales reps can build quotes in a point-and-click fashion, reducing the time needed to build a quote from hours or even days to minutes. It’s not just faster – it’s more accurate, too, saving the vendor thousands in potential after-sale costs and enhancing the customer experience. CPQ programs can also be set-up as self-service to further speed quotes to customers who would rather collect the numbers themselves.

Further, because CPQ applications use rules and constraint engines, the most current pricing, bundle confi gurations, discounts, and other important pricing parameters are always used in the calculations, guaranteeing that the price o� ered is both correct and competitive. Rules and constraint engines also provide the ability to automate the approval process, meaning that deals aren’t held up because managers are on vacation, stuck in a meeting or swamped with their own work.

Additionally, CPQ eases the work burden on several other professionals across the enterprise.

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Setting up and maintaining CPQ

Sellers obviously spend less time on administrative tasks (and more energy on sourcing and closing deals) when fewer proposal errors stand in their way, and fewer iterations of a contract pass through their inbox,

The particulars in setting up and maintaining a CPQ application depends a great deal on which application you choose.

Those that come pre-set to integrate with your CRM system generally make both e� orts easier. However, these can sometimes be limited in lead generation and nurturing. Be sure to look for a CPQ that fully augments lead generation and closely aligns with marketing campaigns and collateral as well.

Cloud-based CPQ applications are generally the most fl exible in terms of working with multiple platforms and systems. They also require the least amount of set-up time and e� ort and generally cost nothing in terms of maintenance.

CPQ applications that allow you to confi gure the system with just a few clicks are easier to set up, maintain, and use than those that require extensive customization.

By looking for these attributes, you can fi nd a CPQ application that is fast to deploy, easy to confi gure, and nearly e� ortless to maintain.

There are additional stakeholders who also benefi t from how CPQ streamlines the proposal development process: sales engineers are called away from high-value demos and implementations less frequently; those pesky legal and procurement folks act less like Managers of Sales Prevention; and the operations team that delivers our goods and services has a clearer line of sight into what they’ll actually need to provide to the customer once the deal is done. So now we can ask: Is 158 percent better improvement in quality control a nice-to-have, or an essential result?

writes Peter Ostrow, VP/Group Director, Customer Management and Principal Analyst, Sales E� ectiveness at Aberdeen Group, in his post in Business 2 Community (B2C).

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Things to look for in CPQ

Learn more about CPQ:

In general, you’ll want to be able to import account lists and confi gure proposals and quotes by territory, thus ensuring pricing is fi tted to and competitive in each territory, so that the sales rep in that area gets spot-on quotes every time.

Look for additional capabilities in CPQ that will add even better odds for your sales e� orts, such as integration with marketing automation to provide automated lead nurturing (presenting the prospect with additional, related information and o� ers over time to maintain interest) to customers who don’t close immediately.

Last, but certainly not least, you’ll want to choose a vendor that constantly updates the CPQ application to extend capabilities throughout many channels and among your ecosystem partners.

When it comes to building quotes and closing more deals, no opportunity should be overlooked. And that, in the end, is the reason you need CPQ.

CPQ: the ROI Argumenthttp://www3.calliduscloud.com/Q4-14-CPQ-ROI-Argument-report-website-LP.html

CPQ: 2-Minute Test Drivehttp://calliduscloud.com/resources/cpq-2-minute-test-drive/

The CPQ market has moved beyond supporting traditional sales confi guration to support self-service, e-commerce, contact center and partner channels,

says Gartner analyst Praveen Sengar in his report.