If you run a business with a sales team, it’s all good when the orders are coming in manageable numbers. However, as the business continues to grow, the tasks become ever-increasingly complex. You may need to expand your product line or hire more salespeople.
Tracking such orders can be a nightmare and is highly inefficient. The best option for your business would be to implement a configure price quote solution.
Discover more below!
What Is A Configure Price Quote Software?
The answer is in the name—a configure price quote (CPQ) software allows salespeople to create price quotes quickly and efficiently. Consequently, this allows businesses to simplify and streamline the invoice processes as well as the payment processes. Moreover, it can also help streamline the inventory management process.
If you have been creating individual invoices and sending them to your customers then you know how inefficient this can be. With a CPQ tool, like one provided by DealHub, you can automatically generate invoices and have them sent to the correct recipient while you focus more on running the business.
Let’s take a look at how you can use CPQ software for your business:
Work On The Configuration
This is the first thing that you will need to do when implementing a configure price quote software. With the huge competition in the market, customers have a wide array of options to choose from. Because of this, they are more akin to selecting products that suit their individual needs and many buyers are now avoiding the one-size-fits-all approach to shopping. In fact, buyers are willing to pay a premium to get personalized products.
CPQ allows you to work closely with your customers and clients to offer them exactly what they’re looking for. You can input the requirements of each individual buyer so that they always get the products with the features and functionalities they want.
Even better is when your business has a wide array of products. With the CPQ tool, you can configure customers’ orders to provide them with a customized product that’s specific to their needs.
For instance, if you supply sports clothing and gear then customers can tell you the type of colors and individual sizes they want, and you can have the orders made to their specifications.
Set Up A Pricing Strategy
Once you have customized your clients’ orders, you will also need to offer them their pricing based on any additions or deductions as well as special features in their orders. Furthermore, you will also need to take taxes and discounts into account.
A business pricing strategy will be your guide. The CPQ tool will support this and increase the chances of making a sale as you will have offered the right price to the customer as per the deal.
There are several different pricing strategies used by most businesses. These include:
- Competition-based strategy
This is where you analyze the going rate with many of your business competitors and offer something similar.
- Dynamic pricing strategy
This is where the business will increase the price with higher demand and lower the price with lower demand.
- Cost Plus pricing
This involves identifying the production cost and then adding a markup on how much profit you want to get.
- Pricing based on the value
Here the business charges a price based on how much customers are willing to offer for the product.
- Pricing based on rates
This pricing strategy is common in the service industry, where the customer pays based on a rate, such as hourly.
With the CPQ tool, you can specify the type of pricing strategy that you want to implement and the software will adjust accordingly. You may also decide to change the pricing depending on the functionality of the product. The configure price quote software is thus a versatile and adaptive tool to use in your business.
For instance, think of a situation where you are willing to offer a discount at higher orders. You will simply set the CPQ software to lower the price of a certain order. It will calculate the correct price for a certain order and offer this price to your customer.
Create A Quotation
So, you’ve configured customers’ orders to their specifications and liking, and you’ve also set the prices. The CPQ software then allows you to create a quotation and send it to the relevant customer. The benefit of this is that it makes the process more streamlined and easier for the sales team.
Creating quotations and sending them to your customers has never been so easy. No longer do you have to manually confirm the pricing and the quantities. All this information will be held by your configure price quote software. Forget the back and forth emails between you and the customers. With a simple press of a button, you can have the right quotations to the right customers in little time.
And that’s not all—there’s also online integration, making it possible to connect to a payment system that allows the business to receive payments from customers online after sending the quotations.
CPQ software is mechanical in its operations. This helps get rid of the human factor that’s prone to errors. Sending a quotation that isn’t accurate reflects badly on your business. With the CPQ tool, you can ensure that only accurate information reaches the customer.
When the deal is finalized and the customer sends payment after receiving the invoice, the CPQ tool will also help you collect valuable data, which you can use for analysis. This is especially so when you can integrate your CPQ to your CRM. This information can help you make changes to ensure you drive more sales in the future.
Final Word
Every modern business can use a configure price quote software. It allows you to better manage a higher number of orders and ensure that each customer gets exactly what they’re looking for. Furthermore, by integrating the tool to your CRM, you can gather valuable insight into the buying habits of your customers and make alterations to drive more sales.
