A configure, price, quote (CPQ) software lets you sell and manufacture at a much faster rate. It has been around since decades, but the recent wave of cloud-based CPQ solutions provide such an immaculate competitive advantage, particularly in the B2B segment that adoption has increased multifold in the recent years.

In 2018, the CPQ market witnessed a growth by 12% to $1.2 billion. And in October 2019, Gartner forecasted that it would continue to rise at about 15% annually all through 2020. But this is already beginning to look like an underestimate.

The commercial landscape today is almost unrecognizable from what it was just six months ago. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, when business travel and personal sales meetings have dropped to zero in a number of countries, remote sales have become highly important and critical. CPQ therefore, will play a pivotal role in adapting to this new normal.

Most of us are aware that CPQ is a sales tool for the purpose of quickly and accurately generating quotes for the orders. But, what exactly does it all allow you to do that you can’t do already? That’s precisely what will be outlined below.

Facts About Configure, Price, Quote

Companies implementing CPQ software witness a number of improvements to their configure, price, quote operations, on average.

105% increase in deal size*
40% increase in conversion rate*
26% increase in reps achieving quota*
Ten times faster quote generation**
95% reduction in approval time**
Two times faster quote to cash speed**
30% quicker ramp for new reps**

*KBMax stats
**Salesforce CPQ stats

Configure, price, quote allows the sales reps to accurately configure the most complex products while also eliminating the configuration errors.

Your sales reps are struggling. You have got a huge catalog of products, a lot of which are highly complicated, with complicated rules governing how they can be put together. It’s very  unrealistic to expect your sales reps, more so the new hires  to configure the perfectly optimized customer-specific selections every time without any clear guidance and plenty of input from the engineering department.

As a result of this complexity, your reps are frequently configuring those products which are non-viable from a technical perspective and failing to maximize profits as well. Mistakes create tension between the sales team and engineering, and a seemingly endless altercation between two parties slows everything down to a dismal pace. Sales cycles are getting stretched to the breaking point, leaving customers exhausted. If you are an engineer-to-order company that’s subject to huge fines for beating deadlines, penalties begin to stack up.

How can configure, price, quote sort you out?

The answer to all your configuration woes is a product configurator, which you are going to find built in your CPQ software. The best configurators are pictorial because we interpret visuals better - our brain processes an image 60,000 times faster than it processes the text.

Sales reps using product configurators can perfect their products every time, super-fast, and here’s how: Product configurators are built on a rules engine that combines complicated mathematical functions, product rules, and related manufacturing data to smartly determine which type of product your customer needs while also ensuring that it’s technically feasible. All without any input from the engineering team.

KBMax offers a 3D product configurator that combines the best benefits listed above with a highly interactive shopping experience for your customers. Reps can then configure the products by pointing and clicking, or dragging and dropping a 3D scene. Add in the VR and AR capabilities, and you get a powerful differentiator, setting you apart from your competition.

You can even add your visual product configurator on your website, enabling your customers to ‘play around’ and purchase your products anywhere and on any device as well. Users can resize the sections, add or remove parts, upgrade features, and also change the colors and dimensions with the prices getting updated automatically in real-time.

CPQ software with the visual configuration capabilities gives the customers a very clear understanding of your products and also connects them to your brand on a very deeper level - conversion rates jump by 40% and the returns, refunds, and chargebacks get declined notably.

Configure, price, quote software provides pricing insights and better workflows

Pricing is the other challenge your sales reps face once they have configured a product. With CPQ, you can harness the power of machine learning to identify the patterns in your data and customize offerings that are in line with your pricing strategy, whether it be increased profits, grow market share, or improve the retention. It’s the antithesis of the tried and tested cost-plus pricing model, which kept many manufacturers back for decades.

With CPQ, collaboration within the sales team improves drastically. When Sales Operations make the changes to list prices, they filter down to the sales reps immediately through the CPQ software, so no more missed emails and hefty exchanges over each price modification.

Conversely, when a sales rep enters a discount on a quote, the CPQ software automatically sends an approval request to the appropriate person. A 10% discount approval might go to a line manager, for example, while a 25% discount might be sent to a VP. Wherever the request goes, it can be approved with the touch of a button. Everybody operates on the same platform, enhancing transparency and accountability. Approvals are carried out 95% faster as a result.

Enhanced collaboration and workflows combine with machine learning capabilities to supercharge your responsiveness to quote requests. In a world of instant gratification, where the company that quotes first often wins, greasing the wheels of your pricing infrastructure can be invaluable. One of our KBMax customers managed to slash their average proposal time from 10 days to 10 minutes! Just think what a cumulative difference that makes.

Configure, price, quote software generates superb quotes automatically

You have got your configuration sorted and your pricing, now you have to provide a selection of compelling documents to get this deal closed. A CPQ software creates quotes instantly and automatically, as PDFs, and then sends them out from inside the admin - everything’s stored in one centralized hub, thus leading to maximum visibility..

Automatic quote generation is a huge win for the sales reps - they can spend less time in evaluating numbers, and also more time to bring in new customers and also interact with the present customers - tasks that actually generate revenue for your business.

But KBMax’s CPQ takes documentation ahead by leaps and bounds, offering CAD design automation. Once a configuration gets submitted, the KBMax users can create an immense amount of documents like technical drawings, Bills of Materials (BOM), CAD data and CNC cut sheets, all of which serve to reduce the engineering burden, streamline manufacturing and dramatically shorten sales cycles.