There is a saying that “Time is money,” and this is especially true for businesses where closing deals faster is of paramount importance to their revenue. In this era where information is easily available on the internet, customers are more informed than ever, they expect a quick response time. Even companies that have been very successful in the past are struggling to stay in the race as the business ecosystem has become highly competitive.
Numerous surveys have been conducted by market experts to understand why the majority of businesses are struggling to increase their sales revenue; the major reasons are listed below.
- Minimal focus on sales activities: The sales reps were busy doing administrative tasks
- Relying on spreadsheets for analysis: The product matching done in MS Excel was too complex, and they ended up spending additional time performing pricing identification while preparing the quotes
- Poor time management: They took longer to respond to customer queries
- CRM is underutilized: Their CRM or ERP systems are not connected, and so they didn’t have product and price details readily available
- Old school pricing techniques: They use MS Excel and Adobe documents, which make pricing of complex products time-consuming. Overall, they find themselves helpless when it comes to complex product configurations and determining their pricing
So now that the reasons are well documented, how do businesses turn around and ensure they stay relevant and continue to achieve their numbers? Well here’s the secret: even the seemingly effortless deal-closers work for it with the help of some tried-and-tested tools that make them more effective at what they do. One such tool that they can depend on is SAP Sales Cloud CPQ. This tool helps sales reps to quote easily and efficiently with a simple approval process for standard and discount pricing, which reduces quoting errors and helps close deals faster. If these outcomes are something you think your sales team could benefit from, then it is evident that your team needs the SAP Sales Cloud CPQ in their work life.
SAP Sales Cloud CPQ helps accelerate sales deals by delivering the below-listed benefits.
Easy and efficient quote generation process
Sales reps spend most of their time collecting information from other systems, spreadsheets, Adobe documents, and so on. They take a lot more time to generate quotes. SAP Sales Cloud’s CPQ feature has a simple step-wise quote generation process. It allows reps to generate quotes directly from product catalogs and collect the pricing, product, and customer information from other systems. Reps can just use product attributes to generate quotes, and the pricing will be calculated automatically based on each attribute that they select. The product and price information is kept up-to-date via integration with ECC and CRM.
Reduce quote generation errors
The SAP Sales Cloud CPQ out-of-the-box integration with SAP ECC and SAP C/4HANA helps sales reps reduce the complexity of the quote generation process during complex product pricing. As all environments are tightly integrated, there is no possibility of errors, like incorrect pricing, incorrect customer name, and incorrect dates.
Reduce time to get quote approved
Often, sales reps offer discounts to their prospects with the objective of closing deals faster and increasing the sales numbers for the month or quarter. However, to arrive at the discount price, the reps need to take the necessary approvals internally. This process of finding the right information on the basis of which approvals need to be sought sometimes requires a lot of time, especially to ensure that discounts do not cut into the margins. The higher the processing time, the greater are the chances of losing the deal. However, the SAP Sales Cloud CPQ tool is designed to provide precise pricing information and also ensures that the discount doesn’t cut into the margins of the deal.
Close deals faster
The SAP Sales Cloud CPQ niche integrations with other applications help sales reps close deals faster. When all relevant information such as that about pricing, product, and customer is available at their fingertips and requires less approval time, it takes shorter time periods to prepare the quote and close deals faster.
Increase sales reps’ productivity - Sales reps spend more time with customers rather than doing administrative tasks
SAP Sales Cloud CPQ comes with a guided selling feature using Artificial Intelligence (AI), which helps sales reps to search products quickly based on the various attributes of the product. The reps can focus on the right product that is within the customers’ price limits. Furthermore, they don't have to spend their time doing administrative work—the CPQ solution does it for them. The result: they get more time to focus on customers and increase their sales and productivity.
Generate professional quotes
Recommendations on SAP CPQ Cloud quoting tool
- Gartner predicts that CPQ will continue to be one of the hottest enterprise apps for the foreseeable future, predicting a 20% annual growth rate through 2020 with the majority being from cloud-based solutions.
- More and more companies are replacing their legacy on-premise CPQ apps and outdated ERP quoting and ordering apps with SAP Sales Cloud CPQ, which has a comprehensive, scalable engine capable of performing bottom-up configuration and adopting the normal top-down approach. SAP also provides robust configuration tools that enable users to define component requirements, analyze functional specifications, blend multiple solution components, and resolve interdependencies. Its complete technology solution integrates seamlessly with service and sales applications to deliver a tailor-made package for increased efficiency.
After all, no business would be able to say no to increased efficiency, higher margins, larger deal size, order accuracy, and—most importantly—profits!
