The 5 Most Common Signs that a Company Can Benefit From a CPQ App

CPQ tools

Every sales team goes through the same five stages of the sales process, or in marketing terms – the Quote-to-Cash cycle: lead generation, prospecting and qualification, presentation and proposal, negotiation and deal closing. Building an accurate quote is probably the most time-consuming task as well as the most crucial due to it involving a final document for qualified leads to base their decision on.

Sales reps working in CRMs may spend up to 40% of their time generating a quote that meets the individual needs of every customer. CPQ tools or Configure Price Quote applications, automate this process and cut the time spent on a single quote to minutes. CPQ solutions integrate with a company’s CRM and databases to configure items for purchase by applying the best pricing and clearance to the item list while generating a customized quote without any typing. It’s a huge time-saver for both customers and sales teams. Here are some signs your business may be ready for CPQ tools:

Signs a company needs a CPQ app

Reliance on CRMs
Companies with more
than 10 sales reps
Sellers needing to keep track of market
changes by constantly adjusting prices
Small businesses where managers
review every offered discount
Work with providers that offer complex
varieties of products and services

If you’ve decided to integrate CPQ with your business systems, make sure the app you’ve chosen integrates with the products you already use. During CPQ setup you’ll be able to create a system that ensures all of your quotes are up-to-date and provide the fullest possible information for the products and services that you offer.

Basic CPQ Setup

Connect with a CRM (eliminate having to retype customer information)
Import your product information into a CPQ app (link to product database sources like external databases, Excel spreadsheets or text files, QuickBooks, PeachTree)
Some applications offer additional options such as setting the limit on discounts offered by sales reps

How does your usual workflow change after implementing a CPQ solution?

Sales reps begin by choosing from a list of products in a step-by-step fashion. The Configurator also allows sales reps to organize items into groups
Building a quote –
select products from the presented list
Automate pricing – once the app has been customized, it automatically adds the best prices and adjusts them according to any discounts, special offers and clearance pricing
Generating a quote –
a PDF containing a quote with a custom design that contains the list of products and prices is compiled for the customer
Send the quote via email and track it –
in the Quote-to-Cash cycle you can provide customers with eSigning tools coupled with the quote in order to speed up the negotiating and deal closing processes before heading into ecommerce.

PDFfiller offers a simple CPQ alternative within its DaDaDocs integration for Salesforce. Besides automating all other documents within the Salesforce i-frame, DaDaDocs allows users to create reusable templates and share them with other departments to easily generate quotes containing info from Opportunities and other Salesforce objects.  

Benefits of DaDaDocs’ Advanced Document Generation for your Salesforce Organization

Reusable templates for future deals
Accurate and properly formatted quotes
User-friendly step-by-step wizard
No need for manual typing:
all documents integrate with
your CRM databases
Full integration with Opportunities,
Leads and other Salesforce objects

Give DaDaDocs for Salesforce a try with a 30-day free trial. Buying DaDaDocs will give you more than a single CPQ tool for your Salesforce organization. You’ll have access to a complete electronic signature manager, web form builder and document generator alongside your CPQ tools, at a lower price than competitor solutions.