If you're a Dynamics partner or reseller and you're not offering configure, price, quote (CPQ) software as an extension of Dynamics CRM, you may be a missing out on a huge revenue opportunity.
As importantly, you may not be fully equipping your CRM customers for success.
"What's CPQ anyway?"
CPQ is a extension that can help CRM users create more accurate and professional quotes more quickly, and which provides a deeper level of sales quote tracking.
Simply put, it's a way most every competitive B2B organization builds, sends, and tracks quotes, and a solution that can lead to:
- lower costs in building and sending quotes,
- fewer errors in sales quotes, and
- a faster on-boarding process for new sales reps.
"Great, but how does that drive CRM revenue?"
That's a good question, and we're glad we asked it for you ; )
It comes down to adoption and usage. We've been in the CRM space a long time, and we know that one of the toughest parts of the business is getting an organization to consistently adopt and use the CRM system the way it is meant to be adopted and used.
Ideally, everyone on a sales team is using Dynamics CRM in the exact same way: entering Lead and Contact info the same way, and tracking every customer interaction the same way, which results in a funnel that is more predictable on both forecasting and actual outcomes.
The sad fact of the matter is that sales people use the CRM system how they see fit, which can result in inaccurate info, duplicates, and other red herrings.
The even sadder fact is that some sales people don't use the CRM system at all. As a Dynamics reseller, this can mean that when it's time to go to a customer and renew licenses, the customer may downsize their overall CRM investment (even if they're not downsizing their team).
Improving CRM usage and data accuracy
When you make closing sales quotes (something every rep is focused on, every single day) into a task that requires use of the CRM — by — you essentially force adoption and near-daily usage of the CRM system on those who might not use it otherwise. You want to create a sales quote? You have to go through CRM. You want to track that quote? You have to go through CRM. That solves adoption.
Insofar as increasing data accuracy, businesses have found that while sales people may sometimes "wing it" when entering Lead or Contact information, they are far more diligent when entering quote information: i.e., the customer info in your CPQ system often becomes the most accurate info you have, and can help when there are questions, or it's time to clean your dbase.
Another way CPQ drives CRM revenue is...
More people using CRM more cleanly is the not-so-obvious way adding CPQ drives more CRM revenue for the Dynamics reseller. The more obvious way is, of course, additional revenue through additional licenses for each CPQ seat... but we know you knew this already.
