How important is it to you to respond quickly to customers’ requests for price quotes, and to produce accurate proposals that reflect their unique specifications?
Sales leaders we’ve spoken with agree that delivering accurate quotes in a timely manner helps their teams close deals faster. If you agree, then integrating leading-edge technology that ensures your sales team has the tools they need to accelerate their sales cycles should be high on your list of priorities for the upcoming year.
CPQ Partner Apps for Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales
In April 2019, that Dynamics 365 for Sales had partnered with the “best CPQ solution providers to deliver deep product integration with Dynamics 365 for Sales.”
These partnerships allow sales organizations to harness the power of configure-price-quote (CPQ) solutions to quickly, consistently and accurately configure their pricing and produce quotes from within their Dynamics 365 for Sales environment.
So What is CPQ?
(also known as Configure-Price-Quote) is a tool that integrates natively with Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales to accelerate deals by quickly producing price quotes and sales proposals. Product configuration options and pricing rules help sales reps create quotes in minutes without the need for Excel spreadsheets and manual calculations.
A sales playbook guides reps through the quote creation process to ensure customers are getting the right products at an optimized price. By reducing error-prone manual tasks, a CPQ helps businesses streamline their sales process and helps move deals along the pipeline.
Below are the ways CPQ and Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales work together to increase efficiency. Consider making the integration before your 2020 sales kickoff so your sales team can achieve better results in the new year.
The Benefits of CPQ-Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM Integration
reported on the benefits of CPQ in their study on best-in-class organizations. Let’s take a look at 4 of these benefits and how they will help your sales organization raise the bar on performance against goals and elevate the customer experience.
CPQ Improves Organizational Capabilities for Faster, More Profitable Sales Deals
Improved Sales Team Response to Request for Quotes
Sales reps who don’t use CPQ waste time searching for updated pricing sheets, supplier lists, sales assets, and proposal materials because they’re not integrated into the workflow.
Aberdeen’s research revealed that CPQ users ship an average of 21.9 proposals per rep per month, versus 9.9 proposals per month per rep for companies that don’t use CPQ.
Lack of efficiency affects not only response time, but quote accuracy as well. When sales reps use Excel spreadsheets or stand-alone tools that aren’t integrated with their CRM, it’s difficult to respond to requests for quotes quickly and the chances for error increase significantly.
Generate Complex Quotes with Ease
In a separate , 86% of organizations that use CPQ report that their sales reps are kept well-informed of pricing, promotions, and suppliers (compared to 73% of non-CPQ companies).
A CPQ is updated in real-time and gives sales teams a single source of truth about current pricing, promotions, supply levels, and discounts and allows sales reps to generate complex quotes easily. CPQ integration with Microsoft Dynamics CRM ensures an automated, streamlined workflow from which sales teams can rapidly produce error-free proposals, quotes, and other sales documents.
Pricing and discounting rules built into the CPQ ensure a degree of flexibility in pricing that gives sales reps the agility to manage pricing by exception without the need to check with managers. Customers appreciate not having to wait for approvals and it gives them greater confidence in your organization.
Learn how easy it is to streamline your sales process and generate error-free quotes by integrating CPQ with Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales in this video:
Use of Personalized Quote, Proposal and Contract Templates
Templates are an essential part of automating the sales process and the CPQ solution will be a central repository for quote, proposal and contract templates. This ensures all quotes that go out are on-brand, follow pricing and discounting rules, and adhere to legal and regulatory guidelines.
Templates are a great way to streamline proposal and quote production, but customization and personalization are crucial to ensuring customers feel like they are not just a number. Personalization helps build trust with customers and pulls customer information and data from the CRM into the proposal to reflect customer needs and previous conversations.
Avoiding “No Decision” Sales Losses
The Aberdeen study brings up an interesting point about “no decision” sales losses and how CPQ helps eradicate these disappointments. The study reveals that 39% of sales organizations that use CPQ are able to avoid “no decision” sales losses, compared with 19% of companies that don’t use CPQ.
CPQ-enabled sales teams use , and workflow of questions, to gather deal specifics and plug them into the software. Information such as buyer data, product requests, and time constraints are entered into the CPQ early in the opportunity management process. Armed with this data, sales teams can evaluate the deals to learn, based on predictive analytics, which are destined to win or fail.
A Stronger, More Efficient Sales Team
CPQ enables your sales team to be more efficient, respond faster, and use data to learn where to focus their efforts.
Are you ready accelerate your quote to cash cycle? Integrate CPQ with Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales and you’ll soon see that your sales team is celebrating more closed deals and happier customers.
DealHub.io is a .
DealHub Configure-Price-Quote solution is rated the #1 CPQ software for ease of use, easiest setup, and best support. Sales teams configure quotes and proposals faster with fewer errors. DealHub’s highly intuitive CPQ minimizes administrative tasks, empowers sales teams to engage more effectively with buyers, and streamlines sales operations to reduce the sales cycle and increase revenue. Operates natively within Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales and includes: dynamic sales playbooks, interactive content sharing, document generation, contract management, and e-signature. to learn how DealHub will accelerate your sales process and help your team close deals faster.
