Managing complex quotes and long sales cycles is a challenge for any company. For companies that sell complex products or who have a catalog with a large number of different possible configurations, spreadsheets waste time, lengthen the sales cycle and compromise accuracy.
Don’t get me wrong, spreadsheets are great tools for financial tracking, but when it comes to creating sales quotes, they have serious issues…especially when dealing with complex configurations.
For example, they:
-
-
- Allow incorrect combinations to be offered to the customer, since there are no safeguards to ensure that what has been configured are legitimate and working product configurations.
- Introduce costly institutional errors (in data and/or formulas) into the entire lead to order process, which will (eventually) be financially disastrous.
- Slow down the process, since sales teams have to spend precious working hours flipping through (and working within) all the cells of pricing lists, inventory lists, and product catalogs.
- Do not support collaborative efforts, since different people are often operating on different versions of any given spreadsheet with little insight into how to reconcile the updates in a single, correct document.
-
Bottom line, spreadsheets do not help sales teams sell more. They cannot highlight upsell or cross-sell opportunities. They are not easy or quick to update — it can months to get a spreadsheet into a usable state. Spreadsheets do not translate well to the cloud; files are continually passed around, manipulated and easily corrupted.
For any company that requires fast turnarounds, collaboration, and easy access to a single, collaborative document, spreadsheets are not where it’s at.
Say “goodbye” to the spreadsheet and “hello” to CPQ.
CPQ (configure price quote) is vital to managing complex sales. Winning the business depends on how (and how quickly) the product (and pricing) is presented to the customer. To maximize the return of a complex sale, companies need a CPQ solution that will allow their sales teams to effectively build and present a complex quote.
So if you are ready to replace your Excel spreadsheet with CPQ, check out our custom-tailored CPQ software solutions and success stories designed to simplify complex ordering and selling processes. Our award-winning solutions drive revenues, maximize the customer experience, and enable growth….and we can do the same for you.
