Skyrocketing demand for personalized products means increasing stress levels for sales reps.
The greater the number of custom options, the greater the number of errors. Sales cycles are longer, sales to manufacturing handoffs are complex, and customers then bear the brunt of these inefficiencies.
There is a much better way. Sales automation software helps to super-charge sales performances, turning unproductive sales reps into top-level performers. Furthermore, by automating crucial but error-prone, time-consuming sales tasks, companies also require smaller sales teams, saving a lot of money.
Choosing the right sales and design automation software for your business is challenging–there’s a lot of noise out there. This one explains why, if you can afford to implement just a single piece of sales automation software, it has to be visual CPQ.
Sales Automation Software
The clue is in the name: sales automation software refers to any software that automates different sales tasks, boosting productivity and performance (the average productivity increase is 14.5%). Most sales automation software also has the added benefit of cutting down overheads.
Sales automation software allows companies to get rid of the most tedious, time-sapping sales tasks. It performs much better and faster than a human salesperson ever could, making data entry, prospecting, emailing, reporting, product configuration, pricing, and quoting a very easy process.
Most Popular Types of Sales Automation Software
There are a lot of SaaS (software-as-a-service) solutions on the market for automating and improving almost every possible business task. These cloud-based solutions have a lot of distinct advantages over older alternatives:
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Quick setup and deployment: With nothing to install and complimentary trial periods as standard, you can begin using many SaaS solutions in a few mere clicks.
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Scalability: SaaS providers offer unlimited scalability with nothing extra for you to download. You don’t need to worry about systems crashing in response to traffic increases. And if a business is slow, you can downgrade your package and even pay less.
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Flexible payment: On-premises software requires a major up-front investment. SaaS solutions get charged monthly, and you can also cancel at any time (less risky.)
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Low maintenance: Upgrades, updates, and even bug fixes get handled by the vendor.
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Smooth adoption: SaaS vendors usually compete on usability–non-technical users can get to grips with the software quickly.
Here are a few of the common kinds of sales automation software:
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CRM: Customer relationship management software like Salesforce breaks down varying data silos. It provides a single point for your customer data enabling richer, personalized buying experiences. It also helps to identify the most valuable leads, allocates deals to reps, and a lot more.
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Marketing Automation: Hubspot, Klaviyo, ActiveCampaign–when choosing marketing automation software, the choice is just endless. The correct solution will allow you to automate email and social media campaigns, segment the market for a planned outreach and guided different leads down the sales funnel.
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Meeting schedule: With a solution like Calendly, you get to send out a calendar that shows your availability. The other party picks a suitable time and then just clicks to book a meeting.
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Workflow automation: Zapier is a fantastic tool. You can also use it to automate annoying, repetitive tasks, and it then gets integrated with everything. A couple of examples: add new leads to email list; share social posts to Slack.
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CPQ: Automate and elevate all your product configuration, pricing, and even quoting tasks. Visual CPQ is simply the best–see below.
If you’re a manufacturer of configurable products and can only afford to invest in one piece of sales automation software, it has to be CPQ. Why? Because organizations that implement a robust visual CPQ solution like KBMax see the following benefits on average:
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40% increased conversion rates
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168% increased annual sales
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38% quicker sales cycles
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35% increased production
Working of CPQ
A standard CPQ solution automates the configuration, pricing, and quoting of configurable products. It saves a lot of time and also improves accuracy. It works like this: Sales reps use the software to select multiple product options for customers, calculate their prices, and then generate quotes for orders.
Many manufacturers use some kind of CPQ software. For many, it’s Excel. For others, it’s Salesforce CPQ, with its several distinct advantages over basic spreadsheets:
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Manufacturers can embed product rules into the software, which precisely speak how products can be configured. These rules save a lot of time, money, and the like.
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Guided Selling functionality guides all the sales reps through the entire sales process, giving smart recommendations along this way to boost the deal size and also improve satisfaction.
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The solution sits neatly within the Salesforce ecosystem–ideal for existing Salesforce CRM users (of which there are more than 150,000!)
Why Companies Selling Complex Products Require Visual CPQ?
Manufacturers that a) have vast product catalogs or b) sell highly complex configurable products will derive maximum ROI from a highly visual CPQ solution.
With a visual CPQ solution, sales reps configure products with a rules-driven tool called a “visual product configurator.” Rather than answering long sequences of tedious, standardized questions to find the right product-customer fit, sales reps can interact with 3D products on-screen. They point, click, drag, and drop to change the colors, dimensions, parts, and even other features with their choices being reflected in real-time.
With a visual product configurator, salespeople gain a deep, visual understanding of the products they sell. It’s not a black box; they can see precisely how products are assembled based on the choices they make.
The best thing about a product configurator is that companies embed their requirements into a customer-facing website. Customers can easily self-serve, configuring complex products without any sales or engineering input. It’s compelling, enjoyable, and socially distanced. It gives customers the ownership and control they crave.
Manufacturers can use their visual product configurator to provide highly immersive buying experiences. A solution like KBMax can very easily incorporate Augmented Reality (AR) to transfer products out of the virtual and even in the real world.
The Bottom Line
Visual CPQ is more than just simple sales automation software; it’s an end-to-end solution that can automate the entire engineer-to-order manufacturing process. It’s affordable, quick to implement, easy to maintain and then integrates seamlessly with all of your back-office systems.
If you want shorter sales cycles, improved quoting accuracy, reduced sales-to-manufacturing complexity, happier customers, and bigger deals, visual CPQ is the sales automation software you’ve been missing.
