I’ve spent the past 15 years in the CRM ecosystem as a Sales Executive, so I’m familiar with the frustrations today’s reps face. SAP’s CPQ (Configure, Price, Quote) is a magic bullet for these common annoyances. Order errors, wait time on the generation of proposals, missed opportunities… the list goes on. In an effort get past these pain points, reps will push deals through prematurely, or offer gratuitous discounts in service of closing. CPQ can keep you free from these pitfalls. Let’s take a look at how.
Closing your Foot in the Door
With constant pressure to close business, some sales reps may do whatever it takes to complete a sale. This often entails leaving money on the table by trying to entice the customer with an excessive discount. Should the customer accept, the sale may be completed, but the margin can erode, and revenue will certainly be diminished.
CPQ’s Protective Processes
SAP’s Configure Price Quote (CPQ) can eliminate this issue. CPQ does the calculations of making sure the sales rep meets the margin requirements set by sales management, to maintain profitability and meet revenue requirements. CPQ’s guided selling capability provides guardrails for the sales rep to follow. Along with automating the sales process by preventing order errors and generating instant proposals.
The Guided Selling feature eliminates rogue discounting by applying discounting rules and margin-protecting guardrails. It protects the margin of every opportunity with product, customer, and channel price controls. It puts extra support behind your team’s cross-sell and upsell activities by recommending more expensive and/or complementary products and services to sell. Should you need to exceed the maximum discount, this process will be fully accounted for. Multi-level approvals with workflow automation can kick in to get the appropriate authorization.
Rather than multi-platform quoting and authorization processes that suck the life out of your sales team, CPQ is a one-stop shop from configuration to quote. SAP CPQ delivers an intuitive, step-driven approach that simplifies and automates the quote creation process. With the requisite guardrails in place, you’ll be maintaining your bottom line more vigilantly, while consolidating the business of quoting.
As always, we appreciate your feedback on our subject matter. Let us know if there are topics within the realm of SAP’s product line, and proper implementation that you’d like to know more about. Reach out to ASAR to learn about how guided selling can eliminate over-discounting and the other capabilities of SAP CPQ.