First things first: the online catalog we’re talking about here is not one that your customers use, but it is one they benefit from.
Yes, embedded in your CPQ solution, a cloud-based catalog of products and services makes it easier for you and your team to create and share quotes with sound pricing and product strategies.
But it also enables you to more completely serve your customers by bundling products/services (based on past successes) that will more completely meet customer needs—both the needs they know about, and the ones they don’t.
Fries with that?
Has there ever been a better upsell? We don’t think so. What’s the “fries with that?” in your online catalog?
Suppose you sell into the security space, selling home alarm systems. Sales rep A might have learned that the perfect upsell for many customers is asset protection devices. And if you take that rep’s learning and put it into your configure, price, quote system’s catalog, then ALL your reps will know it, too. Which means a better deliverable for your customers and more revenue for your company.
Because @@a cloud catalog is for more than storing products and pricing—it’s for storing knowledge.@@
Ideal for “trainees” and “to-go orders”
Returning to the fast-food analogy, an online catalog is one of the fastest ways to turn your “trainees”— your recent hires—into seasoned pros.
Because rather than having to employ any guesswork as to what products, services, and pricing work best for specific types of prospects, recent hires simply follow the footsteps of those who have been there before. Your CPQ system and the reps using it are always marching toward a winning formula—your cloud catalog makes that formula available to all your reps.
And, as your catalog is completely online, no matter where in the world your reps may be working, they’ll have access to the latest products and pricing—all orders are available “to go.”
The catalog can also be centrally managed but locally customized. Most distributed businesses have equally distributed customer-bases, which means different languages, different product needs, different rules, different pricing.
So while you’ll administer a single repository for all product information, you can share different information with different reps. E.g., reps in territory A can view products 1 through 21, but not products 22 through 40; whereas reps in territory B can view ALL products, but have different pricing for products 26, 35, and 40.
The technology that fuels an online catalog may be complicated, but the benefits it delivers are simple: flexibility, customizability, repeatability, accessibility, and a faster path to winning upsells, more revenue, and happier customers.
If you'd like to learn more about this topic or see IQX for yourself with a free demo, contact us.
