Truth: If you’re in the business of building homes, your toolbox contains more than one tool. You probably have a specific tool for most every task.
Also truth: if you’re in the business of building homes, you need to create sales quotes and RFP responses. And, if you’re like most companies in the housing market, you're probably using the same tool to do build quotes that you’re using to balance the books (Excel), write contracts (Word), or communicate (Outlook).
It’s time to add CPQ tools to your toolbox. Just like you’d use one set of tools and heavy equipment for stick-built homes and entirely another for modular housing, you need to use a different tool for quoting that you do for, say, communicating.
Configure, price, quote solutions (CPQ) enable rapid production of professional looking quotes, optimization of product and pricing configurations, and detailed tracking of every step in the quote building/sending/signing process. CPQ is the perfect tool for driving more revenue in the home-building business.
Want proof? Check out how the primary features and functions of CPQ align with the primary deliverable of home-builders.
Proposal templates: the blueprint
Just like every home building project starts with a blueprint, every quote starts with a template. If you’re building a large development, chances are you have a few templates for the different kinds of housing being built: narrow lot plans, country homes, modern, etc.
CPQ tools also come equipped with specific templates to serve different needs. Think about the various customers and partners you send proposals to: what you’d send to a municipality budget office would likely be far different than what you’d send to a chain store or individual homeowner.
Just like you have different blueprints for different structures, CPQ gives you different sales proposal templates for different audiences (most built right in!).
Dynamic product and pricing configuration: the construction.
With your template/blueprint selected, it’s time to build. For a home, here’s where you’re sourcing raw materials and human resources. For a sales quote, here’s where you’re adding products and pricing to the foundation laid by your template.
Unlike the way most home builders keep track of their products and pricing (e.g., spreadsheets), CPQ tools have a dynamic product and pricing configuration engine that’s centrally managed (to ensure consistency in quotes across your organizations) and easily optimized (to ensure you’re driving the most revenue from every quote sent.
The primary function of this engine is ensuring that your quotes get “smarter” over time, presenting a dynamic mix of products and services that lets you build on successes and learn from failures.
Sales quote tracking: supply chain management
If a supplier is a day late with home building materials (or sometimes even just an hour), it can have a disastrous impact on costs and schedules. Which is why every home builder out there keeps a close eye on his supply chain, ensuring all is moving forward as it should.
The sales quote tracking capabilities built-in to CPQ tools enable you to keep a close eye on your quotes, and keep them moving forward as they should. One late reply, one typo-ed product or price, and a whole deal can come crashing down. CPQ keeps your “sales proposal chain” moving, enabling you to quickly spot bottlenecks, create repeatable, winning processes, and close more business.
Construction professionals know: no matter what the job is, there’s The Right Tool for it. For sales people in the home-building business, whose job is creating professional quotes that drive more revenue, that tool is CPQ.
