What’s the most powerful tool/feature/WEAPON in a customer relationship management (CRM) system?
Sales leaders probably say it’s the funnel, the ability to forecast overall sales and monitor individual performance.
Operations/information systems staff likely say it’s the seamless integration of data and workflows with other business applications and platforms.
But the main users of CRM solutions–sales representatives–typically tell a different story as their #1 concern is closing sales (ok, collecting the commissions attached to closing sales), and that often makes sales quote software (a.k.a., CPQ) their top tool.
And while we have written a plethora of posts about the standalone benefits of CPQ (configure, price, quote software), today we’re going to focus on the benefits solely as they pertain to CRM, how the strength of quoting software augments the strength of CRM–and vice-versa.
We’ll concentrate on three key areas:
CRM + CPQ: Easier Product & Pricing Configuration
CRM systems are used to store endless amounts of information: contacts, accounts, marketing “touches,” order history, and more. Although CRM systems do enable storing of product and pricing information, they don’t always make adding that information to a sales quote all that easy.
For example, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales–a leading CRM for which iQuoteXpress offers a single sign-on integration–requires nearly a dozen steps to add a product and pricing to a quote made from an existing opportunity. It’s not CRM’s fault: it was designed to manage customer relationships, not products and pricing.
Sales quote software, however, makes adding products and pricing to a quote as easy as drag and drop. You have your quote open, you click to add products, and then just drop them in. In most cases, it’s far faster to use CPQ to execute this critical task than CRM.
CRM + CPQ: Sales Quote Tracking
As mentioned, sales forecasting is a primary benefit of every CRM system, tracking prospects into leads, leads into opportunities, opportunities into quotes, and quotes into closed sales.
The challenge for most CRM systems in the preceding sentence is in that last “into,” what happens between creating and sending a quote and closing a sale? Most CRM systems offer rather basic functionality: quote sent, deal won/lost.
But, as any sales rep can tell you, there’s often a whole lot that happens in those few, critical steps. Contacts can change, quotes can be revised, pricing can be tweaked, and on and on and on.
Sales quote software allows for far more detailed tracking of individual quotes, which can play a critical role in getting deals across the finish line. I.e., where CRM offers macro tracking, CPQ offers micro tracking. The devil is the details, and so are the deals.
CRM + CPQ: Total Integration
Central to fully realizing the benefits we’re describing here (as well as the many more offered by CPQ: sales proposal templates, analytics, contact management, centralized administration of pricing and discounts) is a seamless integration of CRM and CPQ.
To ensure adoption across all sales representatives, a single sign-on integration is required. Even though CPQ is a different application from an engineering standpoint, you need your sales reps to essentially experience it as an extension of CRM, a tab within the platform rather than an app outside it.
Total integration also means improved reporting as the data uncovered during the closing process can be more easily captured and shared, which means improved forecasting across the board.
Don’t be mistaken: even without sales quote software, CRM has a lot to offer in terms of helping you create and send quotes. But if you’re serious about closing, you’ll ensure you have the absolute best tool for the job, which means total integration of CPQ and CRM. Because while both systems have much to offer on their own, they are ALWAYS stronger together.
