Fixing sales pipeline bottlenecks with quote software

The sales pipeline always looks so simple: prospecting at the beginning, lead qualification and demos/convos in the middle, and closed deals at the end.

But there’s one stage in the pipeline that’s more critical than any others: when you send a quote, as that’s when someone went from being interested to being invested.

And if you’re not using sale quote software at this juncture, it’s time to start doing so. Because with this easy-to-use, cost-effective business application, you can avoid some of the more common perils and pitfalls in the sales cycle, and close more deals more quickly.

Let’s take a brief look at some of the common setbacks or bottlenecks that can occur during the sales process and how quoting software – also known as configure price quote (CPQ) or quote-to-cash software – can help you navigate them, or avoid them entirely.

A lengthy sales cycle

Depending on what you’re selling, the sales cycle can be anywhere from two years to two seconds. For the most part, B2B sales reps with longer sales cycles and more complex product/service offerings are the reps who benefit most immediately and completely from using quote software.

By using CPQ – either as part of a larger solution like CRM or standalone – a rep can add both speed and “sheen” to sales proposal creation, delivery, and execution. Because once you get to the point where a prospect is ready for a quote – even if it took them years to be ready – you don’t want to waste a second in getting it to them.

With sales quote software, you have a tool that lets you create professional quotes in minutes rather than days, and send them immediately, making the most critical step in a lengthy sales cycle into one of the most efficient and impactful ones.

Losing the thread, dying on the vine

It happens all the time in sales. A prospect who was once chomping at the bit gets cold feet or “ghosts” you when it comes time to close. Rude.

But that doesn’t mean a rep lets the opportunity die on the vine. With quoting software, you have both clearer insights into the closing process (being able to see where a deal may have gone south) and automated tools to help “ping” a prospect.

Essentially, your quote-to-cash system – with its contact management and communication tools – can serve as a “personal assistant” dedicated to helping you close. While you’re off warming up new prospects, your quote software can help you keep the fire burning under existing opportunities as well.

It’s a people problem

Perhaps one of the greatest uses of CPQ is in helping solve people problems. No, it doesn’t manage relationships. It helps you do more with less.

Because one of the primary causes of bottlenecks in the sales pipeline is human resource allocation: not enough people to go around. Or too many people working on mundane tasks (like creating a sales quote from scratch using Excel or Word) instead of nurturing prospect and client relationships.

With professionally designed sales proposal templates and drag and drop product and pricing configuration, sales quote software can help you slash the amount of time it takes to make a quote by 90% (read a case study). Imagine how much more effective your sales reps would be with all that time back? Your people problems would quickly become a thing of the past, and your pipeline would be moving at top speed.

What kinds of bottlenecks are you experiencing? How are you addressing them? We’re happy to take a few minutes and show you how iQuoteXpress – the best value in sales quote software you’ll find – can help you fix them.

Leveraging quoting tools inside CRM

What’s your school of thought when it comes to customer relationship management solutions?

Old school like Salesforce — the big dog with a nearly 25% market share… and a nearly impenetrable UI.

New school like HubSpot — the quasi-humble marketing automation tool that has transmogrified into a full-blown (more like mostly blown) CRM.

“Stack school” like Dynamics — the choice for most businesses on the Microsoft Stack… or at least the one being suggested by every Microsoft Partner selling said stack.

No school — using Outlook, Gmail, and spreadsheets to fuel and foster customer relationships (not recommended).

No matter what CRM you prefer, it almost always doesn’t have every single tool a business needs, and that’s especially true when it comes to sales quoting tools, often called configure, price, quote (CPQ) solutions.

Because while there are some features in leading CRMs that can help you create quotes, said features are often lacking in any ability to help you create professional-looking, compelling, on-brand quotes, not to mention the ability to granularly track each sales quote.

In this article, we’re going to show you how to leverage quoting tools inside your CRM system. And if you’re not using a CRM system, we’re going to show you how to leverage these tools to kinda/sorta have a CRM system using the right kind of CPQ solution alone.

Seek single sign-on solutions

Most important in ensuring adoption of any quoting tool you add to your CRM system is ensuring single sign on. Standard SSO benefits include a more secure solution, and removing one more opportunity for the time-suck that is “I lost my password; please send me a code to reset.”

But what we have seen when clients add our CPQ solution to their CRMs is near-immediate adoption of the new quoting functionality as it appears as just another feature to users, rather than a new solution or system. iQuoteXpress currently has SSO CPQ for Dynamics, Salesforce, Zoho CRM, and Zoho Books, as well as an open API that enables SSO with most any enterprise CRM or ERP solution.

Centralize pricing and discounts

Salespeople will try almost anything to close a deal, as they should. However, that sometimes mean using outdated product pricing (quickly going off a spreadsheet they have locally stored rather than taking the time to ensure accuracy) or delivering drastic discounts.

With the right sale quote tool, however, you can centrally administer and control pricing and discount structures–remotely, no less! It’s all done via CPQ’s “backbone,” the product and pricing configurator.

Not only does the configurator give managers more control, it also empowers sales reps to more quickly put quotes together. Where they once had to pull product and pricing information from a separate database or Excel file, they now simply drag and drop configurations right from within the CPQ app embedded in your CRM system.

Leveraging CRM inside your quoting tool

See what we did there? Flipped this article’s title on its head! Because for small businesses that don’t see the need for–or simply can’t afford–a CRM system, there are tools and features in your quoting solution that can make for a “quasi CRM.”

You can create and manage accounts, create and manage contacts, track sales, track productivity, and even forecast revenue based on sales quotes in circulation. Additionally, there are analytics tools that help you get a clearer view of your pipeline and optimize processes, sales quote templates, and more to increase closing rates.

From once simply being little more than a collection of sales proposal templates to functioning as a mini customer relationship management solution, quoting tools have come a long way in a short time. And we’re just getting started.

Sales proposal templates and the art of branding

Every product/service you sell = your brand. Every word out of your sales reps’ mouths = your brand. Every quote you send = your brand.

Which means sales proposal templates can and should be a BIG part of your brand.

Think about it: in most cases, until you send your client a sales quote, your company/offer/products/services/YOURSELF are likely only known to a handful of people, or even sometimes only one person – your main contact: the person you’ve been calling and emailing and giving demos to.

But when you send a quote, that person or small group has decided that you are now worthy of “meeting the rest of the family.” And this time, you won’t be there to coach anyone along, nor to add supporting context and content, field questions in real time, or otherwise do the interpersonal relationship type things that have brought you to where you are so far.

Your sales proposal now has to do the heavy lifting for you, speaking not just for your offer but for your brand. And this is where the professionally designed sales proposal templates that come with most configure, price, quote (CPQ) solutions can help express your brand identity and further customer engagement.

Here are some specific tips to keep in mind when building, selecting, and customizing an ON-BRAND sales proposal template.

Don’t cut corners: go pro!

In most cases, your CPQ system will come populated with quote templates that seem to cover every need, and are often adapted to suit specific vertical markets and/or business use cases.

In most cases, this is still not enough.

Consider using a professional graphic designer to help customize those templates or build new ones. Because even if the proposal templates fit your general market, it’s highly unlikely they’re an exact match for your brand.

This is a very smart–and typically one-time–spend. A decent designer shouldn’t cost more than $100 an hour and shouldn’t take more than a day or so to help create some simple quote templates that help you stand apart from the competition and show off your brand.

K.I.S.S. –  Keep it simple, salesperson!

More is not less: it’s too much. When building a sales proposal template from the ground up, remember that you’re building a showcase, not a warehouse.

You need not detail every use case, cram every detail, show every angle. In most cases, your prospect already has these details and doesn’t need them all over again.

Put your best foot forward: one or two clean images of applicable products against plenty of whitespace. Make the relevant, selling details POP and leave the rest for the fine print.

With sales quotes–especially digital ones–it’s better to have multiple pages that give product images and benefits room to breathe than to try and fit it all on one page. Related note: if you’re sending printed quotes, don’t print on two sides. It creates a crammed experience for your recipient and can often result in details being missed.

Tell a story–a RELEVANT story

Another thing to bake-in to every proposal is your brand story. It shouldn’t read like a Wikipedia page or anything, but there should be some facts and features about your business and your values alongside the facts and features connected to your products and services.

However… this is not a place to say “me, me, me!” When telling your brand story, tell it through your customer’s eyes, make it relevant to them, modify when necessary. E.g., if your prospect is within the same state, hammer that home in your brand story: “Like most companies from Wisconsin, we believe in putting people first,” etc.

Your brand story is more WHAT YOU DO than WHO YOU ARE. Because, in the end, every prospect you’re pitching is far more interested in what you can do; rather, what you can do for them.

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A strong brand makes for a strong sales pitch, and the strength of your brand must be in every customer contact: that first call, that first demo, every sales proposal template, every quote sent, and every customer relationship. Build your brand the right way, and you’ll build relationships that last a lifetime.

Has the meaning of CPQ changed since 2022?

Last year’s buzzwords are often this year’s blather. Just as last year’s hottest business apps are often this year’s “been there, done that.”

But that’s just marketing, just perception. The value behind the apps and the trends and the words used to describe them should be relatively fixed.

That said… sometimes it’s not. Sometimes an app designed for Task A is instead used for Task B, and the meaning changes.

So let’s look at that and the meaning of CPQ (configure, price, quote solutions). What has changed in how we define and use this tool over the past year? As far as we can see, the definition of CPQ in 2023 comes down to one thing: customer experience.

CPQ and the customer experience, part 1: faster, friendlier

Let’s first look at the more traditional, time-tested way configure, price, quote solutions impact the customer experience, and that’s through business-to-business sales proposals.

Prior to CPQ, the sales quote process between a rep and a customer could be pretty uneven across any given enterprise or department.

Depending on who was creating the quote, it could be in different formats (Word, Excel, even in the text of an email), it could have critical information in different parts of the quote (or not there at all), and color schemes/branding/wording could all vary based on the individual. The customer experience was, at best, uneven as well.

Not only would the look and feel of proposals be varied, but in so many cases, products and associated pricing could vary, too, and not simply because of sales rep discount structures. Reps would create a quote based on locally stored (and woefully out of date) spreadsheets or other documentation that could result in quoting the wrong price, or–worse for the customer–quoting products that are out of stock or that a company no longer carries.

But with CPQ, these negative customer experiences are a thing of the past. With professionally designed sales proposal templates and centralized–and centrally overseen–product and pricing libraries, every quote leaving your company looks and feels the same (good for your brand!) and has only the most recent pricing on available products (good for your business!).

CPQ and the customer experience, part 2: empowerment

Perhaps the most impactful way the meaning of CPQ will change in 2023–rather, continue to change–is in how the solution is being leveraged by B2B companies to empower customers with B2C functionality.

By incorporating some or all of CPQ’s toolset into online portals and, for lack of a better B2B term, “shopping carts,” businesses are giving customers new ways to self-serve, which both improves the customer experience (no waiting, they’re in charge, etc.) and reduces costs for the business (no reps attending every step of every sale).

To cite just one use case, a manufacturing client has leveraged CPQ’s product and pricing configuration tools to allow its customers to conduct restock orders on their own.

With tens of thousands of SKUs to manage, “self restocking” would be an inconceivable task for a customer to manage–not knowing product names/numbers, digging through endless product listings and spreadsheets, etc.

But CPQ makes it a breeze for them to select every nut, bolt, and fastener they may need: all the manufacturer has to do is sit back and collect the payment.

When we look back over the years, we see many ways we’ve defined the meaning of CPQ–sales proposal automation, quote maker, quote-to-cash, etc. And while the meaning may have changed a bit over the years, the value CPQ delivers has been constant (and constantly growing bigger).

IQX NAMED AN “EASIEST TO USE CPQ”

G2, the largest and most trusted software marketplace serving more than 80 million people annually, lists iQuoteXpress in its 2023 Top 20 report

Los Angeles, CA, March 2, 2023 – iQuoteXpress (IQX), a pioneering configure, price, quote (CPQ) solution was chosen by G2–a software marketplace and reviewer serving employees in all the Fortune 500–as one of its top 20 vendors in the “easiest to use CPQ software” report. See the report here.

As with the previously released Forrester report, “The Configure, Price, Quote Solutions Landscape, Q1 2023” (in which IQX was also singled out), the G2 report lists many major companies in the CPQ space in its top 20 list. G2 has placed IQX at position 12 with a usability score of 8.3 out of 10.

“The hits keep coming,” said IQX General Manager, Martin Spritzer. “First the Forrester report, and now G2. In the former case, we were delighted to be singled out as a leader in the industry itself. And with G2, we’re even more delighted as making our solution user-friendly has been a focus since day one.”

IQX (available at www.iquotexpress.com) has an open API, and pre-built integrations for Zoho CRM, Zoho Books, Microsoft Dynamics, and Salesforce, and is also widely used alongside leading CRM and ERP platforms. It includes a variety of professionally designed proposal templates, a flexible product and pricing configuration engine, contact management tools, and a wide range of sales reporting tools and dashboards.

IQX allows administrators to centralize control over discount structures, product bundling, pricing, and a host of other business needs and rules. The solution can be customized at both the macro and micro (individual user) levels. The extensive customization options set IQX apart as a leader in its space and the company serves most every market: commercial fitness, security, furniture, HVAC, agribusiness, manufacturing, IT, and more.

“Being recognized by both Forrester and G2 this year is a testament to the hard work being done by our team and our relentless focus on delivering satisfaction and value to our customer,” said Spritzer.

“Many of the competitors in these reports charge hundreds of dollars per seat, six-figure set-up fees, and don’t help customers with key CPQ tasks, like setting up and uploading product and pricing configurations,” added Spritzer. “But IQX helps with all of that and more, and starts at just $39 per seat. So we say to everyone out there evaluating CPQ software on Forrester, G2, Capterra, GetApp, and beyond: you can have it all, and have it all for less with IQX.” 

About IQX: IQX is a US-based company with customers in the Americas, Europe, Asia, and Africa. Its namesake product is a robust, cloud-based proposal solution accompanied by personalized support to help each unique customer use it to its fullest. 

Quote software and other 2023 biz app trends

What are the biggest business applications trends for 2023 and beyond?

Some are the same as they’ve been for a few years now: cloud, digital transformation, etc. All good. These will be “trends” until adoption across the business world equals 100%.

Some sound a little out there: influencer marketing in B2B (are we ready for Tik Tok dances pitching CRM solutions?), blockchain for B2B (have we learned nothing from FTX and other houses of cards?).

And some are downright exciting, like low-code development, expansion of 5G, and AI-fueled chatbots (maybe not this last one… are you listening, Sydney?).

Finally, there’s one that should be on the list for anyone serious about driving more sales (and is B2B really, truly about anything else?): quote software, either standalone or as part of a larger CRM/sales/marketing solution.

Yes, we’re a sales quote software provider and so, yes, we’re biased. But here are two simple reasons – connected to two 2023 trends – why this biz app should be at the top of the list for trends to follow and tools to adopt for business success in 2023.

Professional sales proposals (& the cloud)

Quote software empowers your reps with the ability to make professionally designed quotes in a few minutes. Imagine if every proposal leaving your business looked as if it was created a design agency, replete with your brand palette and imagery.

Additionally, with a unified set of sales proposal templates you present a unified front to prospects and customers alike. It’s all about consistency in look, feel, and messaging, and a centralized collection of reusable proposals makes consistency a given across the board, no matter which rep might be sending a quote to which customer.

Let’s tie this into the other trends predicted for 2023: Obviously, a sale quote template is not an example of “AI in action,” but it does enable you to create a repeatable process that saves time and money. Also, with your quote software tools in the cloud (another trend), you can create, send, and manage quotes from anywhere.

Product and pricing configuration (& digital transformation)

The product and pricing configurator in your solution is (or should be) a clear-cut example of one of the most critical biz app trends of the last ten years: digital transformation.

Products and pricing have typically been stored on spreadsheets or deep in databases. To include this information in a proposal, sales reps often had to find the spreadsheet or PDF, search the document, and then copy/paste (or worse, manually type) information from it into a sales quote. There are myriad opportunities for error in this process.

More dangerous to a business is that most reps–to save time–will store product and pricing documents locally and often be giving information to clients that’s outdated or otherwise inaccurate. (We can’t count how many sales managers we know that have been forced to honor outdated pricing because that’s what made it into the quote).

But quote software makes adding products and pricing as easy as drag and drop. Reps use one of the aforementioned sales quote templates, and then add APPROVED products and APPROVED pricing to the quote–all while staying in the same biz app.

Less manual labor, less opportunity for error, better looking quotes, higher close rates: those aren’t biz app trends for sales–they’re timeless.

IQX RECOGNIZED IN FORRESTER CPQ REPORT

New report, “The Configure, Price, Quote Solutions Landscape, Q1 2023,” names iQuoteXpress  a “notable vendor” in serving the needs of small to midsize businesses

Los Angeles, CA, 2/13/23 – iQuoteXpress (IQX), a pioneering configure, price, quote (CPQ) solution was singled out by renowned business research firm Forrester in a new report, “The Configure, Price, Quote Solutions Landscape, Q1 2023.”

The report lists many major companies in the CPQ space, and identifies IQX as a global business serving clients with annual revenues of $25 million or less in North America, EMEA, and APAC.

“We’re delighted to be recognized by Forrester,” said IQX General Manager, Martin Spritzer. “It’s a testament to the hard work being done by our team, and the results being enjoyed by our clients who use IQX to reduce sales proposal processing times by as much as 70% and improve closing rates by as much as 25%.”

The solution (available at www.iquotexpress.com) has an open API, and pre-built integrations for Zoho CRM, Zoho Books, Microsoft Dynamics, and Salesforce, and is also widely used alongside leading CRM and ERP platforms such as HubSpot and Oracle. It includes a variety of professionally designed proposal templates, a flexible product and pricing configuration engine, contact management tools, and a wide range of sales reporting tools and dashboards.

IQX allows administrators to centralize control over discount structures, product bundling, pricing, and a host of other business needs and rules. The solution can be customized at both the macro and micro (individual user) levels. The extensive customization options set IQX apart as a leader in its space and the company serves most every market: commercial fitness, security, furniture, HVAC, agribusiness, manufacturing, IT, and more.

“One thing the report didn’t mention was pricing,” said Spritzer. “Many of the solutions we appear alongside in the report charge hundreds per user and six-figure set-up fees But with licenses starting at just $39 per user, IQX remains one of the absolute best values in the CPQ market.”

Can you use ChatGPT for sales proposals?

There’s a simple reason people are losing their minds over ChatGPT. Because it does something they can’t easily do themselves and can’t imagine a machine doing at all, let alone within seconds.

Most people use it for fun stuff: “conversations” with Abraham Lincoln, essays on why the Red Hot Chili Peppers were a more influential band than The Beatles (not true, but ChatGPT was up to answer anyway). But what about work stuff? Can you use ChatGPT for business? Specifically, can you use it to create sales proposals?

The answer is… sort of! There are many elements in a sales proposal–whether you’re creating one “from scratch” or using a template–where you can incorporate content generated by AI like ChatGPT.

You can tell your brand story. You can include blogs that support the need for your products and services. You can create articles on the state of a given industry or market segment that help provide a backstory for your sales pitch.

But until AI can access your product catalogs and pricing sheets (probably not a good idea), tools like ChatGPT can really only provide the ancillary content of a sales proposal.

The good news is that there is a tool that can generate “the meat” of every sales quote you send: configure, price, quote software (CPQ), which we can call the ChatGPT for salespeople.

Here’s why…

You’ll always start with a template

Just like ChatGPT creates a groundwork that people might use to create more actionable content (e.g., you can ask it about selling CRM software, and then repurpose what it generates for your own website or pitches), CPQ gives you the groundwork with professionally designed sales proposal templates.

In most cases, it’s the infrastructure and the window dressing of a proposal: i.e., the basic format and the palette, with the latter being a home for your own brand-building (your colors, your logo, etc.). However, you can tap AI to create content that lives within this infrastructure, to tell a better brand story, for example.

Automatic product and pricing configuration

To be technical about it, it’s not automatic from the administrative side. Product and pricing bundles must be created and uploaded (a service IQX happens to provide with every implementation).

From the salesperson’s side, though, it feels automatic. After they select and customize their template (say, with a paragraph or two about the prospect’s industry… generated by ChatGPT, of course), they simply use their CPQ’s product and pricing configurator to drag and drop quoted items and services into their sales proposal.

This is where AI tools like content-creating chatbots have no play whatsoever. This is about products and about pricing, and it’s highly unlikely any business leader is going to trust AI to set prices anytime soon.

CPQ doesn’t control products and pricing either, of course. It just makes it incredibly easy for reps to access the right configurations for the right customer. And, as importantly, for administrators to centralize, define, and control those configurations.

Where ChatGPT works in the sales process

In our opinion–and through our own use of ChatGPT–we don’t see an exact match between ChatGPT and the entire sales process.

But the keyword there is “entire.”

To create collateral, draft cold call emails, create winning replies to customer inquiries, build a database of answers to commonly asked questions about your products and services (answers that help sell), AI tools like ChatGPT can likely be a tremendous help.

For creating sales proposals from top to bottom, you’ll need more. Fortunately, CPQ from IQX does exactly that: more.

Sales quote software: CRM’s best weapon?

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:

• Product and pricing configuration

• Quote tracking

• CPQ and CRM integration

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.

Sales enablement’s #2 tool: quoting software

What defines sales enablement?

To some, it’s mostly a methodology wherein salespeople get the content and training they need to better engage customers.

Our friends at Gartner say that it’s “activities, systems, processes, and information that support and promote knowledge-based sales interactions with clients and prospects.”

We agree with Gartner… mostly. In our experience, the thing that truly defines sales enablement–that makes it effective versus ineffective–is technology. You can have all the activities and methodologies you want, but if there’s no technological “through line,” you have mostly, well, words.

There are myriad technologies that describe themselves as being for sales enablement: content development apps, list building sites, e-signature software… the list is virtually endless. But one sales enablement tool consistently rises to the top and, in most cases, is the platform on to which other sales enablement applications are added: CRM.

Why is CRM the #1 sales enablement tool?

Simply put, it’s the hub (nod to HubSpot on nailing it). It’s the foundation. It’s where every sales prospect lives (or should live), every sales campaign, every sales call, and–finally–every sale.

While CRM doesn’t necessarily automate sales tasks (nurture campaigns and the like being exceptions), it does help expedite many sales workflows and centralize sales data. And it’s that second point that’s a critical component to every sales enablement process: centralized, unified, and widely available sales data is how reps and managers alike verify the efficacy of sales enablement approaches and tools.

But its #1 sales enablement tool status comes from the fact your CRM is where every other sales enablement tool or system connects. While you can run, say, Docusign or a sales quoting solution or content development app outside your CRM, it’s when you run them as part of your CRM that they become part of your entire sales ecosystem and, together, further sales enablement.

We have often thought of CRM as simply the sales enablement tool box. It matters on its own, yes, but it’s what you put into it that matters more. Which brings us to sales enablement’s second most important tool, quoting software, a.k.a., configure, price, quote (CPQ).

Why is quoting software the #2 sales enablement tool?

Have you ever written a sales quote from scratch? Ever populated a spreadsheet or Word doc with products and pricing, then saved as a PDF, then sent via Outlook or Gmail? Time consuming. Sloppy.

Or have you ever used what’s in most CRM systems to create and send a quote? Have you seen what that quote actually looks like on the customer’s end? Have you been able to carefully track its progress from sent to signed? Bland proposal. Vague information.

Chances are you’ve done both. And chances are you’ve had some success, too, gotten some deals done. But if you’ve ever used quoting software, chances are you’ve had a TON of success and gotten more deals done.

In fact, one company reports closing rate increases of 36% by using CPQ. THIRTY SIX PERCENT MORE. That’s not for nothing.

But why/how/what does quoting software do that the old methods of spreadsheet and CRM alone don’t? Here are four fast and easy reasons:

Professional sales proposal templates: You never get a second chance to make a first impression, and using quoting software to create your quotes means starting with a killer template that builds your brand and captures eyeballs.

Product and pricing configurator: The engine inside quoting software, where pricing is centrally administered, where bundles/cross-sells/upsells/upgrades are pre-built for reps, where adding the right product configurations and the most competitive prices is as easy as drag and drop.

Granular sales quote tracking: CRM systems typically only let you see what was sent and what was signed (or lost). But CPQ lets you dig deeper, see where quotes may be getting bottlenecked, and make changes during the process.

CRM integration: Finally, CPQ rises to its position as a necessary sales enablement tool by a seamless, single sign-on integration with CRM, making it feel like a feature rather than a separate application, which helps increase adoption across the enterprise.

#1 CRM. #2 CPQ. What’s the number 3 sales enablement resource? Some might look for another app, but for us, it’s always the people. And when you give the people right tools, closing more deals is as easy as 1-2-3.