Recent research from Datto revealed that rising competition and acquiring new customers are some of the top concerns keeping MSP owners and senior managers awake at night. It's not hard to understand why. Over the past decade, the market has become saturated with new entrants, and as a result, competition is steeper than ever.
To remain steadfast amid a crowded marketplace, MSPs are getting savvy in marketing and differentiating themselves. One of the key themes is that they are walking the talk by implementing new success-enabling solutions into their own organisations. One such solution is Configure Price Quote (CPQ), which helps MSPs deliver a superior pre-sales and customer experience, shorten the sales cycle, and boost their competitive advantage.
What is CPQ?
In essence, CPQ helps businesses to generate quotes much faster with significantly less effort. CPQs work with CRMs and tools like Datto PSA/Autotask to eradicate the repetitive, manual tasks involved in quoting and dramatically shorten the sales cycle.
The best CPQs for MSPs let you create a quote on a single, easy-to-use dashboard within just a few clicks, using real-time pricing and availability, and product and service information. They also minimise data duplication and inputting by automatically adding quotes to tools like Autotask.
CPQ competitive advantages
Maintain accurate, up-to-date data, effortlessly
Cost Price Quote solutions make it easier than ever for you to maintain a single source of accurate product, service, and pricing information that’s instantly accessible across your entire business.
When you need to introduce new products/services or change prices, you implement the latest information in only one place. The CPQ then automatically makes the changes across your organisation in real-time, ensuring that your sales team always has access to relevant, accurate prices and sales information.
Additionally, CPQ keeps track of stock levels, converts prices to international currencies, and can automatically apply discounts based on volumes or specific customers.
Manage quotes and product complexity with ease
CPQ makes it easy to produce accurate quotes, even when complex products or services are involved. This is great news for MSPs that often sell a wide range of products, services, and re-sold solutions from several companies.
CPQ automatically produces quotes using real-time pricing and availability data, rules, and sales policies (e.g., discount rules) accessed from a single source of truth. This reduces the possibility of quoting incorrect prices and incorporating incompatible product configurations. Getting quotes completed quickly and correctly in a one-touch process has several benefits:
- reduces risk;
- accelerates the sales cycle;
- releases the sales team from time-consuming admin so they can sell more;
- enhances your professionalism; and
- increases your proposal win rate.
Increase deal values and profit margins
CPQ can help MSPs land bigger deals by automatically spotting opportunities to cross and upsell. By highlighting additional products that would benefit a prospect or bundling two products together for a favourable price, CPQ helps MSPs offer better value to customers and grow the size of their customer accounts at various stages in the sales cycle. Additionally, since this all happens within a few clicks of a button, your cost to quote is vastly reduced, increasing your margins on every sale.
Better customer experience
The pre-sales experience sets the stage for the kind of service prospects can expect if they decide to become customers.
By accelerating the quoting process, increasing accuracy, and making it easy for MSPs and prospects to collaborate, CPQ aligns the pre-sales experience with prospects' expectations for fast, convenient services. The closer you can get to meeting and exceeding their expectations, the better your chances of landing the deal.
Using CPQ in your business
Salesbuildr gives you everything you need to deliver a streamlined, slick, and modern pre-sales experience. Salesbuildr is a web-based quoting tool and self-service storefront for Managed Service Providers on Autotask.
With Salesbuildr, you can create accurate quotes in seconds, automate up-selling and cross-selling, instantly collaborate with prospects, and give them greater control and visibility into the entire process.
The business outcomes are unignorable: a pre-sales process that wows your prospects, an increased proposal win rate, and healthier profit margins.
If you'd like to learn more about CPQ competitive advantages and how this solution could help you secure more sales, get in touch with one of our representatives today.
