How to Execute End-to-End Sales Automation with CPQ (and Some Other Cool Tools!)

A sales rep’s work is never done. What with writing emails, maintaining records, scheduling meetings, preparing reports, calculating prices, providing quotes, submitting contracts, and chasing payments, there’s never enough time left over to focus on actually selling.

The average sales rep spends just 36% of their time on revenue-generating activities, and the rest bogged down in busywork. Marketing and sales automation software frees reps from the most tedious, replicable tasks, allowing them to focus on the more “human” side of their sales responsibilities–building connections with prospects and nurturing existing relationships.

Investing in sales automation generates rapid ROI and positively impacts a broad range of critical KPIs. The best sales automation software increases sales productivity by a whopping 14.5%. As if this wasn’t incentive enough, it also increases deal closures by 30%, cuts sales cycle duration by 18%, and reduces the amount of time spent on sales admin by 14%.

What Can Sales Automation Actually Do for Your Business?

When used optimally, sales automation can:

• level up your sales productivity and performance, boosting win ratios, and increasing deal sizes.
• increase the number of sales reps meeting quota, which means more commission, greater job satisfaction, and better employee retention.
• make onboarding and training of new hires quick and easy, turning every rep into a top performer.
• shorten sales cycles and quote responsiveness, getting more deals moving through the sales pipeline, increasing customer satisfaction, loyalty, and retention.
• empower non-technical sales reps to configure, price, and quote highly complex engineer-to-order products.
• break down silos and improve cohesion by converging sales teams around a centralized sales hub.
• give managers greater visibility and control over a dispersed salesforce, boosting accountability and ensuring no sales lead slips through the cracks.
• streamline workflows and approvals, meaning no more missed calls and emails.
• allow sales reps to seamlessly move over to remote work by giving them access to cloud-based tools.
• provide extensive self-serve options to buyers who like to research and purchase products independently.
• improve interdepartmental communication and data transfer between sales, engineering, and the shop floor.

Why CPQ is the Ultimate Sales Automation Solution

CPQ is an end-to-end sales solution that guides sales reps through the configuration process, calculates prices based on numerous factors, and instantly generates sales documents like quotes, proposals, and estimates. Unlike sales automation software that performs a specific task, CPQ automates every step in the sales process, starting with a customer’s unique requirements and ending with a shipped product.

The product configurator is an intrinsic CPQ tool that enables sales reps to narrow down potentially vast catalogs of products, with hundreds or thousands of options, into perfectly optimized customer-specific selections. Different CPQ solutions handle the configuration process differently. Salesforce CPQ asks reps a series of questions about a customers’ needs, coaxing them towards the most suitable configuration. A solution like KBMax CPQ does things a little bit differently.

KBMax has a visual product configurator that lets reps (or end-customers themselves through self-serve) build out products using a highly intuitive visual interface. They can point and click or drag and drop to change colors, dimensions, parts, and more, with their changes appearing in real-time, in 2D, 3D, VR, or AR. It’s ideally suited to manufacturers of the most complex, customizable products.

Product rules built into CPQ product configurators ensure that every configuration is optimized for engineering efficiency and sales rep error is eliminated. Engineers can be confident that any product configuration coming to them from sales will be technically viable–no more napkins sketches and deal-threatening back and forths with the customer.

CPQ recalculates prices automatically, in real-time, as users play around with their configurations, which means customers get the features they want while staying within the boundaries of budget constraints, and sales reps can get their heads out of Excel. Dynamic pricing means that prices can be programmed to fluctuate automatically under shifting market conditions (demand, competitors’ prices, order history, etc.), maximizing the margin from every transaction.

The last step in the unified CPQ process is automatic quote generation. With just a couple of clicks, sales reps can generate a quote in PDF format that’s free from human error–it’s a massive win for time-stretched reps.

In addition to quotes, some CPQs will generate estimates, proposals, terms and conditions, and other sales documents. KBMax CPQ takes things even further with CAD and design automation. Reps can generate technical drawings without engineering input, clearing engineering bottlenecks, allowing engineers to focus on R&D while AI handles the mundane, easily replicable tasks.

Other Highly Effective Sales Automation Tools

Hubspot’s Sales Hub

Price: Starter (2 users with limited functionality) $45 to Enterprise (10 users with full functionality) $1,200/mo

Hubspot is a widely regarded sales CRM that automates the niggly sales tasks that waste the most precious selling time. Sales reps can quickly start conversations with prospects using email templates and call tracking. They can turn targets into customers with meeting scheduling, automatic follow-ups, and live chat. And optimize their sales processes with reports and analytics.

Pega Sales Automation

Price: Standard Edition $140 per user/mo to Engagement Edition $250 per user/mo

Pega’s AI-guided selling functionality walks reps through the sales process, recommending “next best actions” to drive engagement. It integrates with Outlook and G Suite, analyzing messages and suggesting replies while syncing emails and calendars. It features an AI “sales coach,” which improves sales performance and predicts future success. And it manages leads from initial capture through qualification, scoring each lead to ensure the most profitable opportunities receive the most attention.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator

Price: Professional (for individuals) $64.99/mo, Team $103.33/mo, Enterprise (price on request)

LinkedIn Sales Navigator is an affordable prospecting tool that lets users identify leads and accounts in their target market through the ubiquitous professional networking platform. It provides customized suggestions and allows users to log, save, and add notes on potential leads in a couple of clicks. Users can send InMail messages, share presentations, and, of course, see who has been looking at their profile!

Prospect.io

Price: Essential €89/mo (+€29/mo per additional user) or Business €149/mo (+€39/mo per additional user)

The Belgium-based company, Prospect.io, promises to take the boredom out of prospecting and increase outbound sales productivity across multiple channels. Users can find the right prospects together with their email addresses and drip-feed them a personalized stream of emails that trigger engagement. Its intuitive sales dashboard boosts productivity and tracks goals.

Calendly

Price: Basic (1 user) $0 to Pro ($12 per user/mo)

Calendly is one of those neat sales automation tools that only does one thing, but does it really well. Its one thing is appointment scheduling–the bane of many a sales reps’ working lives. Calendly does away with back-and-forth emails. Users can just share a link to a calendar that shows their availability and the other party can pick an available slot with a click. Simple.

LeadFuze

Price: Starter (500 leads/mo) $132.30/mo to Scaling (2,500 leads/mo) $447.30/mo

LeadFuze is a “search engine for leads”. Users can find business professional’s contact information, searching by market segment, or just zeroing in on one key decision-maker. It’s the kind of tool of which many reps are skeptical (will contact details be up-to-date, will it lead to loads of bounce backs, etc.?) In reality, that’s not the case, and LeadFuze scores consistently well in sales automation software reviews.