Does it feel like your business customers are taking longer to make purchasing decisions? If you answered in the affirmative, chances are, you do not imagine things.
Recent research from Gartner highlighted the fact that the B2B customer journey is getting longer and harder, with 77 per cent of customers stating their most recent purchase was difficult to execute. Little wonder when procurement decisions typically call for the input of six to 10 decision makers!
Having more people involved in the purchase approval process means more complexity, more opinions and less chance the individuals in question will come to an agreement in a reasonable time frame.
The challenge is further compounded if you’re marketing an inherently complex offering – think a service, or bundle of services, with assorted add-ons, discounts and complementary products.
Subscription selling challenges
Complexity is particularly likely if you’ve adopted a subscription selling model – billing for your products or services on a usage basis or charging customers a fee per week, month or year to access them – rather than the old-fashioned ‘own it outright’ arrangement.
Selling on subscription often means you can offer myriad product or service configurations and options. That flexibility can give your business a competitive advantage, but it almost inevitably necessitates a more complicated pricing model.
And that means more hard work and headaches for your sales and business development teams. Working out exactly what they’re able to offer a customer and how much they need to charge for it to maintain acceptable margins can be no easy exercise if they’re relying on manual methods or old-school tools, like the humble spreadsheet.
Ready, steady, quote!
Having the right tools on hand can take the hard work and hassle out of creating a quote. Being able to provide customers and prospects with an accurate, actionable indication of what they’re up for and what they’ll receive for their money, should they decide to do business with your enterprise, gives decision-makers clarity and certainty.
That’s where Configure, Price, Quote (CPQ) technology comes into its own. A sales tool that has been around in a more rudimentary form for many years, it allows sales teams to generate quotes according to a pre-programmed set of rules that automatically account for discounts, optional features and a myriad of other variables.
You might, for example, choose to offer reduced rates to special customers or a complementary service at a lower introductory price.
Choose a CPQ tool that integrates seamlessly with your ERP and billing platforms, and you’ll enjoy the benefit of data integration and fast and accurate quoting.
Once you’ve established a system of rules that generates the right set of figures each and every time, you may also decide you’re able to dispense with any requirement for management to approve quotes before they’re dispatched
Speeding up the sales cycle
The net result? For many enterprises, it’s a significantly shorter sales cycle. In BillingPlatform’s experience, businesses that embrace this technology can move from quote to cash 50 per cent faster than those that rely on outdated manual methods.
Some businesses find they’re able to reduce, or even eliminate, time-intensive interactions to sign up new subscribers. That’s a compelling benefit if your business is in high growth mode and looking to grow customer numbers without investing heavily in human resources to do so.
Taking the pain out of purchasing
Business customers are generally not short of reasons to say ‘no’ to the purchase of a product or service. The more complex the proposition on offer, the truer that becomes. Using CPQ technology to generate detailed, accurate quotes makes it easier for customers to say yes and quickly. If you’re looking to scale your subscription business economically and fast, it’s a powerful tool to add to your software armoury.
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