How to create a sales proposal in minutes with CPQ

Imagine this scenario: You are in the closing stages of a deal. Your contact is ready to sign the dotted line and be a part of your customer list. But your CRM solution doesn’t have a product inventory with a list of all the updated prices. What do you do? You can’t send what you think the prices will be.

You need to head over to your billing team and retrieve the updated price list. Next, you’ll probably need to create a quote from scratch, and then send it to your contact. However, they find mistakes, send the document back, and you will have to repeat the process.

Eventually, it takes another day or two for you to close the deal. That’s at least 48 hours of business lost!

Is there a way to simplify this process without starting over? You bet.

Enter Configure Price Quote software or CPQ.

What is CPQ?

Configure, price, quote (CPQ) helps you create flawless invoices or quotes and immediately send them to your customers. It can either be a standalone tool or work in line with your CRM solution.

With CPQ software, you can maintain an inventory of all your products and ensure the price is always accurate, in real-time.

From letting you have a faster sales process to customizing emails, a CPQ solution is integral for a salesforce.

Continue reading to know the top four:

Four benefits of a CPQ solution

1. Faster sales process

Let’s revisit the above example. There was a delay in the ongoing sales cycle of at least two days from when the customer was ready to purchase. Possibly, the standard spreadsheet discipline was the key factor for the delay. A CPQ solution helps sales teams address this issue. It provides up-to-date prices, creates and sends accurate quotes from a single place.

2. Minimize errors

When you send your customer a quote, you’d have to structure the pricing based on:

• Discounts or offers

• Bundled plans

• Renewals, monthly, quarterly, or yearly

Keeping track of this manually can lead to confusion and mistakes, even if you use a calculator. This can lead to quotes with errors and dents customer experience. This means that they will keep sending it back to you until it is correct. CPQ functionality helps sales reps keep track of these complex pricing structures automatically and ensures that the quoting process is error-free.

Now, isn’t that helpful? 

3. Add a personal touch

Most CPQ solutions provide you with built-in templates or allow you to create a new one as needed. You can create and save multiple email templates for quick access. You can also customize them with different placeholders, add media, or even signatures. Personalizing emails helps make them stand out in your prospect’s already cluttered inbox. In fact, personalized emails get 14% more click-throughs, and personalized subject lines get 26% more opens! This makes your prospects more likely to click on the emails you send versus somebody else’s.

4. More visibility across teams

CPQ ensures that important stakeholders such as the financial or legal team have access to all your sales quotes. This means that multiple teams can review your proposals before you send them to customers to ensure that they are factually and legally correct. As a result, your documents are current and you can avoid frequent communications with various departments.

Here are four steps to creating and sending a sales proposal quickly with Freshsales:

Step 1 – Set up an inventory of your products

Create an inventory and add various products along with their prices directly from Freshsales. Having this in a centralized location will ensure that your documents always have accurate pricing when you send quotes, proposals, or invoices to your customers. Some of the various details you can add to each product are its name, a picture to associate it with, category, and stock-keeping unit (SKU). You can also associate each product to the visual sales pipeline for easier recall.

Step 2 – Create templates of frequently shared information

Whether they are MSAs or NDAs, you can create a custom template for the quotes or proposals you wish to send. This ensures that you don’t have to create a new document every time.

You can create multiple templates with the following elements:

• Media such as images and videos

• Customizable tables (including pricing information)

• Footer, with your company’s information

• Placeholders that automatically populates your emails with data

Step 3 – Sync deals with documents

Next, sync deals with your documents. By doing this, you’ll ensure that the right price reflects on your documents. You can choose to auto-sync documents with deals, and you’re all set.

This will save you the hassle of manually updating records and ensures you don’t miss out on crucial information regarding the deal. Additionally, syncing deals with your document ensures no gaps in pricing information and helps you quickly identify deals and their respective owners in your pipeline.

Step 4 – Send documents and track their progress

You’re now all set to send the document to your customers. Save the document that you have created and click send.

You can choose to edit the document with essential elements just before sending it or even select another template from the list of your saved ones. You can also easily track the status of your documents once you’ve sent them across. Once you send the document, its status is updated to “Sent”.

You can now see the following information in a single place:

• When they open the document

• If they send it back

• The current version of the document and more

It’s that simple. Freshsales allows you to create and send proposals within minutes with a comprehensive CPQ solution. You don’t have to take our word for it. Try it free for 21 days!

Learn more about CPQ in Freshsales