6 Tips to Optimize Your Configure Price Quote Process & Win at Sales
Ever wish your configure price quote (CPQ) process was… Well, better?
You’re not alone. The act of configuring products, pricing them out, and delivering accurate quotes is complicated. And there are countless ways to waste time. This is a problem in a world where speed is king. Thankfully, there are things you can do to level up in this area!
In this article, we’ll show you how to turn your CPQ workflows into one of your most efficient business processes, ultimately giving you and your sales team the edge you need to succeed.
Why You Need an Optimized Configure Price Quote Process
An effective CPQ process is the foundation for success in sales. Once you optimize your workflows, you’ll deliver quotes faster, boost accuracy, enhance sales effectiveness, improve customer satisfaction, and more. Let’s dive deeper into these important benefits:
Deliver Quotes Faster
Time is money, especially in sales. An optimized CPQ process will enable your sales team to generate quotes in a fraction of the time it usually takes. This will keep potential customers interested and increase your close rate. It will also increase your team’s output. Watch team productivity metrics rise when each rep can handle more quotes in less time.
Boost Accuracy
Speed is great—but only if the quotes you generate are accurate. An optimized CPQ process reduces errors by using software to automate key steps. For example, an automated CPQ tool will verify configuration and pricing choices to make sure they’re inline with company standards. This not only saves their company money, but also provides a better experience to customers. After all, who wants to be told the quote they received is inaccurate, and therefore invalid?
Enhance Sales Effectiveness
An optimized CPQ process will also lead to greater sales effectiveness. How so? When sales reps have access to crucial data points, like industry and buyer history, they can refine their sales strategies and make better decisions. This will often lead to greater close rates and deal sizes. (To be clear, CPQ software won’t reveal these customer details. But the best CPQ software will integrate with your CRM or ERP, which will give you the information you need.)
Improve Customer Satisfaction
An efficient CPQ process will ensure your customers enjoy the buying process. This is important because happy customers are repeat customers. And a 5% bump in customer retention can result in a 25% to 95% jump in profits. That’s a lot of potential money! The question is, how can CPQ accomplish this? It’s simple: CPQ will allow you to tailor your quotes to individual customer needs. It will also help you create and distribute quotes in way less time, as we discussed above. Both of these things will increase customer satisfaction levels to new heights.
Achieve Pricing Optimization
Last but not least, a quality CPQ process will help your sales team achieve pricing optimization. When this happens, you’ll drive more revenue, increase profitability, and perhaps most importantly, give your company an edge over its competition. This begs the question, “How do you actually develop a configure price quote process that works?” Let’s talk about that…
6 Tips to Level Up Your Configure Quote Price Process
If you want to win at sales in 2025, you need to fine-tune your configure price quote (CPQ) process. Here’s the good news: the six actionable tips below will help you do it.
1. Streamline Your Product Configurations for Accurate Quotes
Do you offer complex and/or custom product configurations to customers?
If so, a sophisticated CPQ system will help you organize various product features effectively and eliminate manual errors. The result? More accurate quotes in less time.
This will have a profound impact on your sales pipeline. For one thing, your sales reps won’t have to correct mistakes, which means they can focus on speeding up sales cycles. Two, your reps will keep customers happy, which will lead to a better close rate—both today and tomorrow.
CPQ solutions that include updated product catalogs, precise price lists, and versatile quote templates will help you streamline sales operations and reach peak productivity.
2. Leverage Pricing Rules to Reduce Errors and Improve Accuracy
Next, take a look at your sales team’s pricing rules.
Clear pricing rules are essential to producing error-free quotes on a consistent basis. Without them, your sellers will be forced to resort to gut-level pricing tactics that affect profitability.
Thankfully, the best CPQ solutions on the market will let you set pricing rules. Some will even let you automate the pricing process. Either way, your reps will have a much easier time pricing individual products and product bundles, which will enhance sales efficiency. It will also increase satisfaction levels because prospective customers will get accurate quotes faster. Win!
3. Eliminate Manual Tasks to Boost Sales Efficiency
We won’t lie, automation will completely transform your CPQ process.
Say goodbye to manual tasks and allow your reps to focus on what really matters—connecting with new and existing customers, boosting average deal size, and chasing shorter sales cycles.
This is all possible because automation can handle a range of activities. Use your CPQ software to configure products based on customer needs, price products according to predetermined rules, produce bills-of-materials (BOMs), seek approval requests, and fill out quote templates.
Software that accomplishes these things for you will not only save your sales team time, but also increase quote accuracy, which will lead to seamless business transactions.
4. Enhance Customer Experience with Real-Time Insights and Configurable Quotes
Customer expectations have never been higher. How can you meet their demands?
Start by offering them real-time insights into product configurations and pricing models. This level of transparency will increase trust with your target audience. It will also improve communication between reps and buyers because reps can respond to precise inquiries.
By allowing these kinds of customer interactions, you’ll enhance the buying experience and increase customer retention rates. As such, they’re worth their weight in gold.
5. Use Subscription Management for Complex Quotes and Tiered Pricing
Subscription and tiered pricing models can help companies drive more revenue. But they can also increase the complexity of your sales workflows and lead to customer frustration.
You can eliminate this issue via subscription management inside your CPQ software.
A quality CPQ system can handle a range of pricing structures that lead to complex quotes—all while maintaining accuracy. This will help your reps cater to more than one customer segment.
It will also give you, their sales manager, insights into sales performance. Does your company drive more revenue with a single product offering, a product bundle, or a subscription package? Study the data inside your CPQ software to understand customer behavior and adjust your sales strategy. Doing so will lead to better quotes for customers that actually lead to sales.
6. Integrate CPQ with CRM to Streamline the Entire Sales Process
Finally, make sure your CPQ software and your CRM solution play nice.
Integrating your CPQ and your CRM will help centralize data for your sales team and give your reps a single source of truth to base their sales strategies on. When this happens, your reps will become more efficient, close more deals, and achieve more success for your organization.
More specifically, they’ll always know about product availability and be able to generate professional-looking quotes with ease. These things will accelerate the quote to cash process.
Improve Sales Operations With the Right CPQ Software
There you have it, six ways to optimize your configure price quote process in 2025.
Yes, it will take work to implement the tips and tricks we shared in this article. But it will be more than worth it when your reps close more deals and drive extraordinary revenue growth.
Just remember, to really level up your efforts in this area you need an effective CPQ solution.
Experlogix is a top option in this regard. Our comprehensive solution has all the industry-leading features, from pricing optimization rules to proposal automation. But guess what—you don’t need a degree in rocket science to operate Experlogix effectively. Any seller can use it.
Sign up for a free demo of Experlogix today to see if it’s right for your sales team!
