The Configure, Price, Quote (CPQ) process forms an integral part of any manufacturing business, not least when it comes to custom products.
However, this sales model has potential to cause frustration with prospects and potential buyers because of the difficulties in obtaining an accurate estimation, particularly during the discovery and researching phase.
Product configurators, visualizers, and customizers help to solve this problem by providing prospects an accessible, efficient way to gain insight as to likely costs involved in the build they wish to specify.
Not only does this aid the prospect’s research and discovery process, but also increases confidence as the buyer sees and engages with something tangible that they can mentally quantify.
CPQ processes typically involve a lot of administrative work and high level component knowledge, in order to accurately provide costings. Furthermore, a solid understanding of the buyer’s individual circumstances and pain points that they specifically wish to address is vital in selecting the appropriate components in any CPQ that’s generated.
This immediately disqualifies newer or more inexperienced members of your team from the cpq process in general — which is far from ideal. In a perfect world you wouldn’t need to worry about staff absences, new hires, or high seasonal workloads as barriers to your organization’s ability to deliver timely and accurate quotes.
Enter the product configurator. When done right, these tools can prove instrumental in your team’s ability to run a more efficient, accurate CPQ process, removing uncertainties and providing a reliable, always-on single source of truth.
Whether you choose to make a configurator available to end buyers or specifiers through your website will wholly depend on your business model, but even as back-office tooling they provide a powerful proposition. Configurators are a sales enablement machine.
When they are front of house, product configurators offer buyers and specifiers a gateway into your world, able to serve them with a realtime estimation that’s about so much more than just price. In engaging the user, you’re receiving a commitment from them — they’re giving you the opportunity to solve their problem and address their need.
In brief, product configurators can smooth over the sales process in the following ways:
- They act as a single source of truth
- They offer users and prospective buyers a way to elegantly configure and specify an exact build or configuration of your product or service.
- They accelerate and streamline the quote process
- They enrich user experience
- They alleviate build issues relating to inaccurate specifications
Contact Cocoon for a free consultation.
