In the CPQ Success Secrets video series, DealHub CRO and Co-Founder Eyal Orgil answers real questions from our clients about CPQ. In video 1, we defined CPQ and how it benefits today’s businesses.
In our second video in the CPQ Success Secrets series, Eyal guides you through selecting the right CPQ vendor, including the hidden considerations should you take into account. Check it out below.
[Video Transcript]CPQ Selection Process
It’s really important that you have a process when you go about selecting your CPQ solution. You really have to understand the needs of the different groups within the organization. CPQ is something that is cross-organizational. Although the salespeople are the ones selling to the customer, it really affects different groups within the organization. First of all, there’s the sales management. What is it that they’re trying to achieve? What are the pains that they’re experiencing?
For Finance, are we having issues in the finance side of things in terms of how we’re discounting or the pricing that we’re offering? Are we being accurate? Legal may be involved in there as well if we have contracts in our CPQ, in our quotes that we’re sending out.
For Sales Operations looking at the efficiency of the organization and how our processes are working. Where can we improve that? Where can we also reduce some error rates and inaccuracies? Then, we also have the salespeople themselves. What are they experiencing? How are they able to get back to their customers very quickly with the right information, not having to spend too much time on internal processes so they can be out there selling to their customers?
CPQ Requirements Documentation
Once you’ve gone and spoken to those different stakeholders, what you need to do is basically gather up the different requirements that each of the different groups has. So the legal, the finance, the sales management, sales operations, and salespeople. Make sure that you have a requirements document. Make sure that you’re understanding when you go out to the vendors in the CPQ space, are they able to address those different needs? You can also score those based on what are the more important requirements, nice to have, or must-haves. But make sure you do have some sort of process that you’re documenting so that when you are evaluating different vendors you’re able to compare them based on your specific needs.
CPQ Vendor Evaluation
Once you’ve gone and interviewed your different stakeholders and you’ve built out your requirements document, you then want to go out and take a look at what vendors match the requirements that you have. Bring those vendors in. Have them demonstrate, in a live environment, the capabilities that you’re looking for.
It’s not enough to just have that promise of, “We can do that capability.” You want to be able to see that functionality operating. You then want to go back and short-list from the different vendors that match your capabilities or requirements that you have and bring back the stakeholders into the process to do the final evaluations and final decision-making. You want their consensus. You’re going to need their buy-in. Get them involved in that final decision.
CPQ Vendor Selection
When you make the final selection of your CPQ, you want to make sure that you’re also taking a look at any hidden considerations that may be involved. One of the key ones is the time to implement the solution. Projects for CPQ can be anywhere from three to six weeks. It can also be 12 to 15 months depending on the solution that you’re selecting. Every project involves disruption and defocus within the organization.
You want to make sure that you’re selecting a CPQ that is going to minimize that defocus and that disruption within the organization. As far as the time it takes to implement as well, there’s a cost involved in that. Not just the cost of physically going and implementing the solution but the time to value. How long is it going to take until your sales team actually gets the value from that solution? That’s a cost and you have to take that into consideration.
I think the final one that you really have to take a look at is when you’re selecting that CPQ vendor, are they dedicated to CPQ? Are they committed to enhancing that CPQ functionality, to taking that solution to where you need to go in this next six, nine, 12 months and forward? So, make sure to take into account those hidden considerations when selecting your CPQ.
I hope you found this video informative. If you did, I’d love to hear your thoughts and any questions that you may have on CPQ. If you would like to learn more about DealHub or CPQ, we invite you to schedule a demo to see how CPQ can streamline your sales processes and reduce the sales cycle.