3 Ways to Capitalize on the Cloud to Shrink Sales Cycles

By Audrey Spangenberg, CEO of FPX, Inc.

Using technology to streamline sales processes is not a new concept for businesses with complex sales. What’s become critical is the importance of capitalizing on accuracy, access and automation to shorten a lengthening sales cycle. According to Aberdeen Group research, under-performing companies see a year-over-year increase to their selling cycles of 12%. Moving every day sales tools to the cloud has proven benefits to results-driven companies under pressure to cut costs while being held to higher revenue performance.

Creating sales proposals and quotes for solutions with myriad configurations can be time consuming and error prone when reps are tasked with wrestling manual spreadsheets to do so. Automating this process through a cloud-hosted solution can cut costs and reduce reliance on your IT department while simultaneously improving the access to critical information that improves customer service and satisfaction.

The following are three benefits marketers can capitalize on by utilizing cloud capabilitiy to shrink sales cycles:

1. Accuracy of Information- Many organizations struggle with inaccurate quotes. Often, the information salespeople have is not up to date. Complex solutions have many moving parts. The proposal may not contain all of the information needed for the prospect to make a decision, or it may not provide a clear and concise description of the proposed products. These inaccuracies can result not only in repeated calls to the customer to clarify issues and offer concessions but also in incorrectly placed orders. This leads to a longer sales cycle, increased costs, and sometimes the loss of the sale entirely. According to Jim Dickie, managing partner of CSO Insights, “…just less than half of all forecasted sales deals result in wins.” Improving the accuracy of configurations, pricing and quotes can change that.
2. Access to information- When salespeople and partners are armed with current product and pricing information they can respond to customer requests and questions quickly and confidently. Instead of having to utilize multiple siloed applications to construct one proposal, everything your sales reps need can be at their fingertips. With frequently updated data, it becomes easier for salespeople to up-sell complementary services such as warranties and add-on products and services. Cloud-based configure, price and quoting systems (CPQ) can bring disparate data from multiple sources together in a virtual information nirvana that’s instantly accessible to everyone in your company, as appropriate, at every level. With simple browser access, your salespeople can login to the system to gain access to the information they need to elevate their interactions with prospects and customers from wherever they happen to be.
3. Automation of processes- If your sales-to-production process is still handled the old school way, necessitating human approvals and validation for every proposal, it’s likely that details are falling through the cracks. You’ve likely automated foundational processes, such as those facilitated by your ERP system. With the cloud, you’ve got the capacity to automate more, and do so in an integrated fashion.

With an automated, rule-driven CPQ system, any sales rep who can log into the system can produce an intelligent, error-free quote on a complex product configuration in short order. With the instant gratification mindset of today’s buyers, automating your ability to respond to proposals and customer inquiries can have a dramatic impact on shortening time to revenues.

In fact, according to research by Aberdeen Group, 73% of best-in-class companies have achieved an 8% reduction in the length of sales cycles. This is likely the result of their ability to increase the average number of proposals, quotes or RFP responses generated for prospects and customers by 9.1% per sales rep.

Equally important to automating the sales proposal process is that upgrades to systems provided via the cloud happen automatically, on time, and without stress or interrupted customer orders. And that translates into considerable cost savings when it comes to your company’s bottom line — and to your salesperson’s bank account.

At the end of the day, it’s about winning — winning the sale, winning and keeping the customer satisfied, and staying ahead of the competition. No matter how complex the product or configuration process, cloud-based CPQ applications can make it simpler, easier and considerably less frustrating.

Audrey Spangenberg is CEO of FPX, Inc., a global provider of multi-tenant, on-demand Configure-Price-Quote applications to automate and simplify product pricing and configuration. Audrey can be reached at audrey.spangenberg@fpx.com.

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