CRM technology is becoming a commonality in all business technology. As per industry estimates from Grandview Research, nearly 91% of companies with 10 or more employees are using a CRM to manage customer conversations.
What’s more, in 2014, Nuclear Research revealed that every dollar spent on CRM implementation gave an ROI of $8.71. In 2021, Dynamic Consultants calculated that this number had increased to an average of $30.48. Undoubtedly, CRMs are incredibly important to all aspects of business, including the sales teams.
Inefficient quoting processes harm your business
CRMs fail to serve all aspects of the sales process. The customer relationship management software comes up short when it comes to complex quoting processes. In addition, different stakeholders have varied expectations: for example, managers use CRM for reporting and accountability. On the other hand, sales teams use CRM for managing and nurturing leads and customers. During the configuration, pricing, and negotiation phase, many deals are lost due to slow quoting and inefficient processes.
Yet, as we speak, in many companies, salespeople still use manual, standalone tools like spreadsheets. While they are fully integrated with CRM, when it comes to quoting, they still rely on quoting in Excel or Word, leading to slow manual processes, errors, and unnecessary risks.
When companies have a quoting process that’s slow and unconnected, all efforts expended to improve efficiency go down the drain. At such times, a quoting cloud solution can be a game-changer.
By integrating CRM software with services quoting software like Provus, your sales teams have a powerful AI-led selling platform that integrates with your existing workflow and leverages data to maximize efficiency and minimize errors. They ease the pain of an overcomplicated CRM, allowing your sales teams to benefit from both the software.
Let’s start by defining what is CRM with quoting before we delve into the benefits of CRM integration in the quoting process.
What is a CRM with CPQ Software?
Typically, a CRM is a robust contact database used for managing leads and nurturing customers. Although CRM is widely popular for sales success, its focus on lead management means that other workflows are passed on to different solutions. One of those workflows being relegated is generating, managing, and sending quotes.
Dedicated quoting software when integrated with the rest of your sales pipeline, leads to better outcomes.
In simple terms, CRM with quoting is an integrated solution that manages and automates quotes along with performing other complex CRM functions.
Let’s take a highly relevant example. CRM with CPQ software allows you to pull data from past quotes and provide customization, all without having to leave the CRM. In-built automation of services quoting streamlines the whole process and the CRM tracks the changes in the quotes and helps you make them quickly.
Improved accuracy, speed, and efficiency of the quoting process are some of the reasons why CRM with quoting is being increasingly used, especially by professional service organizations.
6 benefits of CRM and CPQ software integration
Looking at the sales pipeline from the lens of a wider perspective, instead of bouncing from one tool to another which leads to decreased productivity, sales teams can leverage quoting capabilities right inside the CRM system. Here’s how you can increase your sales team’s productivity and ultimately your bottom line by integrating CRM with the quoting process.
1) Streamline your sales pipeline
One way to create a more efficient sales process is by integrating your sales and customer information. Your first thought may be that this is not a major change. However, switching gears on a task does break your concentration. And leaving the CRM to open the CPQ software does qualify as a time-consuming task.
In addition, with a holistic view of the customer’s sales journey at your fingertips, you can focus more on moving leads through the pipeline instead of having to jump from one workflow to another.
Plainly put, CRM integration in the quoting process allows you to better focus on closing deals.
2) More quotes lead to more deals
Streamlining your sales process allows you to focus more on your existing customers and wow the potential customers.
When salespeople spend over 25% of their time on administrative tasks, pipeline management, and sending or customizing proposals, there’s little room to focus on selling. Less time doing these repetitive tasks leads to more time selling.
By seamlessly integrating CRM with the quoting process, your sales reps would spend more productive time within the CRM and see a measurable increase in sales.
3) Reduced errors
The key reason why 64% of companies find CRM tools to be effective to very effective is their ability to automate repetitive tasks. As a result, the salesperson’s job becomes easier and automation reduces human errors.
By bringing quoting proposals into the automation fold, you can avoid the occasional slips that happen through manual quoting processes. Even if you are using a tool for quoting automation, integrating CRM with the quoting process pulls all the customer information into a unified workflow that creates opportunities to streamline sales tasks even further.
The services quoting software helps your sales reps customize quotes in minutes.
Manually, this process would take several weeks to complete. The software also removes human errors while calculating quotes so that you don’t have to worry about misquoting customers.
4) Collaboration across teams
The buying journeys are getting more complex with customers having multiple touchpoints that extend beyond the sales department. Even before the lead is pushed to the sales team, the lead has several interactions with the marketing, lead qualifying, and other teams, making sales generate a team effort.
For a memorable customer experience, every department should know where the customer is in the sales funnel. What’s notable about team selling is that it can boost conversions by 258%.
CRM integration with the quoting process using Provus Services CPQ empowers various departments across the organization to work independently and then collaborate in real-time.
5) Accelerate responsiveness
If your sales reps take too long to respond with a quote, there are high chances of losing the prospects to competitors. Cloud-based services quoting software Provus reduces the time-to-quote from days to minutes.
By now, you know that products and services have several configurations which make manual quote building complex, clunky and time-consuming. A complex configuration requires checking for compatibility and current data and determining the prices based on resource optimization, resource availability, geographic locations, gross margins, and so on.
Customer requests in terms of pricing or discounts further increase the time spent in internal workflows and the turnaround time for quote delivery gets extended.
CRM integration with the quoting process helps salespeople get pricing quickly as it has been dynamically calculated based on real-time data. They can easily collaborate with other stakeholders to ensure queries are addressed.
6) Close deals faster with price recommendations
As per HubSpot, 28% of salespeople find closing deals to be the toughest part of making a sale.
Why integrate CRM with services quoting? The answer is, to increase your sales reps’ chances of closing a deal along with allowing them to close deals faster.
Provus services quoting cloud recommends accurate pricing information in the quote within minutes.
Customers have less time to look for alternatives or have second thoughts, leading to quicker sales.
Choosing the right services CPQ software for CRM integration
When integrating CRM with quoting software, choosing the right cloud-based services quoting software will increase the effectiveness and adoption of your CRM.
Cloud services quoting Provus can help make your sales reps more efficient, close deals faster, increase profits and improve customer satisfaction.
With CRM integration in the quoting process, say goodbye to long turnaround times for quoting, costly errors, and unproductive sales teams.
Looking to transform your business, reduce pain points of the sales teams and drive higher ROI with Provus quoting integration with CRM? Schedule your free demo.
