Configure. Price. Quote. Succeed: Apttus at Dreamforce 2013
This morning, I attended the final CPQ session at Dreamforce 2013, “Configure. Price. Quote. Succeed.” The very cool thing about this morning’s session is that it was hosted by Salesforce, yet it was...
View ArticleThe Value of Guided Selling
When I was buying wood and braces to build and shore up extra support boards for my probably not-to-code garage (the upper rafters have become a de-facto storage attic), I spent some time with a floor...
View ArticleDeal Management: Seeing the Forest Through the Trees
Backcountry sledding is done in a one-person sleigh, careening through powder-filled steeps, open mountain bowls, cutting through a scenery of trees, rocks and cliff-filled ridges. While it takes a...
View ArticleFour Ways Effective Quoting Can Be a Competitive Advantage
For many sales reps, quoting is a source of pain, frustration, and conflict. And this is a shame, because a clean, accurate quote—delivered on time—is one of the best tools you have for turning an...
View ArticleCustomer Centric CRM & CPQ Drive Sales Effectiveness
First part in a series defining the foundation and results of customer centric enterprise Last year on this blog we wrote about the comparative value of ERP vs. CRM. I’d like to expand upon that, with...
View Article5 Ways Deal Desk Streamlines Sales Coordination
If your organization sells complex, high-value deals, a dedicated Deal Desk can make your life a lot easier. Deal Desks give field sales teams the tools they need to configure, price, and quote deals...
View ArticleCPQ: Picking Up Where CRM Leaves Off
If you’re familiar with customer relationship management (CRM) tools such as Salesforce, you know that CRM effectively tracks the activities that move a lead to an opportunity to a closed deal. It’s...
View ArticleTrends in Manufacturing: Driving Growth with CPQ
Not only was complex manufacturing a pioneer adopter of Configure Price Quote (CPQ) technologies, but the manufacturing industry overall continues to lead other sectors in using CPQ software in selling...
View ArticleRedefining CPQ: Collaborate Perfect Quotes
The job of Sales is to sell and sales technology’s role is to help Sales sell. To do this I would like to literally redefine CPQ. Traditionally the acronym stands for ‘Configure Price Quote,’ but in...
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Demystifying the Healthcare Value Chain
the•health•care•value•chain (noun) – A complex network of interactions between manufacturers, payers and administrators, sponsors, distributors, providers and pharmacies, and of course, patients and...
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Five Benefits of an Effective Revenue Management Solution
Want to win big points with your CFO, auditors and stakeholders, all while eliminating unnecessary risk from your business? Adopt an elegant, integrated revenue management solution ASAP. While...
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Bundle Up! Creating an Effective BOM in Your Pricing Solution
To quote Richard Buckminster, I’m not a genius. I’m just a tremendous bundle of experience.” Specifically, one of my areas of expertise is Configure Price Quote (CPQ), pricing solutions, and...
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The Quote-to-Cash Process in 10 Steps
When you integrate your Quote-to-Cash process, you optimize the highly collaborative aspects of quoting, contracts, and revenue management, bringing visibility to everyone involved and accelerating...
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Buying an Aston Martin: Configuration in Action
For those of us here who aren’t in sales, you might be thinking, “Why do we need configuration? Isn’t it the reps’ job to remember the products?!” Well, yes. But it’s not always easy, and if you...
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Why Configure Price Quote Software Helps Manage Business Complexity
In response to challenges with globalization, market volatility and intensifying competition, enterprises are striving to become more dynamic, innovative and agile in the way they serve their...
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Accelerating Quoting Agility with CPQ
Configure Price Quote has come to be known in the business world as a key catalyst for speeding up the quoting process. Although a relatively new entrant in the industry, CPQ solutions have since...
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How Much Are Delayed Quoting and Contracting Processes Costing You?
The answer is possibly millions in top-line revenue. Recently, Apttus and Adobe assessed the impact that sales automation solutions, specifically Configure Price Quote, Contract Management, and...
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Automated CPQ: Your Enterprise Cockpit
In my brief but interesting experience with automated Configure Price Quote (CPQ), I have realized that the speed, accuracy and control it provides reps composing a deal is comparable to that of a...
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Are You Complex? 8 Conditions that Say Yes
What is complex Configure Price Quote (CPQ) software? This is a key question because as new strategies and tactics are adopted, product and process complexity tends to rise, enterprises need to...
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Configure Price Quote Software Magnifies the Impact of Pricing Excellence
Pricing is of existential importance to firms, in ensuring sufficient returns are realized from the development, marketing and sales of products. When done right, it’s a key factor in helping firms...
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3D Product Configuration – The Future of Sales Tools
Here’s the deal: People nowadays want things that fit their own personal needs and preferences. What does this mean? Products need to be more personalized than ever before. To do this, companies need...
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Industry Specific 3D Visual Configuration
If you think configuration and CPQ solutions are only a priority in tech and manufacturing companies, you have a very small and monochromatic imagination. Just about anything can be configured –...
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What is CPQ?
What is CPQ? CPQ, or Configure Price Quote Software is a sales tool designed to help companies produce accurate and highly configured quotes making all of the complex product, pricing, and business...
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10 Elements of the Perfect Quote
The quote is really the first chance you have to make a good impression on the customer. Delivering an accurate and professional order form within a customer’s time frame is the first indication that...
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3 Lessons from a Configure Price Quote Software Implementation
Within the insurance industry, there are two critical needs: exceptional customer experience and the ability to offer complex, highly personalized product offerings. The Standard, a family of...
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Accelerate 2015: Live CPQ Implementation During Keynote Presentation
Speed isn’t a luxury, it’s a necessity. With an increase in mobile capabilities, business is now immediate. Having the ability to remain adaptive and responsive in many cases is a deciding factor in...
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Get in Front of the Customer and You Will Grow Sales
I recently attended the Accelerate conference held by Apttus and had the pleasure of participating in an intriguing panel on the Quote-to-Cash discipline and best practices for sales, legal and...
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Three Pressures of Managing Complex Manufacturing Sales
If you had to guess, what’s more complicated? Managing complex manufacturing of a product, or selling the products you build? In reality, both bring equal levels of complexity, especially as the world...
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Need for Speed: Increasing Your Sales Velocity
Speed is one of the biggest pressures companies face today – Sandra Bullock, don’t let the bus go below 60 mph, type pressure. Business is nearly immediate, and the ability to adjust to market...
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Manufacturing + Customer Service: Benefits of the Cloud Revolution
The Manufacturing State of the Union We are seeing a pivotal transformation across the manufacturing and industry verticals. IDC has a study that says, companies are now investing 25-30% of their...
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Salesforce World Tour München: The Epoch of Customer Focus
Hallo München! Last week, on the last leg of the Euro portion of Salesforce’s true-to-name World Tour, 4,000 plus attendees poured through the expo hall. People from a variety of companies,...
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Salesforce Data Analytics Meetup: Wave and the 4 W’s of Business Intelligence
Earlier this week a hundred attendees crammed into in San Francisco’s Geekdom, for a night of drinks and dashboards, pizza and predictive analytics, networking and next-gen business intelligence. A...
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Deal Management: Get Your Deals Across Home Plate
There’s an old baseball philosophy that says you should never make the first or last out of an inning at third base. In other words, don’t let aggressive base running get you out. With adrenaline...
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5 Common Sales Mistakes That Even Smart Reps Make
Intelligence and awesomeness aside, sometimes even your best sales reps stumble and commit common sales mistakes. We’re all human – we get it. However, these errors can easily be fixed by taking the...
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How Disruptive Companies Like Tesla Motors, CenturyLink, & HP Are Pioneering...
At Dreamforce, Apttus could have given away many things to inspire the attendees, Apple Watches, mono-rovers, or Oculus Virtual reality. We decided to choose a unique product, from an even more unique...
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Why Sales Reps May Be Overlooking a Critical Part of Their Sales Process
Last week I had the pleasure to attend Sales Hacker’s Sales Stack 2015 conference located right on the saffron blue San Francisco bay. Several hundred sales leaders joined to network, explore new...
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Learning from Black Friday: The Benefits of Promotions Management in B2B Sales
It’s not only retailers who can boost their bottom lines with sophisticated promotions strategies. Black Friday, the opening bell to the chaotic holiday shopping season, came and went. IBM Trends...
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6 Tips for Sales and Marketing Alignment to Help Boost Revenue
The following is a guest post by Rachel Lefkowitz of EverString. Sales and marketing alignment can make or break your business. These are the teams that are responsible for bringing in revenue. How...
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4-Step Action Plan to Creating A Successful Omni-Channel Strategy
Omni-channel sales and marketing is increasingly getting the mind share of corporate executives, strategists and decision makers, in firms of all sizes and in different industries, worldwide. In a...
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