Multi-channel sales CPQ with ease

Multi-channel sales are made simple with CPQ. Managing multiple sales channels within the same tool can be troublesome but, this is a worry of the past. This might be a bumpy road, but in this article will sort out what you need to consider in order to support your multi-channel sales challenges.

What is multi-channel sales?

Multi-channel selling is the process of selling your products on more than one sales channel. Multi-channel management includes a mix of your own sales representatives, partners, OEM-suppliers and maybe directly on your website.

Selling on multiple sales channels increases your exposure to potential customers and will increases your sales opportunities. Multi-channel sales are also a way to minimize risk, especially for niche buyers and markets.

In the age of digitalization there is an increasing demand for online presence. In the time of of self-service sales, it’s important to minimize the product complexity and the potential errors due to misunderstanding. This is one of the main drivers for guided selling and high-level product guidance in the CPQ software.

Multiple sales channels give the opportunity to differentiate prices to match your service level commitment. The delivery terms and after-market commitment can also differ between channels.

The three main challenges in multi-challenge sales are the following;

Product offering per sales channel
Pricing and discounts per sales channel
Term and conditions per sales channel

Let’s dive deeper into each one of these topics and how a multi-channel CPQ can support these requirements.

Product offering and guiding your customer

The CPQ solution must be able to easily handle variations in the product portfolio. To start, not all products are sold to all markets. In the same way, it must be possible to control what options and features that are available for different sales channels. Obviously, all CPQ systems can manage this – the key questions is the effort to keep this kind of information up to date.

The second thing is the possibility to communicate and speak the language of the end customer. Different sales channels have different knowledge about your product. Where users in one channel care more about the overall performance of your product is in big contrast to a sales channel with very much focus on details. Here you want to keep the same “core product logic”, but be able to adjust what kind of questions to ask depending on sales channel.

A modern CPQ solution will provide effective tools to tailor general product logic to a specific sales channel.

Pricing and value

Price lists and discounts will most likely be different when you do multi-channel sales. Depending on the perceived value of the product and services provided thru a sales channel it’s very likely that prices are adjusted accordingly.

With multi-channel sales it’s possible to sell both highly standardized products and highly customized products at very different price points. A customer asking for higher level of customization will likely have a more expensive products as their next-best alternative.

A customer looking at a very standardized product might not expect to get the extensive know-how your company can offer and will therefore not value the product at the premium price point normally used. Selling a limited product portfolio thru a dedicated sales channel can be an opportunity to reach these customers that in other cases would have chosen a different vendor.

A modern CPQ solution will provide multiple price lists associated with specific markets or customer types in a multi-dimensional fashion.

Terms, conditions and appearance

Selling thru multiple sales channels will require different content and branding of the generated quotes and proposals. With multiple sales channels it’s possible to deliver exactly the same product but with different terms and conditions to match expectations within a certain sales channel or industry vertical.

A CPQ solutions can produce much more than just line-item prices; it can automatically create a full-blown proposal including customized 2D- and 3D-drawings. This is especially important in sales involving complex products or applications and can create a unique conformity in the quoting process.

The content is likely specific both to country and sales channel. For a global company it’s also important to support quoting in more than one language.  When it comes to multi-channel sales it’s equally important to align sales pitch as getting the language correct.

Bottom line

With modern CPQ software you can address all of the issues of multi-channel sales mentioned above with ease. With a CPQ solution it’s possible to deliver market and channel specific proposals, priced correctly and, of course, only with products available in alignment with your overall product strategy.

If you need advice on multi-channel sales CPQ, please get in touch.