How to Improve Your B2B Sales Funnel with Epicor CPQ

Shakespeare once wrote, “The course of true love never did run smooth.” In the world of B2B sales, this sentiment rings equally true. 

The journey from prospect to customer is often fraught with obstacles: prolonged sales cycles, misaligned departments, lackluster visuals, and pricing ambiguities. These challenges can transform a potentially smooth sales pipeline into a bumpy ride.

In this guide, we’ll peel back the curtain on the B2B sales funnel. We’ll spotlight the common pitfalls that trip up even the most seasoned sales teams and reveal how Epicor CPQ can help you overcome them. Our mission? To expedite your prospects’ journey from the initial awareness stage to becoming passionate advocates for your brand.

The B2B Sales Funnel (In Brief)

For those unfamiliar with the B2B sales funnel, let’s quickly break it down. While various models exist (such as AIDA or TOFU-MOFU-BOFU), we’ll focus on a straightforward 7-stage funnel. This model helps visualize the customer journey and identify opportunities for improvement, particularly through tools like CPQ.

Here are the seven different stages of our B2B funnel:

1. Awareness: Potential customers become aware of the problem your company sets out to solve.
2. Interest: Prospects start showing interest in your products.
3. Consideration: Prospects actively research your solution and compare it to others.
4. Intent: Prospects show a clear intent to purchase, sometimes requesting pricing or a proposal.
5. Evaluation: Prospects do a deep dive into your B2B business and product and may reach out to ask questions.
6. Purchase: Prospects place orders, transforming into real customers.
7. Retention & Advocacy: Satisfied customers generate word-of-mouth referrals and make repeat purchases (provided they’ve had a positive experience throughout the funnel!)

Come funziona Epicor CPQ

Let’s start by understanding Epicor CPQ and how it works. We’ll then dive into the challenges at each B2B sales funnel stage and how Epicor CPQ addresses them.

CPQ stands for Configure, Price, and Quote—a three-step process familiar to companies selling customizable products. Epicor CPQ streamlines, simplifies, and often fully automates this process, making it more efficient and engaging for customers.

By enhancing efficiency and customer engagement, Epicor CPQ:

• Increases the likelihood of initial and repeat purchases
• Reduces operational costs
• Makes your sales team effortlessly scalable

This means you can guide more customers through the sales funnel quickly without expanding your sales team or implementing a convoluted sales strategy.

Here’s how Epicor CPQ, a B2B SaaS solution, achieves these benefits:

Configura

Under normal circumstances, configuring products for customers is a slow, confusing, and often error-prone process. Prospects sit down with sales reps, look at product images together (which are frequently generic and not quite like the product they want to buy), discuss what’s feasible, and come up with a solution.

The ability to configure products is actually a huge unlock for each buyer persona. Instead of one-size-fits-all, prospects can purchase unique solutions tailored to their needs, giving them a competitive edge and maximizing their return on investment.

But the standard configurazione del prodotto process can often be inefficient, ineffective, and sometimes even disastrous for both parties:

• It’s slow: Manual product configuration is lengthy, especially with multiple decision-makers involved. Many companies require custom engineering, further extending the B2B sales cycle.
• It’s confusing: Explaining complex products’ appearance, operation, and technical constraints is challenging. Misunderstandings are frequent and often unavoidable.
• It’s technically demanding: Sales representatives must understand highly technical products with thousands of permutations. This challenge stumps even the most experienced professionals, let alone new hires.
• It’s tedious: Generic product images, constant back-and-forth communication, approval delays, and rough sketches often leave customers feeling disconnected from the process.
• It’s high-touch: The close collaboration required between sales reps and customers contradicts modern buyer preferences. Research shows more than 75% of potential buyers prefer digital self-serve and remote human engagement over face-to-face.

These are the downsides of traditional product configuration. So, how does Epicor CPQ elevate this process and increase conversion rates by up to 40% (the average for Epicor CPQ customers)? The answer lies in visual product configuration.

With visual product configuration, sales representatives and end customers configure products in real-time using 3D models and augmented reality. Instead of selecting parts from a catalog, they can drag and drop components to assemble the perfect product.

Product rules embedded in the configurator guide the experience, ensuring every configuration is optimized for customer satisfaction and margin maximization. Additionally, all transactional engineering work, such as creating CAD files and Bills of Materials (BOMs), is automated. From what I’ve observed, this kind of automation can be a real peacemaker between sales and engineering teams.

The benefits of configurazione visiva includere:

• It’s fast: B2B customers can quickly assemble complex products using drag-and-drop functionality. All data is automatically captured in CPQ and seamlessly pushed to integrated systems like CAD and ERP when required, facilitating cross-functional automation.
• It’s transparent: Customers get an immediate visual understanding of complex products and how they’re put together. There’s no gap for miscommunication between buyer and seller––even with large buying committees involved.
• It’s simple: Embedded product rules optimize every configuration and eliminate errors, streamlining sales training of new hires and allowing reps to focus on nurturing human relationships.
• It’s engaging: Configuring products in 3D, visualizing them in situ with augmented reality, and “using” them before purchase through virtual reality creates a highly engaging process, transforming an otherwise laborious task into an enjoyable customer experience. This transformation can have genuine economic consequences, considering companies that lead in customer experience outperform laggards by nearly 80%. In my experience, nothing lights up a customer’s eyes quite like seeing their custom product come to life in 3D.
• It’s low-touch: Customers can perform much or all of the work independently. Sellers can embed their visual product configurator into their website, allowing customers to play around and self-educate about products. When integrated with eCommerce, customers can place orders immediately.

[For a real-world example of visual product configuration in action, see how FHC, a glazing company, e Van Wijnen, a construction company, handle custom configuration.]

Prezzi

The pricing element of CPQ is both dynamic and automatic, updating in real-time as users configure products. Epicor CPQ goes beyond displaying simple list prices; it can incorporate various internal and external data points, such as current inventory levels or competitors’ live pricing.

This real-time pricing capability offers several advantages:

1. Eliminating calculation errors: Automated pricing reduces human mistakes that can harm profit margins and company reputation. I’ve seen firsthand how a single pricing error can derail a deal.
2. Streamlined approvals: Where applicable, the system can handle approvals automatically, further expediting the process.
3. Immediate purchasing: Customers can make instant purchase decisions based on accurate, up-to-date pricing.
4. Reduced sales cycle: The combination of these factors leads to shorter overall sales cycles and higher win rates.
5. Enhanced decision-making: Both customers and sales teams benefit from access to comprehensive, real-time information.

citando

Epicor CPQ streamlines the quoting process by generating real-time quotes, eliminating delays between product configuration and the purchase decision stage. This automated system offers several key advantages:

1. Productivity: Salespeople are freed from spending hours creating custom proposals.
2. Responsiveness: Customers can instantly receive a finished document to circulate internally.
3. Rich content: Automatically generated quotes can include 3D renderings, technical drawings, terms and conditions, and more.
4. Easier buy-in: The comprehensive nature of these quotes facilitates easier approval from decision-makers.
5. Consistency: Automated quoting ensures all quotes adhere to company standards, brand guidelines, and pricing policies.
6. Accuracy: Real-time generation reduces the risk of errors that can occur when reps create quotes manually in spreadsheets.

How Epicor CPQ Improves Your Sales Funnel

In this section, we’ll explore the transformative impact Epicor CPQ can have on your sales funnel. We’ll examine how it streamlines processes, boosts engagement, and reduces costs. Our focus will be on the most powerful and often overlooked benefits, moving beyond the obvious advantages to uncover the true potential of the solution.

Stage 1: Awareness

In today’s digital world, capturing attention with your marketing strategy is incredibly challenging. However, Epicor CPQ provides a powerful tool to cut through the noise. With its ability to generate videogame-quality 3D graphics, Epicor CPQ enables the creation of stunning visual content for social media (97% of B2B marketers use LinkedIn) and adverts. These eye-catching visuals are far more likely to stop a prospective customer’s scroll and pique their interest.

Epicor CPQ doesn’t just create pretty pictures; it provides valuable data-driven insights. By analyzing popular configurations and user interactions, you can refine your B2B marketing funnel and reach your target audience with the most appealing products and features. 

For businesses looking to expand globally, Epicor CPQ offers another significant advantage. With built-in support for multiple languages and currencies, creating localized content that resonates with international audiences becomes much more manageable. Embedding visual product configurators into websites allows businesses to create brand awareness on a global scale without the need for a sales team on the ground.

Stage 2: Interest

Once prospects reach your website, the interactive 3D product configurators allow visitors to explore your offerings in a hands-on, engaging manner. Rather than passively reading about product features, prospects can actively customize products to their liking, deepening their interest and investment in your offerings. 82% of visitors to product pages choose to activate the 3D view.

This interactive experience creates a memorable brand interaction. In a sea of static product pages and dry spec sheets, a dynamic, visually rich configuration experience stands out. It’s not just about showcasing your products; it’s about creating an experience prospects will remember and want to return to. Research shows that 90% of B2B buyers research 2-7 websites before purchasing.

These online interactions also provide valuable data about prospect preferences. Every configuration choice, every option explored, offers insights into what features and options are most appealing to your potential customers. This information is gold for your sales and email marketing teams, allowing for highly personalized follow-ups that speak directly to each prospect’s demonstrated interests.

Stage 3: Consideration

As prospects begin to compare solutions, Epicor CPQ gives your offering a significant edge. The self-service configuration empowers prospects, allowing them to explore options at their own pace. This stands in stark contrast to traditional sales processes that often require multiple calls or meetings just to get basic information about customization options.

Epicor CPQ delivers the consistency that’s key in the consideration stage. By ensuring that pricing and product information are consistent across all channels—online and offline––you build trust with your prospects. There’s no risk of a B2B prospect getting different information from your website, a sales rep, and a product brochure. Everything aligns, creating a seamless, trustworthy experience.

Stage 4: Intent

As interest evolves into intent, Epicor CPQ maintains momentum. One of the biggest advantages is the ability to generate instant quotes. Prospects don’t have to wait weeks for a quote, losing enthusiasm in the meantime. With Epicor CPQ, the quote is generated in real time as the prospect configures the product.

Epicor CPQ also identifies potential upsells and cross-sells. As prospects configure their product, the system can intelligently suggest complementary items or upgrades, increasing the potential order value and ensuring customers get the best overall solution without feeling overwhelmed by options.

Stage 5: Evaluation

Detailed visual quotes make your value proposition crystal clear during the evaluation stage. Instead of trying to decipher complex pricing structures or imagine how customizations will look, prospects can see everything laid out in an easy-to-understand visual format.

For products where aesthetics or fit are crucial, visual CPQ’s AR/VR capabilities allow prospects to visualize products in their own environment, reducing purchase anxiety. Whether it’s office furniture or industrial equipment, being able to “see” the product in situ can be the factor that clinches the deal. According to Shopify, products advertised with VR/AR see a 94% higher conversion rate.

Epicor CPQ also facilitates the complex internal approval processes many B2B purchases require. The easily shareable visualizations and quotes make it simple for a champion within the prospect’s organization to demonstrate the value of your offering to other stakeholders.

Stage 6: Purchase

When it comes time to purchase, Epicor CPQ simplifies the process even for the most complex configurable products. The instant quote generation we mentioned earlier comes into play again here, allowing for quick decision-making without delays.

For businesses embracing eCommerce, visual CPQ integrates seamlessly with online platforms. This allows customers to complete their purchase online immediately after finalizing their configuration, striking while the iron is hot.

Purchase 7: Customer Retention & Advocacy

The benefits of Epicor CPQ extend well beyond the initial sale. By storing customer configurations, the system makes it incredibly easy for clients to place repeat orders or modify previous purchases. This convenience encourages customer loyalty and repeat business, which is crucial, considering that acquiring a new customer costs roughly 5x more than retaining an existing customer.

The reduced errors we’ve mentioned throughout the process contribute significantly to customer satisfaction and loyalty. When customers receive precisely what they expect, configured to their precise specifications, it builds trust and encourages long-term relationships.

Finally, the sense of empowerment that CPQ provides customers throughout the buying process pays long-term dividends. Customers who feel in control of their purchasing decisions and enjoy the buying process are more likely to return and to speak positively about their experience to others.

In sintesi

By implementing Epicor CPQ, B2B companies can create a frictionless, engaging sales funnel that not only attracts new customers but also builds lasting relationships. It bridges the gap between complex product offerings and customer expectations.

If you want to deliver the kind of buying experience that modern business customers expect and achieve the average improvements our customers experience–including a 108% increase in annual sales and a 105% increase in deal size–it’s time to consider Epicor CPQ for your organization. Contact us today for a no-pressure demo.