Pricing Software for Sales: Overcoming Common Roadblocks

If waiting around for your quotes to pass through the hands of multiple approval levels and struggling to stay competitive while dealing with time-consuming manual calculations sounds familiar to you, pricing software for sales teams may be your answer.  

Here at Pricefx, as the leading cloud-native pricing software company offering a wide range of features and capabilities aimed at improving sales execution, we’d like to put you on to a few ways pricing software can transform your sales process.  

In this article, we explore the most common roadblocks for sales teams when managing pricing manually and how adopting pricing software directly addresses those challenges.  

So, let’s dive in.

Why Software Implementation Can Be Difficult for Sales Teams 

Pricing software comes with a host of advantages that directly impact sales performance. However, it often happens that sales teams struggle to adopt data-driven pricing solutions if they either do not see how these tools benefit them directly or understand how they work in a way that allows their capabilities to be fully used.  

Before diving into how pricing software helps with sales execution, let’s explore two major roadblocks sales teams experience in its implementation.

Lack of Buy-In and User Adoption  

Often, sales teams are resistant to using pricing software due to its potential to cut into their sales compensation. In fact, many would prefer to stick to manual processes, which, while less efficient, feature a compensation logic that is familiar. Teams will rally behind pricing software once they know what’s in it for them, so pointing to its benefits for sales specifically should be top of the list in onboarding.   

Lack of Training  

When a training regime only imparts teams with a superficial understanding of the software platform, it limits their ability to fully take advantage of all the capabilities it has to offer, and your sales team’s performance and your pricing strategy take a direct hit.  

Investing adequate time and resources into a comprehensive training program, without skipping over the more practical, hands-on sessions, ensures your teams make well-informed decisions in sales execution, and ultimately, supports your company’s competitive positioning in the market.  

Common Problems Faced by Sales Teams and How Pricing Software Addresses Each  

Sales teams should have the means to reserve most of their time at work to focus on what they do best: selling. However, if bogged down by manual pricing tools that obscure their performance, result in costly pricing errors, or involve time-consuming bureaucratic red tape, the reality is that tasks that don’t drive value will dominate their day-to-day.   

Here are the main challenges sales teams face before implementing data-driven tools and how embracing pricing software will directly address those issues.   

Disparate Pricing Processes Across Teams  

A streamlined approach to pricing across teams is often missing with dispersed manual pricing and siloed teams, which can lead to inefficiencies and errors in pricing decisions. 

Implementing pricing software addresses this by centralizing pricing data and pricing rules, enabling seamless collaboration among teams and resulting in margin retention and enhanced overall business performance. 

However, dissonance across teams can still happen after pricing software implementation, as sales teams might struggle to adapt to the new system and turn to their old processes and tools, or disregard the solution’s pricing guidance in sales execution. To avoid this, cross-functional training sessions and shared pricing guidelines for sales and pricing teams are crucial.    

Manual Workflows   

With multiple levels of approval required before a price reaches a customer, a manual quoting process typically involves a lot of waiting around, particularly in the B2B space, which is time sales teams can’t afford to waste when closing deals and keeping their established customers happy.  

CPQ software generates accurate quotes based on customer-specific sales data and automates the entire approval process, cutting quote times in half and allowing for evolving market factors to be quickly reflected in contracts.  

Inaccuracies in Quoting, Contracts, and Invoicing  

The human element in manual pricing processes gives way to inaccuracies in quoting, contract terms, and invoicing, resulting in margin leakage and skeptical customers unable to trust the numbers.  

With pricing software, sales teams apply the same pricing rules across all their financial documents for precise and error-free quoting and invoicing, leveraging real-time calculations that pull in discounts, promotions, and contract terms all at once.  

Neglected Customer Relationships  

Due to cumbersome manual pricing efforts and high administrative overheads to match, sales teams often need to prioritize their key accounts and neglect the rest. However, the profits lost from that lack of attention add up quickly when smaller customers make up a significant portion of a company’s roster. What’s more, even the attention sales representatives pay to larger customers might not be as strategic as they would like it to be.  

CPQ software automates the daily tasks that would typically require entire teams to manage, such as quote and proposal generation, and price management and analytics allow teams to target specific customer groups through methods like segmented pricing. In addition, CPQ software suggests the perfect blend of products or services to offer any customer, allowing for easy cross-selling or up-selling for sales reps and a personalized buying experience for the customer.  

No longer tied to inefficient manual pricing processes, sales teams are given back the time to focus on building and maintaining their customer relationships, no matter the strategic importance.   

Obscure Sales Compensation 

Complex pricing structures managed with manual means often lead to confusion around sales commissions and incentives, which is demotivating for sales teams to perform their best.  

Sales compensation solutions automate commission tracking and calculations based on real-time data, allowing for quicker compensation metrics, which is a great indirect benefit sales teams will appreciate. 

Complex Pricing 

When pricing structures involve multiple product options, tiered pricing, and various discounts, pricing calculations can be a frustrating experience for sales teams to manage without data-driven tools.  

With the help of pricing software, sales teams can quickly generate customized quotes from even the most complex product combinations and discount structures, ensuring a faster turnaround in sales cycles and a more satisfying buying experience for customers.   

Get On Board With Pricing Software Starting With CPQ  

In this article, we walked through the most common challenges sales teams face as a result of manual pricing management and how pricing software directly addresses them.  

One of the greatest gifts of a pricing software solution for sales teams is quicker and more precise quoting, giving them the time back to sell and build customer relationships. To achieve that, Configure Price Quote (CPQ) software is the answer.  

To learn more, consider checking out our article on what CPQ software does and its benefits for sales teams below: