Are spreadsheets silently stealing your profits?
As an MSP, delivering tailored, complex technology solutions can be a daily challenge.
The quoting process, often fragmented and time-consuming, is at the heart of your MSP business, so it's crucial that this process is efficient and scalable, as the rest of your business will likely reflect it.
Relying on spreadsheets, PDFs, and emails not only increases the risk of errors but consumes valuable time that could be better spent on serving more clients.
To streamline this process, many MSPs are turning to CPQ software or quoting software to replace their outdated spreadsheets.
But with so many options on the market, how do you choose the right one for your business?
In this guide, we will dive deep into the MSP sales process to help you choose the right CPQ software for your business.
What is MSP Quoting Software?
Quoting software, often referred to as CPQ software or Configure, Price, Quote software, is a sales tool designed to streamline and automate the process of generating technology quotes for customers.
This software integrates with various data systems such as CRM (Customer Relationship Management) and ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) to provide real-time information on products, services, prices, and customer history.
By leveraging this data, quoting software allows MSP sales team to create accurate, consistent, and professional-looking quotes quickly, reducing the potential for errors and enhancing customer satisfaction.
Some quoting software offers advanced features such as:
- Automated bundling options
- Customizable templates
- Integration with supplier portals
- Guided selling
CPQ tools alleviate the common pain points of logging into multiple systems and managing complex spreadsheets.
Quoting software should enable your sales team to spend more time selling and less time mired in administrative tasks, driving more revenue and increasing operational efficiency.
Quoting challenges MSPs must solve
The world of technology sales has changed.
Businesses want one bill, one point of contact, and a guarantee it all works. This means MSPs need to stop focusing on selling singular products and start building solutions. The problem is quoting everything together i.e. hardware, licensing, software, services, etc. is complicated with today’s tools and processes.
Each step in the quoting process presents its own challenges:
Configuration
The configuration stage involves determining the specific product SKUs that a customer requires and configuring those products to meet their needs.
Here are the common challenges you may face during the configuration stage:
- Hardware + Services: Hardware configurations are inherently tied to the product, but what happens when you need to add services?
- Multiple Vendors: Integrating disparate configurations from different vendors. We heard at a conference recently that the average purchase order involves at least 6 solutions.
Pricing
The Pricing stage involves getting the actual costs and applying the appropriate margins. The system will calculate a price based on the chosen components, quantity discounts, promotions, and taxes.
Here are the common challenges you may face during the pricing stage:
- Blending Pricing Models: Each component – hardware, software, configurations, installations, and management services – has its own unique pricing model.
- Gathering Pricing Info: You have to gather prices from multiple vendors, often received via email, and blend them into a cohesive pricing structure.
- Cohesive Solution: How do you blend these diverse models into one cohesive solution?
Quoting
The quoting part of CPQ just involves presenting the proposed solution to the customer, showing the configured products or services, and the total cost.
Here are the common challenges you may face during the quoting stage:
- Standardization: You need templates and standardized presentation formats. Creating proposals from scratch for each client leads to inconsistencies, branding issues, and difficulty managing the high volume of quotes in various formats (Word, PDFs).
- Unified Proposal: A good quote brings everything together into one clear document that shows exactly what you’re offering to the customer and what it costs.
General SalesOps
Business operations and the challenges that come with them are intertwined throughout every part of the CPQ process.
Here are just a few of those challenges:
- Multiple vendor portals: Constantly logging in and switching between vendor platforms to gather pricing information creates unnecessary friction.
- Complex spreadsheets: Legacy spreadsheets are cumbersome and difficult to manage. Copying and pasting and manual entries are time-consuming and prone to errors.
- Back-and-forth emails: The constant exchange of emails to clarify pricing or configurations further slows down the quoting process.
Quoting Software: Products vs Services
Quoting products is different from quoting services, and many tools only focus on one or the other.
Selling hardware alongside managed services is challenging, as each requires its own pricing model. Combining them into a single, accurate quote can be difficult.
Quoting Products
- Hardware configurations are inherently tied to the product itself. You know the specifications, features, and pricing models for each piece of equipment.
- Quoting software like Salesforce CPQ excels at handling these product-centric configurations.
Quoting Services
The CPQ software that is available in the market today struggles to seamlessly combine these two aspects of the quoting process, with some focused on products and others on services.
But the problem is clients don't want piecemeal quotes; they want a complete solution.
- Things become more complex when you add services like managed support, configurations, and installation.
- Solutions like ConnectWise CPQ, tied to PSA software, focus on services.
- These services require separate configurations and pricing models that need to be factored into the overall quote.
Clients don't want piecemeal quotes; they crave a complete solution that seamlessly integrates hardware, software, and services into a single offering.
This requires a quoting solution that can handle the complexities of an MSP's business – diverse pricing models, vendor integrations, and clear presentation of the unified solution for the client.
What to look for when buying quoting software
Here are the key capabilities that effective CPQ software should offer to meet the unique needs of MSPs:
- Basic Functionality: At its core, quoting software should seamlessly handle the configure, price, and quote process. This includes configuration logic for your products, support for standard and custom pricing, and robust quote building, electronic signature, and tracking capabilities.
- Integration: Integrates with your existing tech stack, including distributor integrations, and connection to your CRM and accounting/ERP systems.
- Automated Pricing and Configuration: Define rules for dynamic pricing based on product combinations, ensuring accurate quotes and faster turnaround times.
- Collaboration: Collaboration features like shared workspaces, automated notifications, and centralized storage to streamline task management and improve communication between customers, MSPs, and partners.
- Subscriptions (XaaS): Support XaaS features to allow you to sell, manage, and combine technology services into one subscription, ensuring both upfront and recurring revenue.
- Service Catalog: Included Service Catalog to seamlessly integrate hardware, software, and services into a single offering while managing diverse pricing models and vendor integrations.
- Scalability: Scale with your business, offering new products, flexible pricing models, and integrations with emerging tools, while supporting your growing team without traditional seat license constraints.
- Customizable Templates: Create and use customizable templates can dramatically speed up your quoting process. Ensure your CPQ offers templates that you can tailor to your specific services and branding.
- Bundling Features: Create attractive bundled packages to increase revenue.
- Cross-Selling and Up-Selling Capabilities: Recommend additional products or services to boost sales.
- Online Payments: Connect to your preferred payment gateway for easy online payments directly from quotes.
- Invoicing: Generate and manage invoices directly from the CPQ software.
CPQ Software Options
Each tool offers its own unique set of features, benefits, and integration capabilities.
To help you navigate these choices, we've compiled a comprehensive list of the best CPQ software available today.
- ConnectWise CPQ (formerly ConnectWise Sell)
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