What’s slowing down your sales team?
Your reps are chasing leads and engaging prospects, but they are not able to close deals on a positive note. The reason? They’re stuck in inefficiencies—spending hours on manual quotes, dealing with pricing inconsistencies, and waiting on approvals.
According to the study, non-CPQ users take 73% more time to generate a quote than those using CPQ automation. The longer you take to configure the right offering, determine the correct price, and get approval, the higher the risk of losing the deal. Today, buyers expect fast, accurate, and competitive quotes, and if you can’t deliver, your competitors will.
That’s why you need Configure, Price, Quote (CPQ) automation, which streamlines sales by automating pricing, approvals, and quote generation, allowing sales teams to move faster with accuracy. In this article, you will discover how CPQ automation transforms sales efficiency, the hidden costs of manual quoting, and the revenue impact of automation.
What is CPQ Automation?
CPQ automation is a tech-driven solution that automates the configuration of complex products, applies dynamic pricing rules, and generates accurate quotes based on predefined logic. It easily integrates with CRM, ERP, and other business software to ensure real-time data synchronization, pricing accuracy, and compliance with pre-defined business rules. By using rule-based engines, AI-driven pricing models, and automated approval workflows, CPQ quote automation eliminates manual errors, accelerates sales cycles, and enables scalability for businesses managing intricate product catalogs and multi-tiered pricing structures.
Manual vs. Automated Quoting: What’s the Difference?
| Aspect | Manual Quoting ❌ | CPQ Automation ✅ |
|---|---|---|
| Selection of Product | Often miss including essential add-ons or compile incorrect products, leading to the generation of irrelevant quotes. | CPQ quote automation suggests relevant add-ons and ensures product compatibility for creating optimized and relevant quotes. |
| Data Accuracy | Prone to data entry mistakes when transferring product details between systems. | Eliminates manual input errors by seamlessly integrating with CRM and ERP systems. |
| Pricing & Discounting | Tends to override pricing rules, leading to inconsistent margins. | Enforces standardized pricing and discount policies. |
| Quote Updates | Quotes may become outdated due to fluctuating prices and stock availability. | Real-time updates reflect the latest pricing, inventory, and product changes instantly. |
| Approval Process | Requires multiple manual approvals, leading to long delays and lost momentum. | Automates approvals with pre-set workflows, accelerating deal closure. |
| Sales Productivity | Requires excessive time in creating and revising quotes instead of engaging with prospects. | Automates repetitive tasks, freeing up sales teams to focus on closing deals. |
| Scalability | Managing complex product catalogs and large sales teams manually is inefficient. | Scales effortlessly & handles thousands of quotations, pricing tiers, and global markets. |
How Does CPQ Automation Transform Sales Processes and Boosts Revenue?
Sales teams thrive on speed, accuracy, and seamless deal execution. But manual quoting slows everything down—errors creep in, approvals drag on, and inconsistent pricing leads to revenue leakage. CPQ automation eliminates these roadblocks, turning sales teams into high-performing revenue engines. How? Let’s dive in:
Minimizes Revenue Loss from Pricing Inaccuracies
When sales teams rely on outdated pricing data or manually calculate prices, they risk quoting inaccurate prices—either too high or too low. This can result in missed revenue opportunities, as deals may be lost due to uncompetitive pricing or incorrect estimates. Inaccurate pricing not only eats into profit margins but also harms customer satisfaction. If prices don’t meet customer expectations, deals may fall through, and the company’s reputation could suffer, especially if customers feel overcharged or underwhelmed by the offer.
How CPQ Automation Addresses this Challenge:
- Real-Time Pricing Accuracy: Automatically pulls the most up-to-date pricing from internal systems to ensure all quotes reflect current market rates, promotions, and discounts.
- Dynamic Pricing Rules: Apply complex pricing models and configurations consistently across quotes, avoiding costly errors that could result from manually adjusting rates.
- Reduced Human Error: By eliminating manual entry and complex calculations, CPQ significantly reduces the chances of human error in pricing, ensuring that every quote is accurate.
- Margin Protection: The quote automation adjusts pricing based on pre-set margin requirements, ensuring that profit margins are maintained without the risk of underpricing.
Shortens Lengthy Sales Cycles & Quote Turnaround Times
Sales cycles get longer when sales teams must pull data from different sources or manually create quotes, especially with complex products. Delays in generating quotes lead to slower response times, which can push prospects toward competitors. A prolonged sales cycle not only puts pressure but also reduces the chances of closing deals. Customers expect quick, accurate responses, and any delay gives them the chance to look for other options.
How CPQ Automation Addresses this Challenge:
- Instant Quote Generation: CPQ quote automation allows sales teams to generate accurate and detailed quotes instantly by selecting products, configurations, and discounts, thus cutting down the time needed to prepare each quote.
- Integrated Data Access: By pulling information from customer profiles, product catalogs, and pricing databases in real-time, the automated quote generator eliminates the need to search through multiple systems or data sources, reducing delays.
- Faster Decision-Making: The automated sales process equips sales teams with all the necessary tools to quickly evaluate customer needs and generate accurate quotes, streamlining the entire decision-making process and shortening the overall sales cycle.
Key Statistics: Vendors that are first to respond close 50% more deals.
Streamlines Quote Approvals & Eliminates Bottlenecks
In many organizations, the quote approval process involves several manual reviews, causing delays and bottlenecks. These slowdowns frustrate both sales teams and customers. Waiting for approval can result in lost opportunities, especially if competitors provide quicker quotes. A slow approval process lowers sales productivity and increases the chances of missed or delayed deals.
How CPQ Automation Addresses this Challenge:
- Automated Approval Workflows: CPQ automates the approval process by defining rules and criteria for quote approval, ensuring that quotes are approved quickly without any unnecessary delays. Approval requests are sent to the right stakeholders automatically.
- Configurable Approvals: Sales leaders and managers can configure approval hierarchies based on factors like deal size, product complexity, or customer type, allowing for a streamlined and customized approval process.
- Faster Turnaround: By eliminating the need for manual checks, CPQ ensures faster approvals, allowing the sales team to continue with the next steps immediately and close deals faster.
- Audit Trail: CPQ creates an automatic audit trail of all approvals, ensuring compliance and transparency while speeding up the process by eliminating back-and-forth manual communications.
Improves Sales & Engineering Collaboration
Sales teams often don’t have the technical know-how to create fully customized solutions for complex products. Without close collaboration with engineering, this can lead to misconfigured solutions, delays, and incorrect proposals. When sales and engineering teams aren’t aligned, errors can occur, sales cycles get longer, and customers become dissatisfied. Inaccurate configurations may require rework or result in suboptimal solutions for the customer.
How CPQ Automation Addresses this Challenge:
- Real-Time Collaboration: Sales and engineering teams can work within the same platform, ensuring real-time collaboration on custom configurations and product designs, reducing the risk of errors or miscommunications.
- Guided Selling: Sales reps are guided by an automated product configurator, which helps them select the right products, features, and specifications that meet customer needs, ensuring technical requirements are met from the outset.
- Cross-Departmental Visibility: Both sales and engineering teams can view the same configurations and updates, improving overall alignment and making sure both teams are on the same page throughout the sales process.
- Error-Free Configurations: By automating configuration processes and applying predefined technical rules, CPQ helps avoid costly errors that could arise from manually configuring complex products.
Key Statistics: Sales reps using a CPQ solution are 26% more likely to hit their quota.
Increases Scalability & Simplifies Market Expansion
As businesses grow or enter new markets, managing different pricing structures, regulations, and product configurations becomes more complex. Manual processes can’t scale to meet these growing demands. Businesses risk operational inefficiencies and errors, limiting their ability to seize new market opportunities. Without automation, scaling becomes a bottleneck, slowing down growth.
How CPQ Automation Addresses this Challenge:
- Region Specific Configurations & Pricing: CPQ allows companies to easily manage region-specific pricing, product catalogs, and discounting rules, ensuring that the quoting process is adaptable to different markets without additional manual effort.
- Consistency Across Teams: CPQ ensures that all sales teams, regardless of location, use the same pricing models, product catalogs, and configuration rules, ensuring consistency across all sales channels.
- Flexible & Agile: As the business grows, CPQ allows for the seamless addition of new products, pricing structures, and configurations, allowing sales teams to scale up without the added complexity of reinventing quoting processes.
Enhances Customer Experience & Reduces Abandoned Deals
Customers expect a fast, seamless, and personalized experience. When sales teams deliver slow, generic, or unclear quotes, it frustrates customers and leads to lost deals. A poor customer experience directly impacts conversion rates and reduces the number of closed deals. If the quoting process is too slow or complicated, customers are likely to turn to quicker competitors, resulting in missed revenue opportunities.
How CPQ Automation Addresses this Challenge:
- Tailored, Personalized Quotes: CPQ allows sales reps to create customized, personalized quotes for each customer based on their specific needs, preferences, and previous interactions, ensuring the experience feels unique.
- Self-Service Options: Offering customers the option enhances their experience by allowing them to make decisions at their own pace while accessing all the relevant information.
- Consistent Communication: With CPQ, all interactions with customers are based on the same, up-to-date product and pricing information, reducing confusion and increasing customer trust.
- Speed & Efficiency: The ability to generate quotes instantly not only meets customer expectations for quick responses but also allows for more frequent and meaningful engagement, keeping prospects interested and moving forward.
Key Statistics: 43% of consumers are willing to pay more for greater convenience.
The Hidden Costs of Manual Sales Processes
Now that we’ve seen how CPQ automation drives efficiency and accelerates revenue, it’s crucial to recognize what you’re leaving on the table without it. Manual processes may seem manageable, but the hidden costs—pricing errors, approval delays, and inefficiencies—are quietly eating into your margins and slowing down your growth. Here’s a closer look at the impact of not automating your sales cycle.
Manual sales processes aren’t just inefficient—they’re costing you revenue. Every pricing error, approval delay, and workflow bottleneck adds up, leading to lost deals and frustrated customers. The longer these inefficiencies persist, the more opportunities slip through the cracks.
Conclusion
In 2025, sales teams continue to face pressure to deliver faster, more accurate results, and CPQ automation is the key to staying ahead. That’s where Cincom CPQ™ comes in. With its ability to streamline quoting processes, reduce errors, and maximize revenue opportunities, Cincom CPQ™ ensures your sales cycle is quicker, more efficient, and ultimately more profitable.
Companies leveraging CPQ are already outperforming their competitors, positioning themselves for future growth and success. Don’t let your business fall behind in this fast-paced, competitive environment.
FAQs
1- What industries benefit the most from CPQ automation?
Industries with complex products and pricing models benefit the most, including industrial equipment manufacturing, medical device manufacturing, specialty vehicles, and IT-managed/commercial services.
2- How does CPQ automation reduce human error?
CPQ automates pricing calculations, enforces business rules, and standardizes configurations, reducing manual entry mistakes and ensuring error-free quotes.
3- Is CPQ automation difficult to implement?
Implementation depends on business complexity, but modern CPQ solutions offer intuitive setup, guided selling features, and seamless integration with existing sales tools.
4- Can CPQ automation integrate with other sales tools?
Yes, CPQ integrates with CRM, ERP, and eCommerce platforms, streamlining data flow, improving accuracy, and ensuring a cohesive sales process.
5- How does CPQ impact customer satisfaction?
By generating faster, more accurate quotes and offering personalized configurations, CPQ enhances customer confidence, speeds up decision-making, and improves the overall buying experience.
