CRM and CPQ: What’s the difference?

About 91% of businesses with more than 10 employees use CRM.   

It’s a great tool for efficiently managing customer details and facilitating communications.  

83% of sales professionals use a CPQ system as it’s a great assistant that eases your quotation-making task.    

Though CRM and CPQ seem efficient as sales tools, assessing which can help at what stage of the sales process is crucial!   

So, if you’re at the stage where you want to identify the crux of CPQ and CRM, this blog tells all!

What is CRM?  

Customer relationship management software offers a centralized solution for your customer data and helps you manage them effectively, contributing to your business growth.

Moreover, it helps to get insights into customer behavior and seamlessly facilitates communication, marketing, sales, and customer service activities.

CRM is beneficial as it… 

• Makes your customer service better (74%) 
• Improves customer satisfaction (66%) 
• Helps to improve customer retention (56%) 
• Helps to increase sales (54%) 
• Generate new opportunities (53%) 
• Share and distribute data (48%) 
• Manages customer renewals (24%) 
• Reduces costs (24%) 

Advanced CRM includes features like lead management, multiple sales pipeline management, activity tracking, deal automation, reporting, forecasting, and more.   

CRM is an efficient tool for manufacturing businesses as it helps manage and improve sales performance.   

In addition, it helps save time and boost customer satisfaction by automating tedious tasks like outreach, follow-up, scheduling, etc. 

What is CPQ software?  

Configure, price quote (CPQ) is a software designed for businesses to efficiently configure products, generate pricing quotes, and create proposals.  

It is highly used by organizations that require customization and need to meet the specific requirements of every customer.  

Using a CPQ solution is beneficial as it… 

• Increases proposal volume (49%) 
• Tends more reps to achieve quota (36%) 
• Has the potential to shorten your sales cycles (27%)  
• Holds great value in creating accurate sales quotes for complex products/services (21%)  
• Improves chances of lead conversion (17%)  

Modern CPQ technology includes product configuration, quotation management, proposal generation, pricing, and discount.   

Using CPQ, businesses can manage the complex pricing of their products and services. 

Manufacturing industries have complexity due to the varied material quality, size, color, functioning capability or usability versatility, and more. 

So, manufacturing companies use CPQ to configure and optimize their operations with automatic quoting and ordering processes.  

Thus, this presents an excellent price for their products and helps them a lot of time for more important tasks like marketing or sales.  

While they seem helpful software for business operations, let’s examine their differences. 

CPQ vs CRM 

After knowing about CPQ and CRM, you must have realized both software are designed to make our sales process more efficient.

So, what’s the difference?

Here’s a table for you to have a better understanding of the same: 

Factors	CRM	CPQ
Meaning	Software to manage and store all your customer interactions and details.	Software to manage your product configuration, pricing and generate quotes.
Standalone	CRM is a standalone software. You can carry out all your sales, marketing, and customer service activities using CRM.	Some CPQs can be used independently. However, CPQ only helps you manage your pricing and negotiating tasks, unlike CRM.
Stage of funnel	CRM serves throughout the funnel. You can use it at TOFU to generate leads, MOFU to nurture them, and BOFU while closing leads.	CPQ is mostly useful at BOFU as it perfectly manages your negotiation and quotations.
Example	Salesmate CRM is one of the best examples to refer to for CRM.	IBM Sterling Configure, Price, Quote is one of the best examples.

By now, you must have understood that CPQ and CPM are two different teams in the same department.

And here’s how their collaboration will benefit your business team.  

How does CRM CPQ tandem drive business growth? 

Both CPQ and CRM have their unique value propositions. However, CPQ and CRM, when working in tandem, strengthen sales efforts and drive prosperous results. 

1. Higher customer satisfaction 

Customer satisfaction is extremely crucial in today’s competitive market.  

CRM provides the entire journey and past conversations of a customer to help you form a tailored quote.   

Further, with CPQ, you can generate a personalized quote in no time that meets their needs and preference.  

Moreover, when CPQ and CRM are implemented together, you see progress on various grounds.

You can see your sales process improving, getting faster replies, and accurate quotes, ultimately leading to a satisfied customer base.  

For example, suppose you’re running a SaaS product-based company that offers a marketing automation platform. And one of your customers asked for a customized plan for their team. Here you need to learn about your customer in the first place.  

Now with a CRM intact, you can assess all the past communication to discover prospects’ preferences, track their web engagement, and better communicate to determine their needs and challenges. 

CRM helps you with all the customer history by call recording, call notes, and managing contacts in one place 

Now, you can use this information with CPQ to build a tailored and customized quote for them.  

The CPQ and CRM integration system provides a hassle-free experience for you and your customers.  

CRM allows you to visit your customer’s history, and CPQ gives access to their purchase history, open quotes, and service information.  

Integrating CPQ and CRM can significantly help in delivering a next-level customer experience. This is one of the primary benefits of CPQ and CRM.  

2. Centralized data 

With the integration of CRM and CPQ, you can comprehensively view customer interactions, sales activities, and quotes altogether.  

CPQ systems give you a centralized storage catalog engine that enhances your productivity. Similarly, with CRM, you get centralized storage of all customer interactions.   

This level of accessibility helps you to make informed business decisions. And it also helps you to forecast sales accurately.  

In addition, a centralized system allows you to access every detail of the customer’s journey.  

You have all their previous purchases and interactions, which helps you to deliver a more personalized experience.  

In all, the CRM and CPQ interaction streamlines the sales process by making a centralized hub for all your customer details.   

3. Better pipeline visibility 

With CRM and CPQ integration, you get a detailed insight into pipeline visibility.   

CRM enables your sales reps to manage pipelines better, build multiple ones, and track deals, providing insight into their buying journey.

CPQ, on the other hand, lets you provide accurate pricing information to the customer.  

This integration ensures a clear picture of the customer’s interactions, preferences, and buying behaviors. Further, it allows you to make informed decisions and close deals faster.   

In addition, CRM and CPQ together provide better pipeline visibility by offering insights into sales forecasts, trends, and performance metrics. 

You can efficiently monitor progress, identify roadblocks and make data-driven decisions to enhance your sales process.  

Overall, integrating CPQ and CRM leads to better pipeline visibility and drives higher closing rates. 

4. Seamless process 

Most of your sales process activities are mundane and not revenue-generating, which you can set for autopilot.   

CRM lets you automatically capture, assign, nurture, and manage leads. Further, you can even have detailed insights into their activities using Reports.  

Moreover, with CPQ, you can generate quotes automatically and customize them to meet your customer’s requirements and needs without moving screens back and forth.  

CPQ and CRM streamline your sales process by offering solutions for the entire sales process. In addition, it offers centralized data storage that makes customer information accessible.   

This saves you a lot of time and effort in your process. Eliminating manual tasks and quickly creating quotes makes an efficient sales process.   

CPQ and CRM integration streamlines the workflow, allowing reps to work more effectively. 

5. Better insights for sales teams

The integration of CPQ and CRM provides some valuable insights and reporting capabilities.   

CRM offers you various insights into customer interactions and sales activities. At the same time, CPQ lets you analyze sales trends and provides pricing and configuration data.  

CPQ also lets you gain insights into sales records, best-selling products, and product sales data. In addition, CRM lets you have insight into your team’s performance, deal stages, and sales success.  

The integration allows you to generate detailed reports on sales performance, pipeline, and forecasting of revenues.   

Integrating these two types of sales software lets you access real-time information about customer interactions, buying behaviors, and preferences.

These are the perks you can enjoy after integrating CRM with CPQ.  

Conclusion: Should you go for CRM or CPQ? 

CRM and CPQ each play a role in simplifying the sales cycle at different stages. In summary, both are beneficial in their ways.

Using only CRM software will ensure you have complete efficiency in your sales process apart from the quotation and pricing.

CRM software helps to boost sales productivity with automation. Moreover is a one-stop solution that can be helpful for marketing, sales, and customer experience teams.

Implementing CPQ solutions will ensure your sales team can easily configure products and make custom quotes and pricing plans.

However, CPQ CRM integration can bring the best outcomes for your sales teams by boosting productivity and driving more sales opportunities.

So, start your No Cost Trial with the best CRM now!