Today’s organizations are pressured by globalization, competition, and an ever-increasing product suite. Because of these pressures, enterprises on the supply side come up with multiple price offerings that can go high or low, depending on several factors including competition, demand, and seasonality. Enterprises on the demand side, on the other hand, come up with multiple requests for quotations from different suppliers so they can compare prices. This cycle results often results in “quote overload.”
While companies on the supply and demand sides need to assess the possible cost and performance benefits for their present or upcoming requirements—be it a product or service—quote overload is a barrier to achieving this goal. With multiple, varying quotations—mostly a result of various factors that affect product prices—the price changes don’t make it to the sales representatives’ desk. This leads to lower sales, lost opportunities, and poor customer experience.
The problem with multichannel pricing
Multichannel pricing involves introducing products or services to customers through numerous channels. This strategy bears a number of complexities, involving pricing inconsistency, relevancy, misunderstanding customer behavior across channels, and varying operational costs and competition per channel.
Manufacturers must create a balance between customer expectations of prices in various channels and the cost structure of each channel. This complexity may lead to different prices and quotes per channel for the same product or service (which gives greater financial rewards), or identical prices or quotes per channel for the same product or service (which results in greater customer satisfaction).
The pros of multichannel pricing
Despite the dilemma, suppliers still utilize a multichannel pricing strategy — which usually results in “quote overload”— to improve financial performance and create a strategic advantage through low-cost access to new markets, and increased customer satisfaction and loyalty.
In the retail sector, a multichannel strategy improves customer perception, increases sales and profits, and enhances data collection and productivity, among other benefits. Meanwhile, companies on the demand side still send multiple requests for quotations to multiple suppliers in order to get the best deals.
Multichannel pricing — and the multiple quotations that go along with it — is a good thing, despite its complexities. Manufacturers just need to ensure pricing consistency across channels, provide value-adding services to customers, and guarantee security and full commitment. To do so, they need to streamline their pricing data and enable faster sales cycles, increase revenues by upselling and bundling products, reduce pricing communication errors and lost opportunities, and enable more efficient workflows and faster quote times.
Solving the “quote overload” problem
PositiveEdge’s Configure, Price, Quote (CPQ) Tool helps manufacturers define the price of their products across a wide range of continuously changing variables and factors. It allows companies to simplify pricing complexities so they can focus on serving their customers, creating the best bundles and offerings, and selling their products.
By integrating our CPQ Tool with existing CRM systems, PositiveEdge can help manufacturers offer the best price for customers. It enables enterprises to easily configure their products and pricing so they can give them the best product and customer experience.
Get in touch with us to learn how we can take your customer experience to the next level.