Digital sales tools

Great leads bring great business, and new technologies offer innovative ways to target customers. In the past, generating leads involved hours of knocking on doors, scheduling meetings, and making cold calls.

Today, tools streamline this process, putting new customers just one click away and enabling a well-structured commercial process.

Time is limited, especially for sales teams. Often, sales managers unknowingly distribute their time based on customer requests or account categories. In contrast, top-tier companies use tools to determine the most beneficial time investment in customers. They consider factors like revenue, growth potential, and risk of loss, focusing efforts where they matter most.

As more data on new demand patterns accumulate, you can balance your customer portfolios more effectively. Sales teams can form based on capability and deal complexity. Instead of over-investing in unsuccessful customers, your efforts can focus on retaining profitable ones.

Is your sales process bogged down by a large product portfolio or complex pricing rules? Many sales teams struggle with managing extensive pricing and discounting structures for different products, customers, and orders.

Our benchmarks show that B2B sales teams spend only 36% of their time on active sales tasks, with the rest lost to inefficiencies. It can take days to generate quotes for standard products, causing frustration for both sales reps and customers.

Configure, Price, Quote (CPQ) solutions offer a streamlined approach to these challenges. CPQ software automates the selection, configuration, and pricing of products. This allows sales reps to quickly generate accurate quotes tailored to each customer’s needs.

Not only do you reduce manual errors, you also speed up sales cycles, boosting efficiency and productivity.

By automating repetitive tasks, CPQ software frees up sales to focus on high-value activities like relationship-building and closing deals. It supports dynamic pricing strategies, enabling you to stay competitive and responsive to market changes. CPQ also offers real-time visibility into sales performance, empowering managers with actionable insights for informed decision-making.

However, successful CPQ implementation requires careful planning and alignment with your company’s strategy. Our solutions at Simon-Kucher go beyond automation, providing a comprehensive approach to CPQ implementation.  

We focus on strategic alignment, process optimization, and customization to ensure that your CPQ system delivers maximum value. Contact us today to accelerate your quote configuration. 

What guidance does a sales rep have on where to set prices for a customer? Often, they rely on a list price or rate card, yet it’s common to hear, "No one pays list price." The only other constraint is the maximum discount they can offer before needing approval. This can lead to a race to the bottom.

Enter Simon-Kucher's Peer Pricing tool, a smarter way to set reasonable discounts within a defined range. Peer Pricing uses the knowledge and experience of top sales reps combined with hard data.

Peer Pricing leverages a traffic light system to provide specific advice for each deal. Reps avoid bias and rely less on previous deals. They retain the final decision, but peer pressure comes into play by tracking deal-making metrics, e.g., the number of "green" deals a month. This system can also tie into incentives, motivating reps to aim for optimal pricing.

Sales reps often know their customers well and have a gut feeling for what prices work. However, gut feeling alone isn't enough. Without the right tools and guidance, assessing a deal and a customer's willingness to pay often leaves profits on the table.

Let the best sales reps inspire the rest with Peer Pricing. Whenever your sales team heads into a price negotiation, this engine gives them the knowledge and confidence to achieve optimal prices. Contact us. 

Many business leaders know their customers are their company’s biggest assets. Yet they struggle to realize the full potential value of their customer base. With fast-changing customer needs and digital threats, maintaining the value of existing customers has never been more crucial.

Churn prediction tools can help you proactively reduce churn before it happens. You can establish alerts to notify teams when to initiate retention strategies and customer re-engagement efforts. You can recognize, rank, and distinguish retention activities based on an account’s significance and churn risk. This ensures you take substantial measures for high-risk strategic accounts, while focusing efforts more efficiently for minor accounts.

Our modular solution, MyBase, offers an end-to-end approach to improving customer base management, significantly increasing net retention and customer loyalty. Contact us to find out more.

Data silos pose a significant challenge for large organizations, often leading to incomplete data sets and hindering information sharing. This fragmentation makes meaningful analysis difficult for sales teams.

Success in sales doesn’t come from having vast amounts of data but from accessing the right data. Accurate sales recommendations require targeted, high-quality data, supported by the right model architecture and evaluation processes.  

Embracing data enablement and ensuring access to the right data empowers sales teams to work smarter, not harder. Visual tools can transform numbers into visual charts, helping identify cases for further investigation and providing insights into customer and sales rep behaviors.

Excel is a beloved and versatile tool in the sales world, thanks to its flexibility, familiarity, and cost-effectiveness. It quickly adapts to changing business needs, can be tailored to specific requirements, and provides a practical interface that everyone knows. This makes it the go-to for many sales teams.

Excel's powerful data analysis features enable teams to extract valuable insights without needing specialized software. Plus, its seamless integration with other Microsoft Office applications makes data sharing and collaboration a breeze.

However, Excel has its limitations. Calculation errors often go unnoticed, and isolated spreadsheets can lead to inconsistent data and missed opportunities. Many salespeople might not realize the limits of their Excel skills, potentially creating pricing or discount structures that inadvertently reduce profitability. Therefore, sales tools surpass Excel in many aspects. A few examples of sales tools are listed below:

The key is to recognize when Excel's unique benefits outweigh its limitations and choose the right tools for your sales team. Contact Simon-Kucher for a more detailed discussion on what will work for your business.

Finding the right sales software isn’t an easy process. It requires careful consideration and a structured analysis of business requirements.

Standard ERP or CRM systems often provide basic sales-related capabilities but lack the efficiency, flexibility, and depth needed for advanced sales management and optimization. They fall short in simulating price changes, leveraging AI algorithms, managing discounts, and offering robust pricing analytics. For complex sales scenarios, industry-specific software is essential.

Navigating the fragmented software landscape to find the right tools can be overwhelming. Sales and pricing teams must thoroughly explore various options and assess their functions before making a decision. For some companies, in-house development might be more cost-effective, especially for custom analytics dashboards. For others, seeking the help of external experts facilitates the decision.

"Low code" platforms offer another option, enabling the creation of custom tools with minimal coding effort, which can be particularly useful for mapping approval workflows or deal desk functionalities. However, in-house development requires ongoing maintenance and updates, which can be resource intensive.

At Simon-Kucher Engine, we offer both standard software and custom low code applications, along with maintenance and updates, ensuring that companies have the right tools to optimize their sales processes. Contact us.