In many ways, your sales reps are the face of your business. They’re the ones heading out and interacting with prospects, building relationships, and bringing in the business that keeps the lights on for the rest of your organization. Intimately involved with quote-to-cash processes, salespeople are often the first group discussed when a QTC transformation project is on the table. But it’s not always cut and dry how best to automate for this business unit. 

Let’s take a look at some of the high-level takeaways from Gilles’ chapter on how the sales cycle fits in with quote-to-cash process automation:

1. Listening = landing deals

“When you ask what the deciding factors are in the deal, don’t accept buzzword answers like “budget” or “timeline.” While they may be true, they don’t represent the entire truth. If you can engage your customers, you can overcome their buzzwords. To do this, listen to your customers. Ask questions, clarify, and listen some more. Try to figure out where your offering fits within their larger company goals.” —Gilles Muys 

2. Turning a “no” into an opportunity

“A price is presented, or a service is offered, and the answer comes back: “No.” While this may seem like an end to the discussion, a “No” can actually be an opportunity to continue. As such, rather than trade pleasantries and beat around the bush in order to avoid rejection, it is wiser to push the discussion to get to that first “No”—because “Yes” is only just around the corner. The sooner your client says, “No,” the sooner you can course-correct.” —Gilles Muys

3. What salespeople want from QTC

“As you can see, CPQ provides significant assistance to salespeople by enabling them to be more productive on one side (automation of the quoting process and logic), but also by helping them understand what their limits are both in terms of product offerings (dependencies and exclusions in the product catalog) and in terms of pricing (discount visibility and transparency against approval authority). This helps them navigate through the “Yes” and “No” responses to the prospects and clients they are negotiating with.” —Gilles Muys

Keep reading more on how quote-to-cash automation fits within your sales cycle and what happens next after a deal is secured: fulfillment. Gilles’ book, The Definitive QTC Guide, is available now on Amazon.