Clunky CPQ is costing you more than just time—it’s costing you deals, productivity, and top talent.

Reclaim Productivity. Unlock Growth. Fix the Experience.

Let’s be honest—CPQ user experience is broken.

In a world where consumers can order anything on Amazon in seconds, your sales team is still grinding through outdated interfaces and endless product lists just to build a quote.

No wonder spreadsheets remain the tool of choice. Most CPQ systems are bloated, slow, and unintuitive—more obstacle than enabler.

Having deployed CPQ solutions for over 50 enterprises across industries, we’ve seen this firsthand. In a 1,000-person sales org, inefficient workflows can cost more than $1.5 million a year—just in wasted time. That figure climbs higher when you factor in cognitive load, poor visibility, and generic interfaces.

If you’re serious about enabling productivity and driving growth, it’s time to demand more from your CPQ.

What’s Holding CPQ Back?

1. Click Overload: When Quoting Feels Like a Chore

After two decades deploying CPQ apps, one issue rises above all: excessive clicking.

Creating a quote shouldn’t feel like a marathon—but for most reps, it does.

The workflow:

• Click to browse vast product catalogs
  
• Click again to add line items, one at a time
  
• Click endlessly to configure each with bundles, options, rules
  

Even a basic quote can require 300–500 clicks. Larger ones? Far more.

Multiply that by 5 quotes/week per rep. Now scale to a 1,000-person team.

The result? Millions in lost productivity—just from clicking.

If your CPQ forces reps to work harder instead of smarter, it’s not just bad UX—it’s a business liability.

2. High Cognitive Load: The Silent Sales Killer

Clicking is just the surface. The deeper issue is cognitive overload.

Reps must:

• Translate vague customer needs into precise configurations
  
• Navigate huge product catalogs under pricing and discount rules
  
• Balance business logic, technical constraints, and approvals
  

They’re expected to be product experts, pricing strategists, and deal architects—all at once.

The result? Decision fatigue. Stalled deals. Missed targets. Underperforming talent.

If your CPQ isn’t simplifying decision-making, it’s creating friction where there should be speed.

3. No 360° Visibility: CPQ That Stops at the Quote

Many CPQ systems promise end-to-end automation—but stall after quote generation.

There’s little to no visibility into:

• Order conversion and fulfillment
  
• Invoice generation and revenue recognition
  
• Compensation tied to invoiced revenue
  

Without this, you’re exposed to:

• Revenue leakage from missed invoice line items
  
• Longer DSO from delayed billing
  
• Manual commission calculations and reporting delays
  

If your CPQ can’t show the full Quote-to-Cash journey, you’re flying blind.

4. One-Size-Fits-All UX: Built for Everyone, Perfect for No One

Most CPQs offer the same interface to everyone—sales, solution engineering, fulfillment—regardless of context or role.

The consequences:

• Sales reps scroll through irrelevant technical fields
  
• Engineers miss backend configuration data
  
• Fulfillment teams get buried in pricing details
  

A one-size-fits-all UX ends up fitting no one.

What you need are tailored experiences that match how each user thinks and works.

Real-World UX Tailoring Examples:

• Telecom Reps: Map-based interface for assigning services across locations
  
• Insurance Brokers: Grid views comparing coverage across policies and regions
  
• Solution Engineers: Config mode surfacing dependencies and performance flags
  
• Fulfillment Teams: Logistics views with delivery dates, SKUs, install windows
  

Upgrading Your CPQ UX—Without a Rip-and-Replace

Good news: You don’t need to scrap your existing CPQ to deliver a next-gen experience. Strategic enhancements can dramatically improve usability, speed, and accuracy—without starting from zero.

Case in Point: Guided Selling that Actually Guides

Salespeople today face two major pain points:

• Mental overload from needing to master every nuance of a growing product catalog (e.g., media planners juggling digital, social, print, OOH formats).
  
• Tedious manual entry when quoting multiple variants of the same product or service—think ad placements across weeks, geographies, or formats.
  

What We Built:

Guided Selling interfaces tailored to specific product families and offer types—so reps aren’t overwhelmed with irrelevant options.
Dynamic tables that let reps add multiple product variants in bulk—reducing clicks and manual errors.
Map-based tools for Out-of-Home (OOH) media—making it easy to target and quote by location.

The result?
Smarter workflows. Faster quotes. Fewer mistakes. And better outcomes for customers and sales teams alike.

This Isn’t Just for Media.

The same UX approach works across industries:

• Telecom: Provisioning broadband or wireless services across 50+ retail locations
  
• Insurance: Creating complex, multi-office quotes with bundled coverages
  
• Retail Media: Quoting geo-targeted ad placements with inventory-aware logic
  

No matter your industry, salespeople shouldn’t need to be product ops experts to close deals. Guided, intuitive CPQ interfaces meet them where they are—and make them faster.

Example: 360° Visibility from Quote to Cash

Staying with ad sales, here’s how a 360-degree view plays out:

• Media plans turn into insertion orders (IOs)
  
• IOs map to actual ad server deliveries
  
• Deliveries roll up into invoice line items over weeks/months
  

Whether it’s digital, linear, social, or print, each touchpoint is traceable, helping planners manage performance and finance with precision.

And the model is adaptable across industries—because 360° means something different in telecom, insurance, or hardware.

Example: Tailored Interfaces for Complex Quotes

When quoting similar products across multiple locations, traditional interfaces collapse under scale.

That’s why we created Grid View—a dynamic, spreadsheet-like experience that simplifies:

• Bulk editing of line items
  
• Regional pricing and discounting
  
• Managing 50–500 locations with ease
  

In industries like:

• Medical Devices: Configuring machines for hospital departments
  
• Data Centers: Selling capacity across multiple sites
  
• Automotive: Quoting for national dealer networks
  

Grid View enables 100x click reduction and massive time savings.

For scenarios like OOH advertising or WAN design, we added map-based interfaces that bring spatial logic into the quote process—just like you’d expect from a hotel booking tool.

Final Word: Your CPQ Should Work as Hard as Your Team

If Amazon can make purchasing feel seamless, your CPQ shouldn’t feel like a spreadsheet from 2005.

The current state—click fatigue, mental overload, poor visibility, generic UX—isn’t just annoying. It’s expensive.

But it’s fixable.

With the right UX enhancements—Guided Selling, Role-based interfaces, 360° views, Dynamic Grids, Geo-aware Quoting—you can transform your CPQ into a true productivity engine.

You don’t need a full system overhaul. You need the right upgrades in the right places.

Ask yourself:

If your reps had a CPQ that felt like Amazon, how much more could they sell?

Let’s find out.

Book a free UX assessment—we’ll show you exactly where strategic improvements can deliver immediate impact. You might already have what you need. You just need it to work smarter.