In the corporate CRM world, Salesforce has successfully carved a niche for itself. By offering excellent services, Salesforce support companies efficiently handle their invaluable customer data.
According to an analysis, sales representatives invest only 34% of their working time actively making sales. They spend the remaining time preparing quotes, making proposals, and getting approvals. As a result, businesses are keen to leverage technology to automate and optimize their sales process. They are searching for better platforms, technologies, and add-ons to generate more income and profit.
One recommended software that helps to shorten the sales cycle is the Salesforce CPQ. It assists in increasing sales team productivity and optimizes the sales cycle to deliver measurable results. A sales staff can devote more time to sales which will result in increased revenue and increased company profits.
What is CPQ?
The marketplace for B2B sales is seeing dynamic growth in Configure Price Quote (CPQ) solutions. For a sales team struggling with lengthy approval processes and sluggish quotation turnaround times, CPQ emerges as a savior.
It is a powerful sales tool that helps overcome potential hurdles associated with the sales process. It works with other business technology solutions to accelerate and streamline the quotation process.
B2B businesses create quotes based on the features of the product and the specifications of the customer. However, this sales approach can be laborious and time-consuming. Since the global market is expanding and changing, organizations need to adopt ways to scale up and adapt quickly.
Salesforce CPQ proves to be very helpful. It automates approvals, keeps track of their prices, and closes deals more quickly. Appreciate CPQ’s feature-rich and adaptable design that facilitates rapid sales decision-making and makes the technology accessible to your sales teams across all digital devices. As the CPQ helps automate tedious manual activities, it spares enough time for sales representatives to concentrate on building engaging and satisfying customer experiences.
What is Salesforce CPQ?
A Salesforce CPQ tool is a lifesaver for sales teams since it streamlines and speeds up the pricing and quoting operations.
It incorporates several components, such as:
- additional features offered on a certain product
- client-specific modifications
- volume of product
- discounts offered
Businesses utilize this software application hosted within Salesforce Sales Cloud to deliver precise, personalized pricing depending on product parameters.
Salesforce CPQ support is a supplement platform for a business CRM system that leads to a structured sales process. It guarantees that the description in the quote appropriately reflects the user’s information, product type, and pricing guidelines. Salesforce CPQ’s primary goal is to transform the manual sales process into an organized and automated process that generates a quote that is both accurate and error-free.
Additionally, the Salesforce CPQ tool provides job flexibility as it allows sales reps to sign in from anywhere and at any time. They don’t have to face problems while using it as all information is recorded into the system in real-time. Thus, this solution streamlines, speeds, and organizes the sales and billing processes.
How does CPQ software work in Salesforce?
Salesforce CPQ software operates in real-time, bringing together all consumer and product price information in one place. It delivers accurate statistics, lowers discrepancies, and aids in enhancing the performance of sales processes.
The Salesforce CPQ has three principals:
1) Configure
2) Price
3) Quote
C= Configure Deals
The Salesforce CPQ allows your sales staff to act swiftly on the details of certain products upon receiving the customers’ requests for them. The sales team further communicates this information to the production team to start work on creating the specific product model requested by the customer.
The production team can modify and alter the accessories and components. This way, the likelihood of the manufacturing or designing team making a mistake is minimal with CPQ because it offers the most precise framework for configuration.
P= Price
To appropriately price the product model chosen by the customer, a Salesforce CPQ specialist helps offer multi-layered discounting algorithms. Sales representatives have access to a variety of discounts with the discounting capability of a CPA, including wholesale discounts, supplier discounts, and more.
Through Salesforce CPQ, sales professionals can change both warranty and discount details. Additionally, they can alter the discount expiry dates, which indicates the duration of the deal. To ensure that the transaction is satisfactory for all sides, the financials in Salesforce CPQ update in real-time.
Q= Quote
The consumer may inspect the quote and double-check the conditions after the discount has been granted before preparing the final quote. Consider a scenario in which the client wants to extend the contract’s 30-day cancellation period to 90 days. They may tag the document with such remarks and resend it for approval.
The quote is then created, sent to the customer for digital signatures, and promptly shared with the sales representative, QA team, and sales management team. The entire sales from quote-to-cash significantly shorten, allowing for more rapid decision-making.
Features of Salesforce CPQ
Configuration Features
- CPQ enables the creation of feature- and option-rich product bundles.
- Options are referred to as components, while features are referred to as categories of the bundle.
- A product bundle is a unique grouping of various products under one parent bundle to provide customers with the best price possible.
- It allows components to be hidden or dynamically added to the bundle being configured.
- Options are installed as a basic component of the bundle, and up-sell and cross-sell scenarios may also be supported by accessories or similar products.
- Additionally, it enables choice limits known as exclusion and inclusion sales rules.
- Through CPQ, real-time data and real-time rules conduct the operation.
Pricing Features
- CPQ encompasses a wide range of sales scenarios, including:
- Contract Pricing – The margin calculation for the end customer is also displayed during the discounting and pricing procedure.
- Pricing based on cost plus markup – It includes product costs alongside its price.
- Block Pricing – For example, a tier-based discount would be possible if 1 to 25 products cost 150 USD and 25 to 50 products could cost 200 USD.
- To assist a user in achieving a specified goal price, it runs real-time pricing simulations.
- Users can use customized equations to calculate pricing, discounts, and margins.
Quoting Features
- You can generate quotes for company sales templates and documents.
- It offers editable quote templates with the header, footer, quotation, and terms.
- It allows integration with software for automatic electronic signatures.
Productivity Features
- Customizability in product search is available with CPQ.
- It can write queries and direct the seller and customer towards the ideal product fit.
Additional Features
- CPQ offers automated renewal possibilities that lead to rapid client follow-ups.
- Communities and developers are both supported by CPQ.
- Lightning Experience and Sales Force scenarios are also supported.
Why do we need Salesforce CPQ?
Salesforce CPQ aims to address the invoicing, quoting, and approval challenges in sales that most enterprises face. It streamlines the sales quotation cycle. It defines how your business approaches the market and offers clients services. Additionally, it results in a salesperson spending more time selling and less time on administrative responsibilities.
Here are the benefits of implementing Salesforce CPQ in your company:
- It allows for automating the pricing and quote creation process.
- It creates accurate, properly structured quotes.
- It reduces the time to sell and helps to increase business revenue faster.
- It regulates the discount electronically instead of manually to minimize the error.
- It increases the productivity level achieved by the sales team as a whole.
Conclusion
Modern customers demand individualized interactions and want the optimal amount of services provided to them at the right time. CPQ is not merely a back-office or sales solution; it streamlines inefficient sales cycles into effective, lean systems, boosting sales productivity. It helps you manage teams, partnerships, and processes so that company can meet its short-term and long-term goals.
However, effective implementation of CPQ Salesforce requires understanding your organization’s objectives. To determine how your sales team may perform efficiently after implementing Salesforce CPQ, you must assess their existing performance. This ensures that the adoption of this software will yield the most profitable results for your company.
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Author Bio: Wahinnovations is a company that provides professional CRM services to Salesforce businesses. We aim to focus on ideal solutions that can create a good understanding between customers and employees.
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