Timely, accurate and professional quoting practices are a critical tool for driving and closing sales in almost any enterprise, yet few salespeople fully utilize all the capabilities that “configure, price and quote” (CPQ) software includes.
For Salesforce users, this is often attributable to the complexity and adaptability of this powerful and flexible tool. The expansive capability that makes Salesforce CPQ such a transformational system can be an obstacle if you don’t know how to get the most out of it. Usually, this is because it wasn’t implemented effectively.
Whatever the cause, if you’re not getting everything that Salesforce CPQ has to offer – and the majority of users are not – optimizing its use increases sales, upselling and cross-selling, and increases customer satisfaction.
How Optimized Salesforce CPQ Saves Time & Improves Quoting
Salesforce CPQ dramatically reduces the amount of time it takes to produce quotes, while also improving accuracy, visibility, and usability so that each quote is seamlessly configured to include relevant discounts, add-on services, support contracts and workflows that can be customized to automate approvals, follow-up and more.
It’s the quoting process your most valuable salespeople dream about when they fall asleep at night imagining their future commissions.
Here are five examples of key tasks in the sales process that optimized Salesforce CPQ software can automate and improve, leaving your human salesforce with significantly more time to do what they do best:
- Complex Pricing: Salesforce CPQ simplifies the management of pricing rules and discounts, applying them automatically based on the configuration of products or services
- Product Configuration: Salesforce CPQ helps in configuring products or services according to customer needs and specifications, ensuring that all product combinations are valid and optimally priced
- Quote Generation: Salesforce CPQ streamlines the creation of accurate and professional sales quotes, ensuring all pricing, discounts, and configurations are included
- Subscription Management: for businesses offering subscription-based products, Salesforce CPQ can manage renewals, amendments, and pricing adjustments over the subscription lifecycle
- Approval Workflows: Salesforce CPQ can automate the approval process for discounts and other quote elements, speeding up the sales cycle and enforcing pricing governance
Who Benefits the Most from Salesforce CPQ?
Companies selling products that are bundled together, including hardware or software that is frequently sold with support contracts, will find great advantage in the flexibility that Salesforce CPQ provides, including the capability to automatically generate reminders to sales representatives about selling service agreements. Reminders can also be sent to suggest promoted products and ensure promotional prices are applied, with quantities, customizations, optional features, multiple revenue types, and incompatibilities automatically incorporated.
Businesses that sell specialized or complex products or services in which subject matter experts (SME) play an important role in the sales process can benefit from a customized CPQ application configured to ask the right questions, identify key features, calculate expected ROI and more. This ensures that customers get the expertise they need as part of every sales call, whether an SME is available or not, as well as ensuring that opportunities for cross-selling and upselling do not go overlooked.
Customers are among the biggest beneficiaries of the speed, accuracy, and comprehensive information that Salesforce CPQ provides. A streamlined and professional quoting process saves time on both sides of the transaction and leaves prospects and customers with confidence that your solutions and services are just as reliable.
How StarrData Can Help
At StarrData, our certified Salesforce experts specialize in helping clients get the most out of their Salesforce investment, including CPQ. With over a decade of experience as a 5-star Salesforce partner with a track record of success, we can help you optimize your use of CPQ as a project, or work as an extension of your team by providing comprehensive managed services known as STaaS: StarrData Team as a service.
Our services for Salesforce CPQ include:
- Setting up guided selling to help your sales team with product configuration and quoting
- Creating business rules and logic to ensure your team is packaging and pricing products and services efficiently and accurately
- Ensuring that accurate proposals can be created, approved, and transmitted to customers quickly and easily – all within the Salesforce CRM
- Designing checks and balances to ensure consistent pricing and discounting
- Configuring user permissions and creating customized, role-based page layouts
- Creating quotes faster and more accurately
- Seamlessly integrating CPQ with your Sales Cloud subscription and related systems, such as ERP
- Providing any other answers and solutions you may need
Get Started Today
To learn more about how StarrData can help you transform your use of Salesforce CPQ into time, money and opportunities, read about our success in helping a healthcare analytics company identify new revenue opportunities and shrink the amount of time spent creating quotes by 88%. You can also speak with one of our Salesforce CPQ experts to learn how we can support you.