Three new thoughts about Salesforce CPQ that will turn your world upside down

Sales teams often run into issues when trying to produce sales quotes for prospects quickly without making any errors. This is a common and recurring problem across industries and organizations, yet most leaders aren’t sure how to address or fix it. That’s where Salesforce CPQ (Configure, Price, Quote) comes in.

CPQ is a tool that helps sales teams produce accurate quotes, quickly. Frequently, product pricing and rules change, and these updates can easily be missed by sales team members, especially if communication isn’t centralized.

According to Hubspot, 28% of salespeople believe closing deals is the most challenging part of the sales process for reps, signaling a need for a solution. CPQ houses all of this information, giving sales teams the ability to improve their accuracy and quote times. CPQ ensures your sales team only sells the latest pricing and discounts and allows pricing approvals to be expedited more quickly to ensure bottlenecking doesn’t have an effect on the deal.

When you’re looking at CPQ software potential, it’s important to understand how and why implementing the CPQ software will benefit your organization. Take a look at a few things to know before making your CPQ purchase.

Customizable, Yet Consistent, Pricing

In our daily lives, we are able to customize almost anything. About 1 out of every 3 consumers indicate that they want the ability to personalize a product. We create customized playlists, build dream cars, and customize our apparel to fit our exact wants and needs.

Because we expect so much customization, B2B companies are customizing their packages based on clients’ specific needs. For example, each customized package may vary depending on the business size, goal, employees, etc.

So how do businesses keep this information updated for their sales teams as new changes and packages are created? It’s unrealistic to expect sales teams to keep up with all the different offerings, so that’s where CPQ automation comes in with its various workflows and rules.

CPQ allows your sales team to create more complex quotes quickly by using guided selling with automation. Validation rules ensure that product and discount combinations match predetermined criteria (ex. Discounts on filters cannot exceed 25%). If the quote doesn’t fit the criteria, the user receives an error message upon saving. This gives sales managers peace of mind ensuring sales teams are sending out correct pricing, product packages, accurate descriptions, and discount limits aren’t exceeded.

Make Internal Processes More Efficient with Salesforce CPQ

CPQ software is able to automate a lot of time-consuming and repetitive tasks for the sales team. To start, CPQ software uses previous quotes to automatically configure new quotes for a product or set of products.

It’s also able to store customized quotes that others have worked on allowing for more personalization in the sales process. This automation allows sales teams to create bids much quicker because most of the information needed for the quote is already filled out by the software.

Another way that CPQ software automates the sales process is through automated executive approval processes. Companies establish guidelines, like payment terms or discounts, within the system to keep sales reps within corporate policies. With these parameters, the system reduces the need for executive approval in the sales pipeline.

The system will also assign approvals to the executive team if required within the guidelines, allowing for human oversight if necessary. By incorporating CPQ automation into your sales process, you enable your sales teams to process quotes and close deals faster without bottlenecks.

An integrated CPQ solution can also streamline operations. Customer service and fulfillment teams can see the exact products and add-ons sold to the customer through the CRM or service system. This fosters a better customer experience as products are delivered more efficiently and with more accuracy.

Understand How CPQ Closes the CRM Gap

If you’re familiar with a CRM, you know that it’s great for tracking activities that move a prospect through the sales cycle, as well as managing their relationship once the deal is closed. However, when a sales team needs to quote complex pricing or product bundles, the CRM often doesn’t contain this more robust functionality. Because of this, many companies that have CRM are still using an alternate method for quoting. This can only mean that the sales team is forced into a slow, manual process that allows for many errors.

If you’re relying on a manual process to quote pricing to prospects, you might be experiencing some of these issues. Not only are errors happening, but any price changes that need to be approved are probably being bottlenecked by supervisors. All of these issues can contribute to a slower sales cycle, lower win rates, and far too many obstacles between your sales team and their ability to hit sales goal numbers. Implementing CPQ software will help your company quickly and accurately quote complex product pricing while also keeping business rules centralized and available in real-time so sales teams can close deals faster.

After implementation, many sales professionals that use CPQ software can’t imagine how they ever lived without it. If you’re considering implementing CPQ software, contact Concentrix Catalyst to ensure a seamless process.