Here’s Why You Need Salesforce CPQ To Optimize And Quicken Your Sales Cycle In 2023

If you are a strong believer in Quote-to-cash being done from spreadsheets, then you are in for a surprise. There is a new kid on the block that you should meet. Salesforce CPQ. While a few people still think Salesforce CPQ is only for enterprise-level companies, the level of effectiveness and swiftness in executing sales that it offers to small enterprises is just admirable. The CPQ software works magic for all sales teams- big or small. Before you start scratching your head about what this invention from Salesforce is, let’s sort it out first before we enlighten you on how Salesforce CPQ can be a game-changer for companies like yours.

What’s Salesforce Steelbrick CPQ

Salesforce CPQ (Configure, Price, Quote) is a software by Salesforce for sales teams to Configure, Price and Quote on any product under consideration. The CPQ tool by Salesforce is a sales solution that allows companies to provide precise pricing with any specified product configuration scenario. This tool offers a comprehensive process of finalizing a sales deal by considering optional features, quantities, discounts, and customizations. By doing so, sales representatives can quickly and accurately provide price quotes. Let’s explore these benefits and more in detail.

Benefits of Salesforce Steelbrick CPQ

As already mentioned, Salesforce CPQ is a sales tool for companies looking to rethink their sales closing process. Here are the notable benefits of Salesforce CPQ.

1. Simplified SKUs, Price books, and Discount Tiers

Salesforce CPQ allows you to create price books, simplify SKUs, and create discount tiers all in very simple steps. Because businesses are different- with some selling products or services only while others sell both, the CPQ by Salesforce is revolutionary. In some cases, businesses bundle products with services and subject the same to discounts at every stage, which requires approvals. The approval itself is a process that takes time. As a result, the whole process is marred with massive human errors. Some businesses offer a pricing system based on price books/SKUs merged with established price lists. Others have a different system where pricing is built on costs, to which mark-ups or gross margins are added. The result is a complicated and extensive price calculation process. It’s even worse when subscriptions and perpetual licensing are added to the mix. Salesforce conducted a survey that reported that up to 76% of consumers will cancel dealing with a brand following a one-time bad experience. If you consider Salesforce CPQ’s proposition where tiered pricing and discounts are simplified and programmed to be error-free using SKU simplification, tiering, and price books, the sales cycle can be tremendously improved and simplified.

2. With CPQ in place, it takes Less Time to Quote

If there’s a feature that makes Salesforce CPQ the most advantageous, then it is the partner portal used by Channel Partners and Distributors. In this arrangement, quotes created come to you directly for approval and could be set to include Partner Tier level discounts all by default. If the quotes meet the set criteria, then they can also be set to auto-approve, allowing your Channel Partners and Distributors to close more deals through the automation of the quoting & contract processes. Also, having your sales representatives integrated with pre-configured templates in the CPQ helps minimize the time one needs to accurately create a BoQ and its linked quote. If there are repeated/complex tasks in the process, many of these templates could be created to quicken the process of giving your sales representatives more time to chase new opportunities. In summary,

• Businesses that have successfully implemented Salesforce CPQ have seen a 28% reduction in sales cycles
• The same goes for proposal volumes, which have seen an increase of 49% per representative per month and a further increase of 105% in their average deal size.

3. Businesses can now enjoy Error Free – Forecasting

Forecasting is key to the future success of any organization. If it’s possible to get a detailed picture view of all the deals sales representatives are currently processing and their stages, then forecasting will surely be simplified. Because the Salesforce Steelbrick CPQ is seamlessly pluggable with Salesforce, opportunity values are automatically populated thus facilitating more accurate forecasting.

4. Personalization of proposals/quotes

Salesforce CPQ benefits users by allowing them to personalize quotations at any stage to include extra features or additional demands by customers. Proposals may require extra features which may also keep changing as the deal progresses through different stages. Still, customers may want to throw in new demands out of some discounts you’ve offered. Such proposals or quotes may need modification on the go which the Salesforce CPQ comfortably supports. And with modifications, approvals may also be required. These can also be done on the go because of the pre-defined workflows. This is possible whether it’s your home-grown Sales Representatives using Salesforce CPQ or your Distributors/Partners using CPQ Partner Community. The Salesforce Community Cloud is at the core of facilitating your Partners/Distributors to achieve all these. [Watch how Plumlogix are helping organizations move forward with their digital transformation goals] When using the Steelbrick CPQ, you are guaranteed of utmost ease in personalizing your sales quotes. You also get the ability to quickly and easily visualize all the factors that may come along with pricing and approval considerations. Finally, using Salesforce CPQ allows your sales representatives to generate valuable upsell and cross-sell opportunities because they are privy to insights of which services and products a client might be most interested in.

Wrap up

From the foregoing, it’s obvious implementing Salesforce CPQ is a big win in revamping your sales cycle process. It only gets better and better because the software is available on the go as it’s hosted on the Salesforce cloud infrastructure. If you are ready to get started with Salesforce CPQ, we at Plumlogix are ready to help you kickstart the implementation and partner with you through to the final stage. Talk to us today.