How can you speed up the process of creating customized quotes with Salesforce CPQ?

If there’s one task that every salesperson must often, if not always, go through, it’s the traditional quotation. Traditional, yes, but precise and personalized – that’s what a customer expects when faced with a need.

But this task can often prove time-consuming, sometimes leading to dissatisfaction and the loss of potential customers.

So how can you speed up the process of creating customized quotes?

Salesforce offers a powerful and comprehensive solution to this need, which is faced by many sales reps and companies, making it easier to set up this sometimes complex transaction, with one objective: to boost revenues.

This solution: Salesforce CPQ, for Configure, Price, Quote

In this article, Ferdinand Randria, Salesforce Consultant at Cloudity, presents 6 Salesforce CPQ features that are not exhaustive, but which add considerable value to the accelerated, assisted creation of quotations.

Offering a product package in a quotation means offering a product with X associated options, in other words, offering customers X possibilities! In CPQ jargon, these packages are called “bundles”.

Bundles allow you to combine options and option categories in a single “parent” product.

But Salesforce CPQ goes further than offering the ability to create simple combinations of options in a quote.

The tool also enables :

• flag options as included, either at a zero price in the quote
• flag options as optional, with prices visible but excluded from the total amount of the quote
• set up option dependencies, i.e. offer options that can only be sold if others have been selected
• or, conversely, to set up option exclusions, i.e. offer options that cannot be sold if some have been selected

These features are a “must-have” in current quotation creation practices.

Bundles are at the heart of this quote customization, and play a key role in boosting revenue.

So bundle or no bundle?

Creating quotations is often a time-consuming task. What if I told you that Salesforce CPQ could optimize this time, saving you clicks while helping to limit errors in combining and selecting options when creating quotes?

Another Salesforce CPQ must-have: automatic product rules

These are :

• Selection: selecting options automatically triggers the selection, removal or deselection of other options, or prevents them from being selected.
• Alert: the selection of options automatically triggers a non-blocking alert message, in the form of a toast, to guide the user in creating and customizing quotations.

• Validation: selecting options automatically triggers an error message, in the form of a toast, blocking the user from creating and customizing a quote

These features are designed to :

• Save time when creating a quote by automatically adding or removing options
• Provide support and guidance in the form of controls

Now let’s talk pricing. Salesforce CPQ also offers automatic and manual functions covering common pricing methods that are essential for creating quotations.

Pricing a product in a quotation according to its cost price and then applying a margin to it is a real plus for any salesperson wishing to control the sales prices proposed in their quotations, and also to earn better commissions.

Salesforce CPQ makes this pricing method available by enabling the margin on a product to be manually defined in a quotation according to its cost price, as a percentage or an amount.

The price of the product proposed to the customer is then automatically recalculated, including the defined margin, i.e. cost price + margin.

To take this a step further, Salesforce CPQ also lets you combine this cost-based pricing method with a margin approval process.

Another common practice for pricing a product in a quotation: a price negotiated with the customer.

This negotiated price for a product, linked to a customer, can then be applied to a new, renewed or amended quotation.

Results :

• Customer satisfaction and loyalty
• Accelerated sales
• Save time customizing your quote

In a quotation, any salesperson must be able to manually add an additional discount.

By default, Salesforce CPQ allows the manual entry of additional discounts in percentage or amount form on a quote line (a different discount per quote line) or on the entire quote (an identical percentage discount for all quote lines).

And that’s not all, Salesforce CPQ goes even further: these additional discounts can also be personalized in the form of :

• Unit: the salesperson manually defines a desired price per unit, and Salesforce CPQ automatically calculates the discount required to reach this unit price.
• From total: the salesperson manually defines a total price for the quote line, regardless of the product’s unit price and quantity. Salesforce automatically calculates the discount required to reach this price.

In conclusion: accelerated, assisted quote creation and accurate, precise pricing are the essential ingredients for making the task of creating quotes more efficient, smoother and less complex.

But Salesforce CPQ’s strength lies not only in these few quote-creation functions.

This solution encompasses and optimizes the entire sales cycle: quotations, orders, contracts, subscriptions, amendments, renewals and invoicing, providing a single view of customer assets.

This could be a major argument for sales reps and companies looking for a complete revenue-boosting solution.

Would you like to see a Salesforce CPQ quote creation demo?