Salespeople only dedicate 28% of their professional time to selling. Yet, selling is supposed to be their core business. So what are they doing during the other ¾ of the time? They manage customer issues and primarily handle administrative tasks. Generating quotes, commercial proposals, waiting for approvals – these are just a few tasks that hinder their main activity. Unless, of course, they use a configure, price, quote software like Salesforce CPQ. Discover this solution and its features.
What is Salesforce CPQ?
Salesforce CPQ was launched in 2010 under the name SteelBrick. Acquired by Salesforce in 2015 and renamed CPQ (Configure, Price, Quote), this solution streamlines the sales processes for companies.
How? By centralizing and automating the management of configuration, pricing, and quoting. Sales teams can thus offer precise and personalized offers, regardless of product configuration. They also gain flexibility, as the CPQ tool allows for the rapid adaptation of pricing strategies and discounts according to market changes.
But most importantly, sales teams save time. Instead of wasting hours on administrative tasks, salespeople can concentrate on what matters most: closing deals.
By optimizing each stage of the sales cycle, this solution increases efficiency while maximizing revenue.
And since the CPQ software is part of the Salesforce ecosystem, it integrates this information directly into the CRM. This ensures data consistency and better fluidity of commercial operations.
What are the main features of Salesforce CPQ?
The Salesforce CPQ software breaks down into three essential elements: configuration, pricing, and quotes. Each component offers specific features to optimize the efficiency of sales teams.
Configuration
Configuration aims to customize products or services to meet customer needs. To do this, the platform relies on usage-based pricing: Salesforce CPQ offers flexible pricing models. For each product/service, it is possible to add features, options, or additional modules. These are then automatically integrated into the price to provide customers with a tailored offer (always with an appropriate price). And above all, this prevents salespeople from having to manually configure quotes.
And to improve the productivity of sales teams, the CPQ application has additional features, such as:
- Contract renewals and modifications: customers can modify contractual terms or renew their subscriptions at any time. On one hand, this strengthens their engagement since they now have control over commercial actions. On the other hand, it promotes upselling and cross-selling.
- Channel partner sales: pricing rules can be integrated directly into partner portals to facilitate sales through all communication channels, even outside the company.
Pricing
Salesforce CPQ simplifies pricing with several essential features:
- Product catalog and pricing rules: from the CRM, salespeople can easily access product catalogs and associated prices. But the strength of the CPQ application lies in its flexibility and customization ability. Indeed, teams can define dynamic pricing rules. Therefore, whenever a new product or module appears, modifications are automatically triggered.
- Discount controls: through the discount system, salespeople have additional negotiation levers to encourage purchases. These can be promotions granted for large purchase volumes, loyal customers, anniversaries, etc. Nonetheless, these discounts remain controlled thanks to an automated approval system.
- Advanced approvals: with cross-functional approval chains, salespeople no longer need to wait days to get manager validation. Here, it is possible to define certain conditions, such as approval triggers, user groups, user permissions, and sequences.
Quoting
Before closing a sale, salespeople must send the quote. But with Salesforce CPQ, teams no longer waste time generating this commercial proposal, notably thanks to:
- Guided selling: through targeted questions to the seller, the platform can provide intelligent product recommendations. The idea is to offer the solution best suited to the final customer.
- Product configurator: the CPQ solution offers bundled offers. The software can automatically add available and compatible features or options as long as they meet the customer’s request.
- Quote generation: from the elements collected during the sales cycle, CPQ can generate a commercial proposal encompassing the product and its complementary features, the price, discounts, and commercial terms. All while incorporating the company’s branding elements.
Thanks to all these features, Salesforce CPQ allows sales teams to save time, while increasing sales efficiency and maximizing revenue.
