Gone are the days when your customers were buying cookie cutter mold products. Now they want personalization: From the tiniest details to differentiating, bigger changes. Customers want to be treated as individuals and not numbers. Meaning, they want sales quotes specific to their wants.
But, satisfying these ever-expanding customer expectations is tough.
The good news: You can use tried and tested Salesforce CPQ software (Configure, Price and Quote), and enable your sales team with a higher horsepower to push your potential customer to the next stage of the funnel.
Salesforce CPQ allows your sales team to spend quality, precious time on actual selling instead of generating quotes and doing related activities.
According to Salesforce, when their customers have deployed CPQ Software, they’ve reported:
- 10x faster quote generation
- 2x faster quote-to-cash
- 95% reduction in approval time
- 30% quicker ramp for new reps
What is Salesforce CPQ, Anyway?
Salesforce CPQ, part of Sales Cloud, is a native tool which generates targeted, highly personalized, and accurate quotes for sales orders. It follows a pre-programmed set of rules and brings together the available pricing and customer data to automatically create error-free quotes which are precise and tailored to customer’s requirements.
By using CPQ, your sales team can overcome the hurdles of creating custom quotes, all the time.
Why Do You Need Salesforce CPQ?
Being an effective Salesperson requires a special skillset.
You need to understand your customer, know what they want and be able to come up with solutions that help them achieve their wants. Easier said than done.
And your sales team needs to sell more to outgrow your competitors.
One way they can up their game a notch is by using tools like Salesforce CPQ.
There’s more…
So, we’ve compiled a list of added 5 benefits of using Salesforce CPQ and growing your numbers –
Achieve Accuracy
You do not want to lose a major potential client because of errors. One bad experience and your customer will shift gears towards your competitors. As much as 63% respondents said that they will leave a brand because of poor customer experience, in a 2022 survey conducted by Emplifi.
You certainly don’t want this to happen.
And wrong quote is no minor error to overlook. Error filled quotes can lead to you charging your customers less than your costs. Resulting in losses. So, Salesforce CPQ is your insurance.
Salesforce CPQ automatically creates accurate quotes as it even updates new goods, features, and pricing in real time. Let your customers see how meticulous your sales team is when they send correct quotes each time.
Reduce downtime
A major setback happens when your sales executive is sure of closing a new customer. But he or she couldn’t.
And oftentimes, it is because of delays in creating and sending proposals to customers using manual spreadsheets.
Salesforce CPQ takes this downtime out of the equation by automatically generating sales quotes without requiring you to use the traditional spreadsheet method, routing them for approvals, when needed and integrating the CPQ software with eSignature for a frictionless experience.
In doing so, it helps your sales executives make most of their time.
Because to be a trusted seller, your team needs to spend time on delivering value, each time they contact the buyer.
Not only this, but more time at hand also means that the sales team can follow up with more leads and bring in more revenue.
“Once we implemented Salesforce CPQ, our sales team could quote within a matter of minutes, we had automatic checks and approvals based on certain levels of costs, etc.,” said Brad Bilotta, Division IT Manager at Magnaflux. “And our win rates are now up well over 60%.”
Optimize contract process
The holy grail of sales is to speed up the sales cycle or the selling process. And in this new landscape, it is the one thing that each business wants to achieve.
Because you don’t want unexpected circumstances like changes in budget or your point of contact, have left the company, to stall your deal at the final stages.
Especially when your sales team grinds hard to move the potential buyers towards the end of the sales pipeline.
Salesforce CPQ shortens your sales cycle by streamlining your contract process. In addition, it uses Salesforce Einstein AI to anticipate all the possible scenarios in pricing. CPQ also helps in adjusting the prices based on external factors.
Ensuring your data is updated in real time.
Higher efficiency in configuration and quoting process means your business becomes a more trusted seller.
As is always, it’s about gaining the trust of your customers.
Increase deal size
Solving your customer’s queries and problems is prerequisite for effective selling. You want your sales executives to know every possible angle in detail.
Still, there are chances of highly technical questions arising in conversations and the expertise of a subject matter expert might be needed to answer those. Not always you can have one in the team due to budget constraints or he or she might not be available at the moment.
That’s where Salesforce Configure Price Quote Software becomes a viable option.
You can preprogram specifications and bundles in CPQ Software which can act as rules for sales executives. Letting your customers take advantage of Subject Matter Expertise through CPQ.
Through Salesforce CPQ and its AI based features, your salespeople can ask the right questions and provide a more comprehensive pricing which is based on customizations, add-ons, or complex configurations.
Additionally, they can use guided selling to upsell, and cross-sell offers.
And in all of this create the opportunities for bigger deal sizes.
Maximize profitability with integrations
CPQ solves the many challenges your sales team faces like long sales cycles, unmet quotas, and declining margins. It provides accuracy, decreased timeframes, and higher conversion chances.
But you still lack the insights into the sales pipeline.
That’s where your CRM comes in. A CRM is also essential to managing the customer relationships once the deal is closed. And then there will be renewals or subscriptions to manage.
And Salesforce CPQ and CRM cannot work in silos because that would lead to half-truth about customers and associated data. And if you are an active user of an Accounting or Operations ERP, then you would also require it to work in tandem with your CPQ Salesforce and CRM software.
Only then you would be able to streamline your business processes and choose your single source of truth for accessing the data.
You can achieve this unified, profit maximizing sales process by integrating your Salesforce CPQ with your CRM and Accounting or Operations ERP with top data integration companies like Commercient SYNC, which lets you and your sales team see the whole picture.
That’s what Nicole Taylor, MBA, Director of Marketing at Republic Manufacturing, agrees with, “The Commercient SYNC data integration between Salesforce CPQ, Pardot, and Sage 100 allows our Sales Team to take appropriate steps to increase their rate of closure based on real time information.”
The Bottom Line
Deploy Salesforce CPQ along with existing software and help your sales team achieve more. Remember to oversee the rules and options while programming Salesforce CPQ for using it optimally.
And to use Salesforce Configure Price Quote (CPQ) software to its full potential, integrate your current CRM and Accounting or Operations ERP with the help of Commercient SYNC.
Let you, your team and business reap in the benefits of error-free, timesaving, accelerated growth.
