Most of the business owners who are new to salesforce, ask two questions: What is Salesforce CPQ? And why do I need it? Salesforce CPQ stands for configuring, pricing, and quoting, and it is used to create an organized sales process. 

In this informational blog, we are going to discuss salesforce CPQ in detail so that you can decide if you need this software to transform your business or you are better off without it. Let’s take a tour and know more about software. 

Understanding Salesforce CPQ flow 

As a business owner, you must be having some excellent product with you that you want to pitch to your target audience. The C in salesforce CPQ stands for configuration. With the help of inputting your audience details, you ask the software to analyze the product and then move on in deciding its price. 

Let’s say for example that you have a new version of a laptop that you want to introduce in the market, but you are unsure of what color is going to be or what the technical configuration that it should have is. Salesforce CPQ will have your product configured. 

Once your product is configured, salesforce CPQ will tell you about the pricing and if any discount is needed for the product. When this price is decided salesforce will ask you for its price approval. After your approval is done, a quote or electronic document will be sent to you to ensure that you have approved the quoting of the software. 

Once you have done that you are free to release the product on your website. Every time customer buys a product the CPQ will keep a track of that and move the information contract management folder, where every customer detail who has brought your product will be recorded. You can repeat this cycle for as many products you want.

5 solid benefits of salesforce CPQ

There are numerous benefits of salesforce CPQ, but we are listing only five because we believe that these are the most significant benefits of salesforce CPQ that a business owner must know: 

1. CPQ helps you streamline your orders 

Once you start using this software, you will start loving it? Why do we stay that? It’s due to three reasons: the software helps in automating approvals, helps you sell the right product combos to your customers, and controls discounting. 

This indicates that your sales team will help close a deal faster.  Without this software, it would take plenty of time for your sales team to make a deal because hours are spent in creating spreadsheets and emails. Instead of moving to the next sale, your business team is busy deciding the price of the product.  With the help of CPQ, your sales rep would take minutes in quoting the price of the product even though it may be a complex task at hand 

2. Offers visibility 

Daily use of this software will give you insights into your company. You will know what are products being offered and what is being sold. Without it, your sales team would send out chaotic practicing to your customers or promise products that are no longer available in your inventory. 

Whenever a company scales and does more business, it introduces a new revenue model. This revenue model would mean tracking, quoting, and forecasting new products. Salesforce CPQ helps you track that. 

 Your customers will have flexibility with your products and you will boost productivity. To know more about the visibility that CPQ offers, you can get connected to experienced salesforce companies like isyncSF. 

3. Helps in Upsell/ cross-sell 

The right mix of products is what makes all the difference. For instance, let’s say a customer is trying to buy a cell phone from your website. Salesforce CPQ would also suggest a back cover, tempered glass, and a headphone go with it. 

Initially, the customer was only interested in purchasing the cell phone but as soon salesforce CPQ introduced the bundle back, your sales went up. 

4. Eliminating errors 

Let’s say that your company had dome policy changes recently. A product was which was priced initially at $10 is now priced at $15 after the policy change. Your business team was not aware of that and they quoted the initial price on the website. 

This could lead to financial loss. To avoid it; start using salesforce CPQ, the software automatically informs the team about company policy changes. This leads to no errors while pricing for a product. 

5. Makes you learn guided selling 

Your website needs sales and nothing suits better than guided selling.  Salesforce CPQ teaches your business team how to do that. It analyses the customer map and provides a guided selling technique to your team. 

For example, there is a customer who has brought a cell phone and a laptop from your website. So which is a product that he will possibly buy next? Salesforce CPQ would recommend the customer buy of smartwatch, tablet, or a home pc. In knowing the customer behavior, salesforce CPQ offers guided selling.

How to migrate to Salesforce CPQ from legacy systems 

Now once we have made you understand the importance of salesforce CPQ, it’s time that we let you know about how CPQ data migration which is the process of migrating data from legacy system to Salesforce CPQ. 

We would highly recommend getting connected with experienced salesforce companies to implement this process. They will know which data to migrate which are of two types: historical data or new data. 

Once the data has been designed skilled CPQ professionals would use several tools to make the CPQ migration happen. Some of the most common tools that are used during the transfer are data loader, custom CPQ accelerator, ETL tool, and integration. Once the tool is decided, it’s time that processionals think of a strategy to reduce the execution time. To do so the professionals would generate an external ID for each object. 

Once execution time is reduced, the CPQ professionals formulate a plan, which is listed as follows 

• Developing contact stage 
• Creating account stage 
• Developing price book entry stage 
• Creating opportunity stage 
• Formulation quote, price, and contract  management stage 
• Ending it with post, billing, and order migration stage 

When to know if the CPQ data migration is successful?

When the source and the destination folder will show zero discrepancies, it would indicate a successful CPQ data migration. If any disprepancy is depended the Salesforce professionals would incorporate the data in CPQ calculation engine and match it with trigger events 

Final thought 

CPQ has revolutionized sales management. This software had made the sales process so seamless that large-scale industries could use it for change in revenue model and also for keeping track of a large customer base. We believe you should implement CPQ as soon as possible.