Sales is not an easy job.
Research shows that sales teams are the most stressed people in an office, with 79% having suffered from work-related stress
Sales professionals often struggle with time-consuming and complex tasks – one of which is creating accurate quotes. On top of that, salespeople spend a lot of time researching product pricing, revising quotes based on customer feedback, and dealing with unexpected customization requests.
Naturally, this lengthy process leads to mistakes, delays, and a longer sales cycle. So, instead of spending time on building relationships with customers, sales reps wrestle with pricing and quote generation.
One of the best solutions to this problem is to automate all of these tedious tasks with the help of technology, and Salesforce CPQ (Configure, Price, Quote) in particular.
Salesforce CPQ helps sales professionals optimize and automate the entire sales process – from initial product configuration to final quote delivery.
In this article, we will explain the main benefits of Salesforce CPQ, and how it can help you automate pricing, quote configurations and approvals, as well as reduce errors and get more done.
Read on to find out more about:
- 8 key benefits of Salesforce CPQ
- Practical applications of Salesforce CPQ across industries
- Case study: Salesforce CPQ in action
8 KEY BENEFITS OF SALESFORCE CPQ
1. Quote accuracy
One of the biggest (and most stressful) challenges for salespeople is to generate accurate quotes. And when the product configuration is complex, quote accuracy suffers even more. On the whole, manual quoting often leads to pricing mistakes, misplaced deals, or incompatible product selections – to name but a few.
Salesforce CPQ can improve quote accuracy by:
- Enforcing rules-based configurations. For example, by ensuring that warranties are included with specific products.
- Automatically updating pricing tiers or discounts based on predefined criteria, thus eliminating spreadsheet errors.
- Ensuring that all discounts, bundles, and configurations align with company policies.
Example ➡️ A company sells customized software packages with multiple pricing tiers, add-ons, and service agreements. Often, sales reps miscalculate discounts or forget essential components. Salesforce CPQ helps them to make sure pricing rules are enforced, generate accurate quotes, reduce errors, and improve customer trust.
2. Sales cycle efficiency and acceleration
Typically, B2B sales cycles can range from a few weeks to several months, depending on the industry. For more complex solutions, especially those requiring significant investment or involving multiple stakeholders, the cycle can extend to 6 months or more, up to a year.
By automating complex pricing calculations and approval workflows, Salesforce CPQ dramatically reduces the time from initial customer interest to closed deals.
Automated approvals and workflows eliminate bottlenecks and help sales teams close deals faster. A process that typically took weeks can now be completed in days or even hours!
Salesforce CPQ can accelerate sales cycles with the help of:
- Guided selling – targeted questions to narrow product options based on customer needs, reducing decision fatigue for sales reps.
- Dynamic pricing rules – adjusting quotes in real-time for discounts, bulk orders, or currency conversions, ensuring compliance with company policies.
- Instant PDF quotes – generated with a few clicks, they can drastically cut approval times and accelerate deal closures.
- Cross-sell/upsell recommendations – sales reps get prompts to add complementary products or trainings.
- Parallel approval routing – allows multiple stakeholders to review quotes simultaneously, thus reducing approval wait times.
Example ➡️ A manufacturing company spends days reviewing quotes due to slow manual approvals and back-and-forth email exchanges. Salesforce CPQ can help the company reduce the entire quoting process from days or weeks to mere hours. Deals are closed faster, and customers get their correct orders quicker.
3. Guided selling
When you know what to do in each step of the sales process, selling becomes smoother.
The greatest benefit of Salesforce CPQ is that it offers a guided selling feature. It acts like an experienced sales mentor, leading sales representatives through the optimal product configurations based on customer needs.
For instance, Salesforce CPQ can recommend complementary services, required licenses, and appropriate support levels based on the customer's industry and size.
All this helps your sales reps offer the most suitable products and services to your customers, improving overall satisfaction and increasing conversion rates.
Example ➡️ A telecom company offers multiple internet packages with different data limits, speeds, and service agreements. The guided selling in Salesforce CPQ prompts sales reps to ask customers certain questions and offer the best package.
4. Sales process automation
According to statistics, 97% of businesses agree that the main factor of digital transformation is to automate business digital transformation. And 90% of workers are said to be burdened by repetitive tasks that can be automated.
Fit to handle this challenge is Salesforce CPQ that has automation at its core. It helps salespeople to minimize such manual tasks as data entry and document generation.
Salesforce CPQ automates the creation of quotes, contracts, and proposals, all the while ensuring consistency and compliance.
Let’s analyze the key sales tasks that Salesforce CPQ helps automate:
Salesforce CPQ allows sales teams to dynamically configure products and services based on customer requirements. It guides users through selecting the right product features, options, and components, ensuring compatibility and reducing errors. The system can manage complex product configurations with customizable options and rules.
Salesforce CPQ automates pricing by applying predefined rules, discounts, and pricing tiers, ensuring consistent and fair pricing. It manages discounts, custom pricing, and currency conversions, removing the need for manual calculations and reducing the chance of errors.
Salesforce CPQ creates professional, branded quote documents that are accurate and consistent. It speeds up the quote-generation process, allowing sales teams to create quotes in minutes, and it can be routed to the appropriate parties for approvals, sequentially or in parallel.
Salesforce CPQ includes automated workflows for pricing, discounts, and quote revisions to expedite approvals. It can also handle complex contract terms and send them for approval.
- Contract and renewal management
The system can monitor and manage contract lifecycles, renewals, and amendments, ensuring timely renewal reminders and upselling opportunities. CPQ can also automatically generate renewal quotes.
Example ➡️ A SaaS company uses CPQ to automate proposal generation. The system pulls relevant pricing, terms, and customer details into a professional proposal template, allowing reps to send quotes with just a few clicks and ultimately save hours of work.
|
Manual process
|
Salesforce CPQ
|
|
Only 34% of time spent selling
|
2x faster quote-to-cash
|
|
Error-prone configurations
|
17% higher conversion rates
|
5. Quicker approvals and compliance
Most salespeople still remember the times when they had to hunt down their managers for quote approvals. It took ages and caused a lot of stress both for the sales rep and the customer.
Salesforce CPQ eliminates all this hassle by offering automated approval workflows that ensure proper managerial oversight. Discount thresholds, margin requirements, and special pricing agreements are automatically enforced, reducing risk and maintaining profitability.
To illustrate this benefit, let’s consider an example.
A software company sells enterprise-level cloud solutions. The traditional approval process for complex deals looked like this:
🫤 Sales rep creates a quote manually
🫤 Prints out the quote
🫤 Physically walks the quote to the sales manager
🫤 Manager reviews, potentially requests changes
🫤 If discount exceeds 15%, escalates to finance director
🫤 Process could take 2-3 days, risking deal momentum
With Salesforce CPQ, the same scenario transforms dramatically:
👍 Sales rep generates quote directly in the system
👍 Automated workflows instantly route the quote based on predefined rules
👍 If the discount is 10%, it auto-approves
👍 If the discount reaches 16%, the system automatically
- Notifies the finance director
- Requires digital signature
- Tracks approval time
- Logs entire approval history
The result? ➡️ Approval time drops from days to hours.
With Salesforce CPQ, sales teams can respond to customers faster as compliance is built directly into the quoting process. The system ensures no quote violates company pricing policies, thus reducing financial risks.
6. Improved collaboration across teams
Nothing beats teamwork and smooth collaboration between departments. If there are no gaps or silos in the teams’ processes, a business runs like a well-oiled machine.
Here is how Salesforce CPQ can help you bridge potential gaps between departments:
- Legal and finance teams set approval workflows for discounts or custom terms, ensuring compliance.
- Real-time CRM integration gives reps access to customer history, enabling context-aware quotes.
Example ➡️ A software company can reduce contract disputes by allowing legal teams to predefine terms in Salesforce CPQ.
7. Scalability for complex sales models
Whether selling subscriptions, hardware, or services, Salesforce CPQ can help your business adapt to evolving business needs:
- Multi-currency support simplifies global sales with automated exchange rate updates.
- Renewal management tracks expiring contracts and auto-generates renewal quotes, thus boosting retention.
Example ➡️ After adding Salesforce CPQ to its tech arsenal, a SaaS company streamlined its tiered pricing models, reduced onboarding time for new reps and maintained quote consistency. By automating repetitive tasks and empowering teams with data-driven insights, Salesforce CPQ turns complex sales processes into competitive advantages.
8. Integration with CRM and ERP Systems
Salesforce CPQ integrates seamlessly with CRM and ERP systems and in this way ensures a unified workflow, as well as offers better visibility into sales pipelines, customer interactions, and revenue forecasts.
Typically you store your product and pricing information in an ERP system. But to feed your CPQ, you need to get this data from your ERP into Salesforce. This can easily be done with a simple data integration solution such as Rapidi.
Example ➡️ A logistics company uses Salesforce CPQ integrated with their ERP system to track inventory levels in real time. When sales reps configure quotes, they can immediately see product availability, preventing stock issues and delivery delays.
PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS OF SALESFORCE CPQ ACROSS INDUSTRIES
Salesforce CPQ can benefit a wide range of industries by automating their sales processes.
Here are some practical applications across different sectors
| Typically challenging areas |
Salesforce CPQ can help |
| TECHNOLOGY |
| Various subscriptions, tiered pricing, and complex product combinations. |
- Better manage complex licensing models, user and pricing tiers, bundles, and subscription terms
- Better manager cross-selling and upselling opportunities
|
| MANUFACTURING |
| Complex product catalogs with numerous customizable options and varying prices. |
- Better manage complex pricing, configurations, and discounts
- Handle different pricing for various customer segments and regions, also managing seasonal sales and customized options
- Simplify quote creations for custom product bundles to reducing errors and turnaround times
|
| Retail |
| High volumes of personalized recommendations, promotions, and transactions in online and offline locations. |
- Offer more personalized recommendations
- Manages online and offline integration
- Support tailored promotions
- Better manage seasonal pricing
- Better bundle products and services
|
| FINANCIAL SERVICES |
| Diverse product sales and complex risk management. Complex pricing structures. |
- Automate quotes with complex pricing structures and custom terms
- Manage risks by ensuring compliance with financial regulations
|
| HEALTHCARE |
|
Complex product sales, patient billing.
Various service options, with specific rules for pricing and compliance.
|
- Simplify medical product sales and billing
- Allow customized pricing based on various factors
- Ensure compliance by incorporating specific pricing rules and regulations
|
| ENERGY |
| Complex sales, contracts, and pricing for energy solutions. |
- Streamline complex sales processes
- Optimize pricing
- Better manage contracts
- Simplify creation of quotes for various energy solutions
|
CASE STUDY: SALESFORCE CPQ IN ACTION
Gilson, a global manufacturer of laboratory instruments, faced challenges with their existing CPQ tool.
The manual quoting process was time-consuming, taking sales representatives up to an hour to generate a single quote. This inefficiency led to missed opportunities and a suboptimal user experience. Additionally, their CPQ platform lacked seamless integration with other systems, causing data discrepancies and further delays.
Solution
To address these issues, Gilson implemented Salesforce CPQ. The new system streamlined the quoting process, reducing the time required to create quotes and ensuring data accuracy across platforms. Salesforce CPQ's integration capabilities allowed for a unified workflow, minimizing the need to switch between multiple systems.
Results
- The time to generate quotes was significantly reduced, enabling sales representatives to respond more quickly to customer inquiries.
- With better integration, data remained consistent across all platforms, reducing errors and enhancing decision-making.
- The streamlined process led to higher satisfaction among sales reps and customers alike.
And that’s how Salesforce CPQ can transform sales operations and increase efficiency in real life.
💡 Want to more examples of how Salesforce CPQ can help a company improve sales? Read this story of how a leading US healthcare IT solutions provider reduced its sales cycles by 70% with Salesforce CPQ.
Final thoughts
For businesses that are still relying on manual processes or disconnected systems, implementing CPQ means getting a strategic advantage that can transform their sales operations.
It also means: destressing the sales teams and giving them more time to focus on building customer relationships.
Let’s recap on the benefits of Salesforce CPQ:
- CPQ enables sales teams to generate accurate quotes quickly.
- Automating pricing and configurations reduces the amount of human errors.
- By automating manual tasks, CPQ frees up sales teams to focus on selling.
- CPQ can suggest cross-selling and upselling opportunities and increasing the value of each deal.
- CPQ provides control over what is being sold and offers improved data and tracking for better decision-making.
Whether you are a business owner or sales leader, implementing Salesforce CPQ can drive significant improvements in both your sales performance and customer satisfaction.
Salesforce CPQ can easily be integrated with ERP solutions such as Microsoft Dynamics (365 Business Central, Finance, Sales, Customer Engagement, NAV, AX, GP).
Don’t know how to do it yourself? Worry not! Data integration platforms like Rapidi can help you do that. No programming skills required.
With Rapidi, this entire data synchronization process can be set up and automated with best practice integration templates as the starting point. It can also be done in real-time.
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