Recently, I came across the name Salesforce CPQ software that is making my friend’s sales and marketing job role easy! He claims that Salesforce Configure Price Quote software (or Salesforce CPQ software) is the sales tool that is helping his organization create accurate, personalized, targeted sales quotes for its customers. He also adds that reduced time in delivering personalized quotes utilizing centralized customer data in real-time help building customers’ confidence.
I was satisfied with his elaboration of Salesforce CPQ software benefits when I could make my own view out the benefits:
Comprehensive & configurable data streamlined on mouse clicks: In conventional manual quoting scenario sales teams need to run pillar to post to gather any vital information required for drafting the quotes. Now, with CPQ, quotes related to selling, up-selling or cross-selling groups of products or services can be configured easily. Anytime sales team can personalize products and services, and their components in aggregated forms to meet customer demands. Salesforce CPQ software helps in configuring packages and bundles to offer to customers with the clicks of a mouse in real-time. Availability of centralized data streamlines the process of preparing quote faster than any conventional method.
No guesswork, only accurate information: There should never be any point of guesswork when it comes to quoting a price. Due to accurate centralized database availability through Salesforce CPQ software customers are delivered highly accurate, specific and requirement oriented quotes. In later stages, confusions and conflicts do not arise, as all the information provided are genuine and backed by the database. Sales representatives cannot deny promises made in quotes. On the other hand, executive get authentic data sourced from the centralized database instead of relying on lesser dependable information gathered from different individual resources. What they used to do in past - guesswork quickly to complete the quotes and later try to match/rectify that info with available resources – those possibilities are minimized to almost nil with the use of CPQ software.
Only required and personalized quotes: When time is of higher importance in drafting quotes along with the accuracy of information, there should be equal weight to personalization of quotes. Earlier, sales team had to wade through huge information pile-ups (case studies and similar collaterals) to pick out particular matching information for any specific requisite. Due to the shortage of time, they in most of the cases had to rely on similar but non-specific information to draft the quotes. As a result, clients used to mark those quotes generic. Sales teams had to miss the bus due to the shortage of time to analyze the information manually. Salesforce CPQ software has relieved them from this situation. Now data are on click, can be analyzed quickly, and added immediately as per requirements. Let the customers demand adjustments to their purchase as per requirements, ask discounts, or anything specific - sales representatives can update quotes in real-time.
Reduced time to response: Hope reading up to this, one thing is clear – time plays an imperative role in drafting price quotes. Salesforce CPQ software has condensed the time to respond largely. The availability of vital data and option to draft quotes in real-time with available templates has improved the turnaround time to reach customers in grabbing the opportunities.
Automation & retention: There are generally several processes of price quoting. In some cases, quotes are to be converted to contracts. However, in other situations, customers demand to get proposals in specific proposal templates. With Salesforce CPQ software now sales team can get approvals and convert quotes to contracts quickly due to automation and use of tools like DocuSign, Echosign. There are ready and quickly customizable templates also to meet the demand of template specific proposals. In both the cases percentage of retaining customers with quick quote to contract conversion has improved a lot while tools transform any quoting automated.
Finally, what I understood is that Salesforce CPQ software is not only a great addition to Salesforce customer relationship management platform, it is empowering sales team with quote pricing ability. CPQ software is a tool or can be called a suite for making price quoting fast, accurate, easy, reliable and even automated. Personalized price quoting is now on a mouse click and done in a real-time scenario. Thanks to Salesforce to acquire SteelBrick CPQ and providing option to use CPQ software in Salesforce CRM.
