The CPQ (Configure, Price, and Quote) process is vital to any Sales department, so it makes sense that sales leaders would be interested in the CPQ solution with the best benefits. And if you’re already using Salesforce as your CRM solution, Salesforce CPQ is specifically designed to work with it to help you hit your numbers, which is never an easy proposition. (After all, 54% of sales reps won’t make their quota this year, according to SiriusDecisions, and nobody wants to be one of the 54%.) So if you’re a sales leader looking to accelerate revenue growth, what are the benefits of Salesforce CPQ? Let’s take a closer look.
Sales Challenges That CPQ Can Improve
Nobody ever said making sales was easy. Add in leadership responsibilities and things get even trickier. All in all, every sales leader faces a number of challenges, including:
- Meeting (and hopefully exceeding) revenue goals
- Building a strong and sustainable sales org
- Defining the sales process and methodology
- Ensuring legal and process compliance across the board
- Meeting the needs of specific verticals
- Making things easy for self-serve customers
- Preparing for new technologies
- Enabling their selling partners
Of course, every challenge is really an opportunity in disguise. With the right outlook, team, and technology (like Salesforce CPQ), sales leaders like you will be able to post the numbers you need to succeed. Here’s how.
The Benefits of Salesforce CPQ
When it comes to automating your sales processes, there are a large number of benefits of Salesforce CPQ—not only does it make things generally easier on you and your team, it also increases efficiency (saving you time), accuracy (since there are fewer manual steps), and more. Specifically, Salesforce CPQ helps sales leaders…
Improve Forecast Accuracy
Since everyone on the team is using the same tool to build quotes (and nobody’s “going rogue”), you maintain a clearer view of what’s going on in your pipeline. And since Salesforce CPQ is (by definition) connected to Salesforce, the tool also automatically populates opportunity values, helping you to forecast more accurately.
Increases Deal Visibility
No matter how good you are as a sales leader, there’s no way to manage your team properly if you’re in the dark. Being able to see changes, discounts, and the status of quotes (not to mention the analytics to monitor and track them all) will help you plot the course to success.
Ensures Compliance with Pricing and Configuration Rules
Pricing and configuration rules are necessary, but it can be tricky to get everyone to stick to them all the time. There are always those customers that want sweetheart deals or salespeople that weren’t quite listening when you told them what products have to be sold together. If you want to stay consistent and compliant, rules-based configuration and pricing tools are the way to go. (After all, it’s tough to select a non-compliant option if the system literally won’t let you.)
Improves Productivity
Since you’re already using Salesforce, a tool that looks and functions similarly will help new salespeople pick it up faster, helping to ramp up productivity. And everyone—new reps and current ones—will benefit from automated configuration rules, discount limits, and approvals. An automated CPQ system means reps don’t have to try and find information buried in some folder or spreadsheet. They save time, your customers save theirs, and deals move more quickly. Everybody wins!
Reduces Errors
In addition to increased productivity, the automation present in Salesforce CPQ will also help reduce your team’s error rate, as well. Manual effort not only takes time, but it leaves room for errors to creep in as well. Every part of the CPQ process—from configuring the deal to finding the right price to creating the quote itself—is an opportunity for a mistake to happen, and fixing those mistakes can cost you big time (in both dollars and customer goodwill). Salesforce CPQ’s automation helps to keep them from happening in the first place.
When it comes to CPQ solutions, sales leaders like you have their choice of options, but if you’re already running Salesforce, there’s really only one that makes sense: Salesforce CPQ. Connecting your CPQ software with your CRM increases the power of both systems, so there’s no downside.
Need help getting things connected? Whether you’re completely new to Salesforce or just Salesforce CPQ, Surety Systems’ senior-level Salesforce consultants are here to help you accelerate revenue growth and meet your quota. Contact us today to see all the benefits Salesforce has to offer for yourself.
