If marketing is the brain of a business then sales is its heart, and one should maintain a proper balance between the two for greater sales and revenue. In some cases, we have noticed that sales reps spend only 34% of their time in actual selling activity and the remaining time on non-selling tasks like quote creation, proposal making, and etc. Here comes Salesforce CPQ (Configure, Price, and Quote) into the play. Salesforce implementation services for CPQ will help businesses empower sales teams by automating sales operations.
Why Does Your Business Need Salesforce Implementation Services for CPQ Software?
Salesforce revealed in a study that 84% of sales reps missed their sales quota last year, whereas 67% of sales teams are finding it challenging to meet their quota this year.
If your sales team is also facing challenges in coping with sales quota, it’s time you choose CPQ software and hire Salesforce implementation Company, USA for its successful deployment.
Coming back to why your business needs Salesforce CPQ implementation services? Recognize these five signs of when to adopt the Salesforce CPQ technology. –
Complex Product Configurations
If your business deals in multiple products & services with customization facilities, then there are chances you are facing challenges in managing accurate quotes manually. With the help of Salesforce CPQ, you can easily handle intricate product configuration, streamline the entire process and improve accuracy of quotes.
Long Sales Cycle
Does your quoting process involve manual intervention? Yes!! Then consider implementing CPQ software. It will bring all stakeholders to the same place, conduct back-and-forth communication, and streamline a lengthy review cycle.
Missed Opportunities
Merely buying and selling is not a sales process, it also involves up-selling and cross selling and if you are missing these two opportunities, it’s high time you get Salesforce CPQ implemented for your business. Powered by AI technology this software analyzes customers data and gives intelligent recommendations to the sales team to enhance cross selling and up selling capabilities.
Inconsistent Quotes
Salesforce teams often grapple with inconsistent quotes that lead to delays in quote delivery and pricing errors. It can severely affect business image. CPQ comes with the power of automation. It automates the process, standardizes the quoting process, and ensures accurate pricing and configuration.
Difficult Pricing Model
Sales teams often find themselves challenged when it comes to managing complex pricing strategies. It would affect their ability to build accurate pricing models, generate effective discount structures, and ability to update pricing frequently. CPQ simplifies pricing rules and logic and automates price calculation on predefined criteria.
There are more challenges that a sales team has to go through like inconsistency in quotes, lengthy sales cycle, scaling of complex quoting tasks, unavailability of the efficient sales analytics, and complex pricing management. All these challenges lead to the biggest challenge, low customer satisfaction rate.
Successful Salesforce CPQ Implementation – Overcoming Quote Challenges like a Pro
Salesforce implementation partner holds a pivotal role in successful deployment of CPQ software. As it is hosted with the Sales Cloud, it would allow businesses to make efficient and result-driven sales decisions.
Following the 8 Steps for Successful Salesforce CPQ Implementation –
Define Your Objectives
Understand your sales goals & process, and identify CPQ requirements. Work on the following KPIs while defining the objectives –
- Factors to improve quote accuracy
- Increase time spent on core selling
- Improve Average Order Value
- Improve quote turnaround time
Analyze CPQ Features
Once the objectives are defined, it’s time to concentrate on choosing the business-centric features from CPQ software.
- Identify and choose the most useful CPQ feature.
- Features should be acquainted with your sales goals.
Some of the most amazing and crucial CPQ features include, product bundles, order management, price book, product catalog, and guided selling, to name a few.
Choose Your Project Team
It is very crucial to have the right set of people/resources, when it comes to implementation of Salesforce CPQ.
- Choose the team of subject matter experts.
- Hire the best performers along with their backup.
- Hire a Salesforce Implementation partner for better project methodology understanding.
Optimization of Quote-to-Cash Process
It is one of the key components on which the entire Configure, Price, and Quote process and its efficiency depends.
- Evaluate every aspect of your sales process
- Optimize the process and modify it as per needs
- It will help the sales team cater to customers more
Data Management Process
When your sales team is equipped with the right set of data, it will allow them to create accurate, faster, and impressive quotes that drive sales and increase revenue.
- While implementing CPQ, ensure it collects all pieces of data fragmented across the spreadsheets and systems.
- Ensure your data is easily accessible across systems like CRM, ERP, and across the departments.
- Data management includes consolidating all important factors like pricing, codes, SKUs, etc., in one place.
Choose The Best Change Management Team
Implementation of CPQ brings lots of resistance for its users. To cope with it, you need to have a change management team that will help your business users adopt the new technology, make them understand its usage, and help them overcome any challenge that comes while using it.
- Bring all stakeholders in one place. (sales, finance, marketing, etc.)
- Understand their expectation from the CPQ project.
- The representative of each department will help the change management team understand their challenges and expectations from the newly implemented software.
Well-Curated Documentation
CPQ implementation is done for different users, the two important departments that leverage the software include the admin and the sales departments.
- Prepare admin user documentation and sales user training documentation.
- The proper documentation helps business users with good execution of the process.
- A strong sales document includes factors like products, approvals, document signing, doc generation, renewals, and more.
Post-Deployment Support
Businesses often mistake Salesforce implementation as the final step, but the reality is that real work starts from here.
- Discuss all potential issues with your Salesforce partner.
- Inform them about any challenge that might come during the usage of the software.
A Gateway to Successful Salesforce Implementation Services – The Conclusion
To have a strong sales team and a stronger sales process is the need of the hour. With Salesforce implementation services, you can achieve excellence in both dynamics.
We hope you can relate to the challenges we have discussed here and also the steps of implementing Salesforce CPQ.
Hire a Salesforce CPQ implementation partner like FEXLE, which is also a summit partner. The certified CPQ professionals will help you embrace the power of data accuracy and automation. Give your business and sales team a competitive edge with FEXLE Services, the best Salesforce implementation company in the USA.
