As per a recent Salesforce State of Sales report, sales reps spend 34% of their time in doing real sales while a startling 66% of their time in generating quotes, proposals, and getting approvals. Isn’t that surprising? In today’s world of fast-forward digitalization powered by sales utility tools, if sales reps are still spending almost two-thirds of their time in doing non-selling activities, it will certainly be going to hamper business efficiency along with loss of opportunities.Â
CPQ – Configure, Price, Quote
To enhance business efficiency & revenue by engaging sales reps in doing real sales activities, progressive enterprises prefer using a tool such as Salesforce CPQ. CPQ which is primarily a sales utility tool, helps sales reps quickly generate quotes for orders. CPQ work in tandem with CRM solutions, ERP systems, and other external systems ensuring integrated data with accuracy. With CPQ, businesses can generate quotes that are automated according to a preprogrammed set of rules. The error-free quotes consider account quantities, discounts, customizations, optional features of products, multiple revenue types, and incompatibilities. Leading enterprises using Salesforce CPQ has observed:
- 10x faster quote generation
- 95% reduction in approval time
- 2x faster moving from quote to cash
- 30% quicker ramp for new reps
5 Ways Salesforce CPQ is helping enterprises
Here are 5 ways Salesforce CPQ can help an enterprise drive high efficiency by closing more deals with a shorten sales cycle:
Greater accuracyÂ
CPQ drives higher efficiency by integrating various aspects of a sales cycle including sales, service, renewals, finance and legal. This ensures sales reps won’t be dealing with configurations that aren’t possible financially or legally. This saves time of manual quoting and enables sales reps to create quotes with greater accuracy. The automation function will also ensure that errors can be avoided before they occur, leaving you with satisfied customers and happy salespeople. Though sales reps are going to primarily use the CPQ, however, you can optimize the tool in order to benefit the entire organization. CPQ analytics can help you with accurate demand and product trends.Â
Standardized processes with larger collaboration & reduced costs
An enterprise has different entities such as sales, service, finance, legal and many more that are siloed. CPQ collaborates with all the entities and allows seamless communication during a sales cycle. From generating an order to quote sending, invoice sending, payment receiving, auditing, and order fulfillment, CPQ integrates with your existing business technology & siloed entities to make the entire process smoother & standardized. CPQ has a great ability to integrate with ERP systems and connects sales with operations. CPQ with ERP can potentially reduce high operational costs.
Enhanced sales efficiency & reduced time
As mentioned before, a sales rep spends roughly 34% of his time doing actual sales related work. This leads to multiple challenges such as reduced efficiency, minimized sales, and longer sales cycles. With a streamlined process, sales reps can avoid doing non-selling jobs and spend more time in prospecting, meeting customers, cold calling, etc. So that when it comes to close the deal and start the transaction, CPQ can accurately configure products, apply pricing discounts, have preprogrammed approvals to fasten the process. This will enhance efficiency and save a lot of time.Â
Increased revenue & business transparency
A Salesforce report shows that companies that use a Salesforce CPQ software increase their average deal size by a whopping 105%. CPQ allows enterprises to ensure that they get the most out of their sales deals by analyzing sales pipelines and having a deal profitability analysis in order to offer financially viable and successful quotes through automated streamlined processes. CPQ with Einstein Analytics can really help sales reps maximize revenue opportunities with actionable insights. Insights can also help you identify what works for you and where improvements are needed. Custom dashboards can also be accessed with CPQ in order to identify top customers, successful pricing models, and opportunities.Â
Quote-to-Cash: On the fly
One of the most significant factors of the sales cycle is timely communication & round the clock accessibility. Salesforce CPQ enables sales reps with greater visibility across the sales cycle from anywhere using any device. Sales reps can offer deals based on revenue goals, margins, pricing models, and legal factors. They can also send quotes, access reports, dashboards on the go.Â
CEPTES for Salesforce CPQ Requirements
As a Salesforce platform specialist, we have successfully implemented Salesforce CPQ solutions in various enterprises. Salesforce certified developers at CEPTES will help you maximize your revenue with minimum time & cost. Schedule a meeting today.
