3 Salesforce CPQ Features That Drives Sales Transformation

Salesforce CPQ Features

You are using Salesforce CPQ (configure, price, quote), but do you think your sales representatives aren’t fully utilizing this powerful sales tool? While it’s designed to assist your sales team in generating precise quotes for customers, the extensive range of features in Salesforce CPQ may remain untapped.

As leaders in the quote to cash industry, today we help you realize the five noteworthy Salesforce CPQ features that would definitely create a major impact in your sales team as well as drive revenue growth. We help  many businesses from small to medium to large growth enterprises unlock their true potential and drive revenue.

 

Contract Amendment And Automated Renewals


The Contract Amendment and Automated Renewals feature is valuable and simplifies the management of customer contracts and helps organizations maintain ongoing relationships with their clients. Let’s delve into the key aspects of this feature;

1. Contract Amendment: Contract amendments are integral to the business world, allowing companies to change existing contracts as their needs evolve. Salesforce CPQ’s Contract Amendment feature enables sales and legal teams to handle contract modifications efficiently. Here’s how it works:

  • Effortlessly modify contracts for pricing changes, add-ons, or extensions.
  • Maintain version control and track contract history.
  • Implement automated approval workflows for efficiency.
  • Facilitate real-time collaboration between sales and legal teams.

2. Automated Renewals: Automated renewals are critical to subscription-based business models and maintenance contracts. Salesforce CPQ’s Automated Renewals feature simplifies renewing contracts, reducing administrative burden and minimizing the risk of missed opportunities. Here’s how it works:

  • Automatically generate renewal quotes and contracts based on criteria.
  • Send renewal notifications to sales teams in advance.
  • Flexible pricing options for renewals.
  • Access analytics and reporting for renewal performance insights.
  • Turn renewals into an upsell/cross sell activity leveraging the richness of the Salesforce platform.
Benefits of Contract Amendment and Automated Renewals in Salesforce CPQ:

  • Improved efficiency reduced manual effort.
  • Increased revenue through automated renewals.
  • Enhanced customer satisfaction with seamless processes.
  • Compliance and risk mitigation.
  • Data-driven decision-making with contract insights.

Guided Selling

 

Guided Selling plays a crucial role in helping sales teams sell more effectively. Guided Selling in Salesforce CPQ is like having a knowledgeable sales assistant who guides sales representatives through the complex process of creating quotes, ensuring that they offer customers the most relevant products and services. By harnessing the power of data and automation, companies can deliver a superior customer experience and stay competitive in today’s fast-paced business landscape. Here’s how:

1. Personalized Recommendations: Guided Selling uses data-driven insights to provide sales reps with customized product and pricing recommendations. It considers customer preferences, historical sales data, and current market conditions. This approach ensures that sales representatives provide customized solutions that suit individual customers’ unique needs and budgets.

2. Simplified Product Selection: CPQ Guided Selling simplifies product selection by presenting a list of recommended products and services based on customer requirements. Reducing the chances of errors and oversights makes it easier for sales representatives to create accurate quotes.

3. Cross-Selling and Upselling: With Guided Selling, sales reps can quickly identify cross-selling and upselling opportunities. The system suggests complementary products or services to enhance the customer’s purchase and increase the deal’s value. It is important to note that improving processes can significantly impact both profits and customer satisfaction.

4. Real-Time Pricing Guidance: Pricing is a critical aspect of the sales process. Guided Selling provides real-time pricing guidance to ensure that sales reps are quoting prices that are competitive, profitable, and within acceptable discount limits. This prevents over-discounting and revenue leakage.

5. Automated Rule Enforcement: Salesforce CPQ allows organizations to define business rules and pricing guidelines. Guided Selling ensures that these rules are consistently applied, reducing non-compliance risk and ensuring sales reps adhere to company policies.

6. Streamlined Collaboration: Guided Selling promotes collaboration between sales teams and other departments, such as product management and finance. Different departments can ensure the availability of appropriate products and alignment of prices and terms with company strategies by effectively receiving customer needs and preferences conveyed by sales representatives.

7. Improved Sales Training and Onboarding: Salesforce CPQ’s Guided Selling feature is valuable for new sales representatives who are still learning about the company’s products and pricing strategies. It provides them with a structured framework for creating quotes and ensures they follow best practices.

8. Data-Driven Insights: The system gathers data on sales interactions and outcomes, which can be analyzed to further refine the guided selling process. This enables continuous improvement and helps organizations adapt to changing market conditions.

Product and Pricing Rules

Within Salesforce CPQ, four product rules are available to admins: validation, selection, alert, and filter.

  • Validation Rules: These rules act as gatekeepers, preventing sales teams from saving an incompatible quote configuration. They ensure that only valid product combinations are included in a quote, minimizing errors and ensuring compliance with business rules.
  • Alert Rules: Alert rules serve as gentle reminders, notifying your sales teams of important information without hindering them from saving the quote. This feature is handy for conveying critical details that might impact the customer’s decision, ensuring transparency in the quoting process.
  • Selection Rules: Selection rules automate the process of selecting or deselecting products and showing or hiding them based on defined parameters. This automation streamlines the configuration of quotes, saving time and reducing the risk of human error. For example, a selection rule could automatically add complementary products when selecting a specific item.
  • Filter Rules: Filter rules are instrumental in creating dynamic search filters that automatically refine the product catalog based on specific criteria. This feature simplifies the product selection process for sales reps by presenting them with only relevant options, enhancing their efficiency.

Product rules become relevant  when all defined error conditions are true. For a product rule to be effective, it must have at least one error condition defined. Selection rules, in particular, require both error conditions and product actions to be specified. Product actions instruct the system on what to do when the error conditions are met. 

How These Salesforce CPQ Features Benefit Businesses Across Different Industries 


The new Contract Amendment, Automated Renewals, Guided Selling and Product and Pricing Rules features in Salesforce CPQ offers significant advantages across various industries, helping organizations streamline contract management and enhance customer relationships. Here’s how it can benefit different sectors:

  1. Manufacturing Auto and Engineering:
  • Streamlines contract modifications for pricing changes, add-ons, and extensions, which are common in complex manufacturing contracts.
  • Allows for complex configuration of product mixtures and can support engineer to order configuration.
  • Automates the renewal process for maintenance contracts and subscription-based services, ensuring ongoing client engagement and support.
  • Allows for overall agreements management with multiple actors such as resellers, distributors, wholesalers, and end consumers.
  •  Enables adaptation to dynamic market conditions and ensures smooth contractual transitions.
  • Recommendation of machinery, equipment, and maintenance solutions based on production needs and budgets.
  1. Finance and Banking:
  • Ensures precision in contract modifications, adhering to stringent legal requirements for financial agreements.
  • Facilitates automated approval workflows, vital for navigating complex financial contracts efficiently.
  • Promotes real-time collaboration between sales and legal teams for rapid adjustments to contracts.
  • Recommend investment portfolios, loans, and insurance products personalized to individual financial situations and objectives.
  1. Communications, Media, and Technology:
  • Swift adaptation to market trends and evolving customer demands, facilitated by efficient contract modifications.
  • Allows for the quoting and pricing of complex mixtures of finished goods, SaaS, and Services.
  • Automates renewal quotes to prevent revenue leakage and allows the renewals function to be an opportunity for up/cross sell. 
  • Automates and automatically prorates key amendments such as add on’s, deprecations, cancellations, and swaps of software licensing.  
  • Addresses the nuances of SaaS recurring revenue models for which ERP’s traditionally struggle. 
  • Access to analytics and reporting for insights into renewal performance, helping organizations stay competitive in these fast-paced industries.
  • Provide tailored suggestions for technology solutions like advertising strategies, and communication services that align with clients’ goals.
  1. Health and Life Sciences:
  • Ensures compliance with regulatory requirements when amending contracts. Can be applied to both payor provider and/or CRO side of the business each of which has unique regulatory requirements. 
  • Efficiently manages changes in support and maintenance contracts, vital for the healthcare sector.
  • Enhances data-driven decision-making with contract insights for improved patient care and support services.
  • Suggest medical equipment, medications, and laboratory supplies based on patient needs and scientific experiments.
  1. Commercial Business Services:
  • Efficiently manages contract modifications and renewal processes, reducing manual effort. Applies specifically to the nuances of resource change orders, timeline extensions, and modifications in project scope.
  • Ensures accuracy and compliance in a wide range of business agreements including MSA’s, NDA’s, Statements of Work, and Change Orders. 
  • Provides real-time collaboration for rapid adjustments, improving client satisfaction and operational efficiency.
  • Streamlines the recommendation of professional services, marketing strategies, and HR solutions aligned with clients’ business needs and industry.
  1. Retail and Consumer Goods:
  • Streamlines contract amendments, allowing flexibility in pricing and add-ons.
  • Facilitates automated renewal processes for service contracts and subscription models.
  • Enables cross-selling and upselling opportunities to increase revenue and customer engagement.
  • Provide personalized product recommendations, enhancing the customer shopping experience and increase in sales.

By effectively harnessing these Salesforce CPQ features, you can unlock your team’s true potential, enhance customer relationships, and drive revenue growth. Ready to Transform Your Sales? Keep these powerful Salesforce CPQ features from being untapped. Contact us today to discover how we can help you implement and optimize these tools, driving sales transformation and propelling your business to new heights. Please take the next step towards maximizing your sales potential and schedule a consultation with our experts now! Your success awaits!

Tags:

Love it, Share it!

Get the latest articles right in your inbox

Explore our posts

Subscribe To Our Newsletter

Subscribe To Our Newsletter For Exclusive Content And Industry Updates.

Satch Patel, Executive Vice President, MD, UK & EMEA

Satch brings 25+yrs of enterprise global solution experience having contributed to the growth of some of the worlds largest marquee software and hardware giants in the industry from Oracle Corporation, Sun Microsystems, Cisco/EMC, to Apttus & Salesforce.
 
Satch has helped many blue chip organisations realise their vision to modernize their systems from the front office to back office revenue operations to meet the demands of today’s radically transforming and digitally-driven business models, having worked with the likes of Linklaters, CliffordChance, Barclays, RELX Group, Microfocus, Novartis, Siemens, PayPal, Vista Equity Group Companies, London Stock Exchange, TPICAP and Princes Trust.
 
With his leadership approach, experience and passion for helping companies drive transformative change, Satch has a deep expertise in many industries, technologies and best practices across the lead to revenue lifecycle and how driving such digital transformation(s) can improve business growth and increase operational efficiencies  as well as preparing businesses for M&A activities.

Brion Schweers, Board Observer

Brion Schweers is a Senior Vice President of Product Management at Salesforce, currently managing the Revenue Cloud Solution Excellence team. During the past 30 years, Brion has assisted enterprises around the world in transforming their business by focusing on their Product-to-Cash processes. Prior to joining Salesforce Brion was VP & GM, CPQ at Apttus, VP, Sales & Success at A5 Consulting, served on the OAUG ConfigSIG Board and spent 15 years at Oracle in various roles related to their CX and CPQ products. Brion is also the executive Sponsor of Vetforce – Carolinas and is actively involved in the Salesforce Military program where he mentors Veterans and their spouses with actionable, personalized career advice.

Joseph Truhe, Board Member

Joseph Truhe has over 20 years of investing experience. Prior to joining Jefferson Capital in 2013 Joseph was a Portfolio Manager with Whitney Bank in New Orleans, Louisiana, where he oversaw the company’s Trust accounts and served as the Energy sector analyst for the Hancock Horizon Funds. Prior to Whitney, Joseph worked as an analyst and member of the investment committee at HFR Asset Management, a multi-billion dollar hedge fund platform in Chicago, Illinois. There, Joseph reviewed and maintained investment discretion over the firm’s Event Driven and Asia-focused hedge fund allocations. He was also responsible for the expansion of the firm’s Asia-focused fund offerings.  Joseph holds a BA in Economics from Yale University.

Steve Swartzman, Board Member

Steve Swartzman is a Principal and co-founder of CPC. Previously, as a co-founder of C3 Capital, he helped originate and manage over 35 investments, including national brands such as American Apparel, Traeger Grills, and Grunt Style. Steve’s chief focus remains consumer brands and e-commerce enablement businesses, and he currently serves on the boards of Grunt Style, Accel Clinical Research, Spoke Custom Products, Warne Scope Mounts, and New World Natural Brands.

Prior to C3, Steve structured and managed subordinated debt investments at KC Venture Group, and he spent 7 years as a Vice President with Citibank in New York, managing client relationships for emerging markets clients and structuring over $1 billion in complex trade financings. He is a past President of the Midwest chapter of the Small Business Investment Alliance, and he serves on the board of the International Center for Music at Park University in Kansas City.

Steve received a MBA from Columbia Business School and an AB in History and Literature from Harvard College.

He resides in Kansas City, where he was raised, with his wife Evelina and two sons, Harrison and Zandy. When he’s not working, his favorite activities are fishing, golfing, and eating.

Charles Scripps, Board Member

Chad has over ten years of experience investing in dynamic, growing businesses in diverse industries and geographies. His private equity experience includes HIG Capital, which has over $12B in capital under management, and AEA Investors, which manages over $3B of invested and committed capital. While at HIG and AEA, Chad led diligence, structuring, and financial analysis of potential and existing investments, and completed transactions in the industrial products and consumer services industries. Chad also has experience investing in the public equity markets, most notably as a Managing Director at Fox Point Capital, a $1B fund seeded by Julian Robertson of Tiger Management. He invested across a number of industries, including industrials, financials, technology, and consumer products, and led Fox Point’s international research. Prior to focusing his career on investing, Chad was a management consultant at McKinsey and Company, solving strategic problems for the world’s leading companies. Chad earned an MBA with Honors in Finance from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and a BS with Distinction in Chemical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Lester F. Alexander II, Board Member

Les Alexander is a partner with Jefferson Capital Partners where he provides mezzanine and equity capital for growth and buyout transactions. Mr. Alexander is a member of the firm’s investment committee and serves on the board of directors of several portfolio companies where he is actively involved in strategic planning and corporate governance. Prior to joining Jefferson Capital, he worked at Advantage Capital Partners where he completed several portfolio company investments and served on the investment committee. Before becoming a private equity investor, Mr. Alexander served as president of Ferrara Fire Apparatus, Inc., a leading fire truck and emergency vehicle manufacturer. At Ferrara, he was responsible for managing a workforce of 450 employees producing over 300 vehicles annually for its domestic and international customers. As an investment banker for 15 years with such firms as Howard Weil, Southcoast Capital, and J.C. Bradford & Co., Mr. Alexander completed over 50 public offerings of debt and equity securities, private placements, and merger and acquisition transactions totaling more than $7 billion for public and private companies in a variety of industries. Mr. Alexander is an adjunct professor at Tulane University and Loyola University where he teaches graduate and undergraduate classes in investment banking, private equity & venture capital, advanced financial management, investments, and entrepreneurship. He is also the board president for Benjamin Franklin High School, a public charter school in New Orleans. Mr. Alexander is the former Chairman Finance of the Association for Corporate Growth (ACG) and served on the global Board of Directors. He is a founder of the Louisiana chapter of ACG and was a recipient of the ACG global Meritorious Service Award and the Louisiana chapter’s Outstanding Service Award. Mr. Alexander received his bachelor of science in Commerce from the University of Virginia in 1989 and his MBA from the University of North Carolina in 1993.

Patrick F. Healy, Board Member

Based in Kansas City, Mr. Healy is a co-founder of C3 Capital. He has been an active private equity investor since 1985 and was a co-founder of C3 Holdings in 1994. Prior to this time, he sponsored and structured equity investments in real estate. He gained extensive workout and restructuring experience as chair of the creditor’s committee of a $1 billion bankruptcy and from being called upon to rescue a publicly-traded company from a major fraud. Mr. Healy was a senior tax partner at Mayer Hoffman McCann, a regional CPA firm, for eleven years. He received a Bachelor of Science in Accounting from the University of Kansas.

Chris Waters, VP of Strategic Sales

As Vice President of Strategic Sales, Chris guides and influences all strategic sales activities at A5 , starting in presales activities, successful sales methodology, sales process, and continued revenue generation and expansion opportunities. Furthermore, he will provide oversight in strategic sales function for the company and develop strategic sales plans that will promote growth in sales and customer satisfaction. Chris has proven his commitment to sales leadership and organizational success through field leadership as National Sales Manager at Deluxe Corporation, Field Sales Manager within the Social / Analytics Cloud at Oracle, US Regional Manager for CPQ Major Accounts at Oracle and now as Vice President on Sr. Leadership Team at A5.

Keith Fox, GM Salesforce Canada

Keith Fox is a software and consulting veteran for the past 34 years. Keith started his career at EDS which was followed by 4-year stint offshore in Bermuda. Keith then returned to Canada where he held a number of progressive sales and technical positions with software companies such as Sybase, BEA, and Oracle. After his stint with Oracle, Keith founded Cloudware Connections, a premier Salesforce consulting partner. 11 years down the line, Cloudware was acquired by A5, and Keith joined as GM for Canada.

Tarun Sharma, Vice President Delivery

Tarun Sharma is Vice President Delivery at A5 and is responsible for customer success, project operations, recruitment, resource utilization, and sales operations functions for Oracle practice. As a business and technology leader Tarun helps businesses develop solution strategies to streamline the sales process and improve customer relations to drive revenues, profits, and build brand loyalty. Tarun has led customers through digital transformation journeys. He has commanded strategic and tactical initiatives to shorten sales cycles, increase deal values and productivity, improve brand awareness and help organizations become easier to do business with. He has helped customers modernize their sales enablement tools and present a single source of information to support an omni-channel sales approach. This includes global roll-out for multiple business units included multi-currency and multi-language. Tarun graduated from Texas A&M University with a Master’s degree in Industrial Engineering.

Adam Rosenfield, VP of Salesforce Practice

As Vice President of A5’s consulting practice – Adam is responsible for both strategic alliances with partners and expanded sales growth through the entire portfolio of A5 services. With over 20 years of Sr. level management consulting expertise – Adam has worn multiple hats in his career including practice development, sales, and client advisory. He has sold & delivered countless enterprise transformational initiatives creating a measurable competitive advantage for his customers. In addition to various technical software certifications, Adam holds an undergraduate and master’s degree in Accounting & Information Technology from the University of Texas at Austin and resides in El Paso Texas with his wife and 3 children.

PJ Alfrejd, CFO

As the CFO, PJ is responsible for all things financial at A5. With over 20 years of experience in financial leadership positions, PJ has worn all the hats required of a growing tech business. His extensive knowledge of the consulting industry, experience with M&A, and strength in operational finance is another catalyst to take A5 to the next level in its growth trajectory. PJ is a CPA with a BS in Accounting from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and has held various finance leadership positions at Exodus/Savvis (acquired by Centurylink), Neohapsis (acquired by Cisco), and mFoundry (acquired by FIS).

Vinay Kruttiventi, President & CEO / Chairman of the Board

As the CEO of A5, Vinay plays an active role in all aspects of day-to-day business operations. He is also actively involved in establishing a strategy and vision for the company. As a true customer advocate with Salesforce and Oracle product development, Vinay is actively engaged in various industry user/special interest groups. Since founding the company in 2004, Vinay has grown the business into a leading Salesforce, and Oracle partner focused on multi-cloud transformations.

Vinay has successfully implemented and architected CPQ solutions and multi-cloud complex transformation projects for various Fortune 500 companies since 1996. He has a strong authority over industry, process, and technology in Configure-Price-Quote and ERP applications. Vinay graduated from Osmania University with a Bachelor of Engineering degree and JNTU (Jawaharlal Nehru Technical University) with a Master in Technology degree.