Key Features to Consider During Salesforce CPQ Implementation

If you’re thinking of considering Salesforce CPQ implementation, you definitely need to know what features you need at the top and how you can make the most of them. Praises can fall short if we start talking about CPQ, as it’s one of the best Salesforce products, helping sales reps to generate accurate quotes for customers faster. But you need to know how to use the features in the best way that could contribute to business growth.

Studies show that sales reps spend just 34% of their time actually making a sale. They spend the rest of the time on other tasks like generating proposals and quotes. That’s the kind of situation Salesforce CPQ helps to improve. Considering the value of Salesforce CPQ implementation, we’ll be covering the best features it supports that you should consider on top of your mind when implementing the solution. 

7 Features You Shouldn’t Miss Out On During Salesforce CPQ Implementation 

So, let’s delve deeper into the blog and cover the top features of Salesforce CPQ that you must use for your internal quote generation and management operations.

1. CPQ Favorites

This can be considered the most underrated feature of CPQ. There are chances you might not have been using it. But once you use it, you might wish you could have used it sooner. 

With CPQ Favourites, users can mark products as Favorite, and CPQ will save the record for any future use. This helps to save the time of users, enabling them to configure a bundle just once and keep re-using it whenever needed. You can also use the feature to save specific products out of the catalog, which will be helpful when you’ve got a large catalog to handle. 

2. Guided Selling

Sales representatives can easily find out the best product that could be sold to their customers using the Guided selling feature of Salesforce CPQ. The feature can be used to answer a few predefined questions through which the system will find out the most suitable products for the customers. This will save time for reps that they had been spending on looking through the complete product catalog. 

The feature also allows the users to task the system to select a product automatically if it’s the only one found after the search. Sales reps can set up Guided Selling to automatically pop up when any user enters the product catalog. Users can also choose to trigger it manually.

You can even hire a CPQ developer to leverage the feature in the best way possible.

3. Twin Fields

The feature allows automatic data mapping between two fields on different objects. Typically, admins have to copy data from Quote Line records to resulting subscription records, opportunity product records, and order product records. With Twin Fields, admins have to have the same field type with the same API name on objects. The system will automatically copy the value when the record is created.

It is necessary for admins to be sure that the users reacting to the records must have Edit access on the target field and at least Read access for the source field to ensure data mapping. The table given below indicates some objects with the field mapping. 

4. Product and Price Rules

Product and Price Rules play the role of the cornerstone for Salesforce CPQ. It is with these features that sales reps can be assured that they are preparing accurate quotations every time. 

Talking about product rules, there are four types:

– Validation: It prevents users from saving a quote configuration that is incompatible.

– Selection: It helps to automatically select, deselect, show, or hide products according to the added parameters.

– Alert: It provides users with notifications about important information but doesn’t prevent them from saving the quote. 

– Filter: This rule is used in dynamic search filters, enabling automatic filtering of the product catalog.

Another one is the price rules, which are versatile for CPQ admins. It helps to inject a field value, static value, or summary variable in a quote. 

Consider that your marketing team wants to run a promotion and provide an automatic 15% discount on the entire quotation, ensuring that at least one software is added. Price rules can easily help the rep to achieve this. Once you have set the price rule, you can update the condition or action next.

These rules can be complicated to work with. But you can always get experts from the best Salesforce implementation company to help you access and use them efficiently. 

5. Quote Line Groups

Users can use Quote Line Groups in different ways in Salesforce CPQ. It enables users to group products and apply parameters on the complete group level instead of applying them at the quote level.

In the example given below, you’ll see Services grouped together and made optional with an added 20% discount. The subtotal of these quote lines will have no impact on the overall total of the quote. This is because we have kept them optional.

6. Contracted Pricing

The feature is quite essential for the users as it helps to automate the pricing in any quotation according to specific parameters or requirements. You can create the contracted prices either manually or automatically according to the specific settings for your organization. 

It is to note that the contracted price will affect the regular price of any products or group of products based on the contracted price record. For example, you’ve provided a customer with a 20% discount on all products in your catalog for the first 6 months of the contract. With contracted pricing, you don’t have to remember to apply the discount every time the customer makes a purchase. You can set up the contracted price and mention the start and end date of the discount, thus making the discount valid for the mentioned time.

7. Multi-Dimensional Quoting Products

Multi-Dimensional Quoting products or MDQ product is another essential feature of CPQ that you must consider using. This feature means that a specific product can be affected by a given dimension, for example, time, and the other products would not be affected by it. For example, a software subscription and a laptop purchased on a one-off basis.

When configuring complex deals, sales reps can achieve increased flexibility while using MDQ for some products. As an example, consider a sales rep who wanted to offer a larger discount than normal to sign a big customer. But to counteract the discount in year one, the discount level needs to be tapered off over the remaining contract years. The sales rep can use MDQ to do so. 

Hire Trusted Salesforce Implementation Services and Benefit from CPQ

Salesforce CPQ definitely has a long list of extensive features, and covering it all here isn’t possible. But what you need is to implement it and actually see the difference it makes in your productivity and efficiency. 

Hire experienced and trusted Salesforce implementation services with certified professionals to help you work with these features smoothly. Contact us and talk to our CPQ developers, who can implement the solution and even help you adopt its features.