What Is Salesforce CPQ and Why Every B2B Ecommerce Business Needs One

A CPQ (Configure Price Quote) software is a crucial tool for many B2B businesses today. It assists the sales teams in providing the right pricing at the right time to customers for a wide range of complex products while also improving their own ability to boost sales volumes. It also helps streamline the process of configuring complex product offerings and preparing proposal quotes based on a predetermined price list. 

What’s interesting is that a CPQ software like Salesforce CPQ does it all across different sales channels. Salesforce CPQ utilizes your company’s data to generate proposals, pricing, and quotations, and automate approvals. Data is extracted from items such as:

• Product catalog
• Past transactions
• Customer data 

Customer expectations are at an all-time high today and sales reps have to work a lot harder to achieve higher sales figures. All it takes is one bad experience and you can lose a customer forever. 

That is where a Salesforce CPQ implementation can help you. It enables your organization to deliver a delightful customer experience by leveraging the benefits of the Salesforce CPQ system.

When we talk about a B2B e-commerce business, customers don’t have the patience to wait for days or weeks to receive a quote from sellers. Gone are the days when they used to get a quote, negotiating further to get final prices. Now they want responses instantly and any delay only encourages them to seek out other options. 

Let’s take a quick look at the benefits of having a CPQ system like Salesforce CPQ for your eCommerce business:

Benefits of Salesforce CPQ System for Ecommerce Businesses

1. Quick Quote Generation

Salesforce CPQ system yields faster results by increasing processing rates and enabling faster checkouts. 

If a customer is not satisfied with a particular quote, it delivers a revised one within record time and reduces customer attrition rate to a great extent. 

Though many debates that the CPQ systems are only associated with manufacturing, they work equally well with service industries and subscription-based selling models. 

2. Accurate Pricing

A lot of B2B purchases are made in bulk and the customers are very concerned about the pricing offered to them. Even the slightest mismatch in pricing can lead to a huge deflection in the translation and you cannot afford to have room for errors when quoting prices. 

The Salesforce CPQ system eliminates the errors that might occur in manual pricing. It generates accurate quotes for customers in a swift manner. When CPQ systems are combined with eCommerce platforms, quote and customization become the deciding factors when choosing suppliers. 

You can eliminate such errors using Salesforce CPQ and as a result, get more clients and enjoy higher revenues. 

3. Quotes Display on Store

Salesforce CPQ implementation allows you to display your quotes directly on your eCommerce store and enables the customers to configure it as per their requirements. 

You can then use the data provided by your customers to create a customized pricing model that factors in several other elements of the deal in progress. 

Read More: 4 Crucial Sales Challenges You Can Solve With Salesforce CPQ

4. Improved Negotiation Process

You can either make the negotiation process painful for the customer by not providing the required attention and quotes or make it simple and delightful by offering flexible and accurate pricing.

When you integrate Salesforce CPQ with your Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) you can save your customers from a bad experience. This integration streamlines the negotiation process by taking parameters like pricing and timeline into account. 

That is why experts suggest that every B2B eCommerce business should integrate its CPQ systems with reliable sales automation tools. 

5. Customized Offerings

All customers visit a B2B eCommerce platform with different expectations and you cannot win them over with the same offerings. Understand that each customer has their own demands and requires solutions accordingly. 

This makes customization the need of the hour, making it the key feature of delivering a positive customer experience. 

Salesforce CPQ implementation contributes greatly to creating an eCommerce experience that is personalized for every customer.  With CPQ, you can tailor a catalog with special pricing that sits well with all your customers’ needs. 

Automating Sales Processes with Salesforce B2B Commerce

Automation is revolutionizing the way businesses operate, and sales processes are no exception. With Salesforce B2B Commerce, your sales team can save precious time and effort by automating various tasks throughout the sales cycle.

A. Introduction to sales automation

Sales automation refers to the use of technology to streamline and automate sales activities. By automating repetitive tasks, your sales team can focus on building relationships, closing deals, and achieving revenue targets.

B. Key sales automation features in Salesforce B2B Commerce

Salesforce B2B Commerce offers a wide range of powerful automation features. These include:

• Lead Management: Automatically capture, qualify, and assign leads to the right sales reps, ensuring no opportunities slip through the cracks.
• Opportunity Management: Track and manage the entire sales pipeline, automate follow-ups, and prioritize deals based on their likelihood to close.
• Quote Generation: Generate accurate and professional-looking quotes with just a few clicks, eliminating manual errors and speeding up the quoting process.
• Order Processing: Automate order creation, fulfillment, and tracking, ensuring seamless customer experiences and reducing order processing time.

C. Benefits and ROI of sales automation in a B2B business

The benefits of sales automation are immense for B2B businesses. By leveraging Salesforce B2B Commerce's automation capabilities, you can:

• Increase Efficiency: Automating time-consuming tasks allows your sales team to focus on high-value activities, such as building relationships and closing deals.
• Improve Accuracy: Manual errors can be costly in sales. Automation eliminates the risk of errors and ensures consistency and accuracy throughout the sales process.
• Enhance Collaboration: Sales automation provides a centralized platform for sharing information, collaborating with team members, and ensuring everyone is on the same page.
• Accelerate Sales Cycles: With automation, deals can progress through the pipeline faster, enabling your business to close more sales and generate revenue more quickly.
• Gain Actionable Insights: Salesforce B2B Commerce's automation features provide valuable data and insights that can be used to optimize sales strategies, identify trends, and make data-driven decisions.

When implemented effectively, sales automation can deliver a significant return on investment (ROI) by boosting sales productivity, reducing costs, and driving revenue growth.

The Impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI)-Backed CPQ Platforms

With its in-built Salesforce Einstein AI, the Salesforce CPQ system gives you an advantage over the traditional CPQ platforms. It analyses your entire system and presents new cross-selling and up-selling opportunities based on your previous transactions with a client. 

It also provides granular data and better insights into several metrics to eliminate the level of research each sales representative has to conduct before preparing quotes for each deal. As a result, they can focus more on their core job of selling and worry less about administrative stuff. 

Since Salesforce CPQ minimizes the amount of human interaction needed in research, it eliminates any discrepancies that might occur when computing everything manually. 

In the end, the buyers can receive offerings that are tailored to their needs, and sellers can deepen their relationship with the customers and increase their sales. Salesforce CPQ aids eCommerce businesses in the aspects mentioned above and can be instrumental in promoting the growth of your business. 

Some More Benefits Salesforce CPQ Solutions Offer

CPQ solutions surely offer some amazing benefits, don't they? But wait, there is more. Here are some more benefits you can get if you opt for Salesforce CPQ implementation for your eCommerce business: 

• Quick Response Time: Get back to your customers quickly when they ask for a quote
• Reduced Churn Rate: No more losing customers for quoting incorrect information
• Increased Number of Quotes: Cater to the demands of more customers with automated quote generation
• Improved Sales Completion: Increase the number of closed deals with error-free and tailored quotes
• Better ROI: Experience increased profits for the sales opportunities that reach closure

Next Steps?

Are you ready to jump on the CPQ bandwagon and transform your eCommerce business into a revenue generator? Let’s talk!

Get in touch with our Salesforce development and implementation experts today and find out the best solution for your business. We offer tailor-made strategies that help you in achieving your business goals and increase your chances of scaling up rapidly. 

To know more about our Salesforce development services, email us at info@growthnatives.com or feel free to check out our blog section.