1. CPQ Produces Accurate Quotes

CPQ in Salesforce automates the product configuration, pricing, and quote generation process. Instead of relying on product lists and price books, sales people have everything they need to create accurate quotes built into the tool. Discounts and approval rules programmed into the CPQ software place guardrails around deals, so rogue discounting is a thing of the past.

Next-generation CPQ solutions make quote accuracy possible through guided selling playbooks. This advanced technology uses a series of dropdown menus to guide sales reps through the product selection process.

By answering a series of simple questions about opportunities from a dropdown menu, backend systems can accomplish a number of tasks like product selection, documentation generation, pricing/discounting parameters, and product validation.

The result is the automatic generation of 100% accurate price quotes that reflect current sales strategies.

2. CPQ Improves Efficiency

CPQ enables faster quote delivery. By improving efficiency in sales operations and reducing time spent on administrative tasks and quoting, sales teams are free to focus on customers.

CPQ in Salesforce eliminates inefficiency in the entire quote process by automating product catalog searches, pricing decisions, and discounting rules. It also streamlines the paperwork required to close a deal including document generation, customization, and ordering forms.

The result is that sales reps do not need to do things like search through product catalogs, email chains, or create their own proposal documents. They are free to spend their time selling products, instead of doing administrative tasks. In addition, streamlining the sales process speeds up the sales cycle and helps salespeople close deals faster.

This is important because research shows that responding quickly to sales inquiries is one of the most important factors in closing a deal. It’s estimated that the first sales rep to respond to a prospect turns that into a closed/won opportunity 50% of the time.

3. CPQ Builds Trust with Buyers

Using a CPQ inside Salesforce provides sales professionals ready access to buyer information while working through the sales process from opportunity to close.

Offering the right product and the right price keeps deals on track and avoids roadblocks in the contract approval process so buyers never feel a sales rep is not being responsive.

Buyers appreciate the customer-centric approach to building product configurations and receiving sales quotes based on their needs.

4. CPQ Maximizes the Benefit of Existing Prospects and Customers

It’s easier to sell to existing prospects and customers than to find new ones. The same playbooks that ensure pricing accuracy also suggest up-selling and cross-selling opportunities that are in line with margin considerations, to sales representatives. Sales reps can make sure they take advantage of all the opportunities afforded to them by each prospect and customer in their sales pipeline.

5. CPQ Increases Revenue

Using a CPQ tool in Salesforce allows for accurate quotes, increased efficiency, complete visibility on the purchasing process, and building trust with buyers. The result of all of these things put together is increased deal size and revenue growth.

CPQ lets you eliminate the administrative burden while producing more accurate pricing and quotes and providing a better experience for buyers even while upselling and cross-selling them.

Use Cases for Salesforce CPQ

Salesforce is a versatile CPQ solution with uses across industries and sales processes.

Complex Product Configurations

Salesforce CPQ is ideal for businesses that offer customizable or bundled products, such as technology or manufacturing companies. It ensures accurate configurations by applying rules to prevent incompatible selections, helping sales teams build tailored solutions that meet customer needs.

Global Sales Operations with Multi-Currency Support

Organizations operating internationally use Salesforce CPQ to manage multi-currency transactions and adjust pricing based on regional markets. This feature ensures accurate quotes and pricing across borders, simplifying global sales processes.

Guided Selling

In industries with extensive product catalogs or complicated pricing structures, Salesforce CPQ’s guided selling functionality helps sales reps navigate options efficiently. By prompting reps with relevant questions, it identifies the best solutions for customers, speeding up the sales process and improving accuracy.

Streamlined Approval Workflows for Enterprise Sales

Large enterprises benefit from Salesforce CPQ’s automated approval workflows, which ensure pricing and discount compliance. By routing approvals to the right stakeholders based on predefined rules, it eliminates bottlenecks and reduces deal cycle times.

Key Features of Salesforce CPQ

Salesforce’s native CPQ solution offers a robust set of features that enable businesses to automate complex configurations, manage pricing and discount strategies, and generate professional quotes quickly and accurately. Below, we explore the key features of Salesforce CPQ.

1. Product Configuration
   Salesforce CPQ simplifies creating tailored product bundles by enabling dynamic configurations that adjust based on customer needs. Sales reps can quickly design and modify configurations, ensuring that each proposal is customized without manual errors. This feature ensures accuracy, even for complex products or services, by applying pre-set rules and logic.
2. Automated Pricing
   The solution offers advanced pricing automation, calculating costs based on factors like volume, region, or customer type. This eliminates manual errors and ensures consistency across deals. With automated pricing, sales teams can focus on value-based selling rather than manual calculations.
3. Discount Management
   Salesforce CPQ supports structured discounting, enabling predefined discount rules and automating approvals for special cases. This feature ensures profitability while offering flexibility to meet customer demands. Teams can apply volume-based, promotional, or customer-specific discounts seamlessly.
4. Guided Selling
   Salesforce CPQ walks sales reps through a series of questions to identify the best-fit solutions for customers. This feature accelerates onboarding for new reps and improves overall sales performance by reducing errors in the quoting process.
5. Approval Workflows
   Customizable workflows streamline the approval process, ensuring compliance with internal policies. Automated notifications alert managers to pending approvals, speeding up deal cycles. These workflows enhance transparency and reduce bottlenecks in large organizations.
6. Dynamic Quote Generation
   Salesforce CPQ automates the generation of quotes, complete with pricing, product details, and terms. Quotes are consistent, professional, and tailored to specific customer needs, which helps close deals faster. This feature eliminates the need for manual document creation, saving time and resources.
7. Usage-Based Pricing
   The solution enables usage-based billing, ideal for businesses offering consumption-based services. It integrates with tracking systems to calculate charges automatically, ensuring transparency and accuracy. This feature enhances flexibility in offering scalable solutions.
8. Analytics and Reporting
   Salesforce CPQ offers robust reporting tools to analyze sales performance and quote effectiveness. Teams can track key metrics like quote turnaround time, win rates, and revenue by product. These insights help businesses refine strategies and improve results.
9. Multi-Currency Support
   The platform handles multiple currencies, making it ideal for global sales operations. It applies real-time exchange rates, ensuring accurate pricing for international deals. This feature simplifies transactions across borders.
10. Mobile Accessibility
    Salesforce CPQ is accessible on mobile devices, empowering reps to generate quotes and close deals on the go. This flexibility ensures productivity, even outside traditional office settings. The mobile-friendly interface enhances usability for field sales teams.
11. Integration with Salesforce CRM
    As a native solution, Salesforce CPQ seamlessly integrates with Salesforce CRM, unifying customer and deal data in one platform. This eliminates data silos and enables smoother workflows across sales, service, and finance teams.
12. Scalable Product Rules
    With advanced rule management, Salesforce CPQ handles product compatibility, dependencies, and exclusions. These rules ensure that only valid combinations are quoted, reducing errors and enhancing customer satisfaction. The flexibility accommodates a broad range of industries and business models.
13. Compliance and Audit Trails
    Salesforce CPQ maintains detailed records of changes to quotes, pricing, and approvals. This audit trail ensures accountability and supports compliance with industry regulations. It provides peace of mind for companies in heavily regulated sectors.

Many of these features are also available with CPQ software that integrates with Salesforce CRM, at a lower price point and with less complexity to configure and implement.

Overcoming Salesforce CPQ Challenges

Steelbrick was started in 2010, acquired by Salesforce in 2015 and then re-branded as Salesforce CPQ. As expected, it inherits many of the product architecture decisions that are inherent in legacy CPQ systems.

Configuration Complexity

Implementing and using Salesforce CPQ often comes with significant challenges that can hinder its adoption and effectiveness. One common issue is the complexity of configuration. The tool requires deep technical expertise to set up product rules, pricing logic, and workflows, often involving extensive coding in Apex or reliance on consultants. This can create bottlenecks when businesses need to make frequent adjustments or expand their offerings, delaying time-to-market and increasing costs.

Lengthy Implementation

Another challenge is the lengthy implementation process. Salesforce CPQ implementations can take months, especially for businesses with complex sales processes or large product catalogs. These delays can lead to extended periods of downtime, frustrated teams, and delayed ROI. Additionally, the steep learning curve for both administrators and sales reps means significant time and resources must be invested in training, which can slow adoption and hinder immediate productivity.

Support Requirements

Ongoing maintenance and support often become burdensome. Companies frequently encounter issues with updating configurations, integrating the tool with other systems, or managing its performance at scale. Without dedicated CPQ teams or consultants, many organizations struggle to keep their systems aligned with changing business needs. This lack of flexibility can result in inefficiencies, inaccurate quotes, and a suboptimal user experience for sales teams.

Subscription Management and Billing

Salesforce CPQ includes some subscription management capabilities, such as managing renewals and applying contracted terms to add-ons. However, its core design prioritizes features like product configuration, pricing, quoting, and guided selling. 

For companies in SaaS, which heavily depend on subscription billing and complex recurring revenue models, Salesforce CPQ might not fully address specialized needs out of the box without integrating additional billing tools. However, its integration with advanced subscription billing systems can become complex and resource-intensive. This reliance on additional components may create hurdles for businesses aiming for a unified and seamless subscription management process

The CPQ market has significantly moved forward in recent years at a breathtaking speed, and deployments that traditionally took 9-15 months to achieve can now be achieved in a matter of weeks. Alternative CPQ solutions like DealHub are designed to minimize complexity, accelerate deployment, and provide user-friendly interfaces.

Salesforce RLM vs. CPQ: What’s the Difference?

In addition to CPQ, Salesforce offers a Revenue Lifecycle Management (RLM) solution  called Revenue Cloud. Each product serves a distinct but complementary role in the sales and revenue process. Salesforce’s Revenue Cloud includes CPQ, Billing, Subscription Management, and Revenue Recognition tools, providing an end-to-end solution for managing revenue processes.

Understanding the key differences between these two solutions helps businesses determine how to optimize their sales operations and revenue management strategies.

Salesforce CPQ: Streamlining the Quoting Process

Salesforce CPQ is designed to help sales teams configure products, generate accurate pricing, and create professional quotes efficiently. It is primarily used to improve the sales cycle, ensuring that reps can quickly generate customized quotes while maintaining pricing accuracy and compliance with business rules.

The features and benefits of Salesforce CPQ are discussed above. While it streamlines the sales process by integrating with Salesforce CRM and enabling sales teams to generate accurate quotes, it stops short of managing the other stages of the revenue lifecycle. It should be noted that Salesforce is no longer adding enhancements to their managed CPQ solution since they are focusing on growing their Revenue Cloud solution, which includes CPQ.

Salesforce RLM: Managing Revenue Throughout the Lifecycle

Salesforce Revenue Cloud extends beyond the quoting process to manage the entire revenue journey, from contract execution to billing and revenue recognition. It integrates contract management, billing, and revenue operations to ensure smooth financial workflows.

Salesforce’s RLM solution enhances revenue accuracy by automating billing and revenue recognition, ensuring that invoices are generated correctly and revenue is recorded in compliance with financial standards. This automation also helps companies adhere to revenue recognition standards like ASC 606 and IFRS 15, reducing discrepancies between sales and finance teams and ensuring accurate financial reporting.

Beyond improving accuracy, Salesforce Revenue Cloud strengthens financial compliance and minimizes revenue leakage by enforcing contract terms, tracking amendments, and automating renewals. Improved subscription and contract management helps prevent missed billing cycles or incorrect charges. Additionally, with real-time revenue analytics and forecasting, businesses gain deeper insights into revenue trends and customer lifetime value for improved financial performance.

Key Features of Salesforce Revenue Cloud

• Automated Billing: Generates and processes invoices based on contract terms, subscription renewals, and usage-based pricing.
• Revenue Recognition Compliance: Ensures financial reporting aligns with ASC 606 and IFRS 15 revenue recognition standards.
• Contract and Subscription Management: Automates renewals, upsells, and amendments to reduce revenue leakage.
• Usage-Based and Recurring Billing: Supports flexible billing models, including pay-as-you-go and hybrid pricing structures.
• Revenue Forecasting and Analytics: Provides insights into future revenue trends and contract performance.

Use Cases for Salesforce RLM

• SaaS and Subscription Businesses: Automating recurring billing and revenue recognition for subscription services.
• Media and Advertising Firms: Managing usage-based pricing and campaign contracts.
• Professional Services Companies: Streamlining invoicing and contract amendments for long-term client engagements.

Technical Differences Between Salesforce Revenue Cloud and CPQ

Understanding the technical differences between the two solutions is crucial in deciding which solution to use. Revenue Cloud is a fairly new solution, with features that are still being developed. It has significant potential for Salesforce users looking to extend the value of the solution and optimize revenue management. However, since it is in its beginning stages, those needing a straightforward managed CPQ solution may want to wait to implement Revenue Cloud or look for another solution that’s more fully developed.

Some of the differences in their implementation and flexibility include:

Which One to Use?

While Salesforce CPQ focuses on accelerating the sales cycle through accurate quoting and pricing, Salesforce Revenue Cloud ensures that revenue processes—from billing to revenue recognition—run smoothly. Companies selling complex products with customized pricing benefit from CPQ. Businesses managing ongoing subscriptions, recurring billing, and compliance-driven revenue recognition find Revenue Cloud, or a similar revenue lifecycle management platform, essential for a seamless end-to-end sales and revenue management process.

Salesforce CPQ Alternative

As you are reviewing CPQ solutions, you will want to evaluate Salesforce CPQ alternatives. The right CPQ will add value to your investment in Salesforce. It should help make your CRM easy to use and enable your sales organization to create error-free quotes in minutes. Learn how to simplify product configuration and quote management in Salesforce.

DealHub is recognized as the leading CPQ solution provider in the market today, and the best Salesforce CPQ alternative. DealHub receives accolades from reviewers for usability, customer support, fast implementation, and ease of administration. DealHub CPQ empowers sales organizations by enabling a streamlined quoting process that, compared to legacy CPQ applications, is fast to implement and easy to maintain and use.

When you compare DealHub CPQ to Salesforce CPQ, you see DealHub offers an intuitive experience with interactive sales playbooks that guide reps through a seamless process and built-in approval workflows. The sales tools teams need to produce error-free quotes in minutes are available whenever or wherever they log into Salesforce.

DealHub addresses key challenges with Salesforce CPQ through streamlined design, user-friendly features, and faster implementation processes. Here’s how:

1. Simplified Configuration: DealHub eliminates the need for complex coding. Sales and operations teams can independently configure the system without relying on IT or developers, drastically reducing implementation and update times. This enables businesses to adapt to changing requirements effortlessly.
2. Faster Time-to-Value: Unlike Salesforce CPQ, which can have lengthy deployment timelines, DealHub is designed for quick implementation, averaging a few weeks. Its intuitive guided selling framework accelerates onboarding and allows sales teams to begin quoting accurately and efficiently right away.
3. Enhanced User Experience: By integrating guided selling and multiple sales playbooks, DealHub ensures sales reps follow an optimal process for creating quotes, reducing errors and manual effort. Features like automated workflows for approvals further streamline operations and minimize bottlenecks.
4. Comprehensive Solution: DealHub combines CPQ with other critical functions like contract management, subscription management, and billing into a single platform. This unified approach avoids fragmented workflows and ensures smooth integration across all stages of the quote-to-revenue process.
5. Cost Efficiency and Scalability: Because DealHub is easy to configure, businesses avoid the ongoing costs associated with custom development and IT support required by Salesforce CPQ. Additionally, DealHub’s scalability supports organizations from SMBs to large enterprises, adapting to their evolving needs without major overhauls.
6. Seamless CRM Integration: DealHub integrates natively with popular CRMs like Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics 365, and HubSpot, providing real-time data synchronization. This ensures that sales data remains accurate and up to date, improving decision-making and customer experience.
7. Product Updates: DealHub continues to enhance its CPQ solution with features that extend its value and improve usability. Recently, it launched API-first headless quoting to support selling through diverse sales channels.

DealHub is completely user-configurable. No coding is required, so implementation can be accomplished without a developer. Our customers are up and running within weeks (as opposed to months). Our easy scalability, competitive pricing, fast implementation, and short ramp time mean higher ROI.

These improvements make DealHub an attractive alternative for organizations looking for a more agile, cost-effective, and user-friendly CPQ solution compared to Salesforce CPQ.