How Manufacturers Are Generating More Quotes, Winning More Business With Salesforce CPQ

For sales departments within midsize manufacturing companies, day-to-day business is a constant hustle of responding to customers needing quick quotes or proposals and navigating siloed, legacy systems to obtain accurate pricing, production and shipping information.

Manufacturers that rely on traditional quoting and pricing processes are at a competitive disadvantage compared to businesses using automated tools such as configure, price, quote (CPQ) software. And for manufacturers that are already using Salesforce within their business, improving quote and proposal process is low risk with Salesforce CPQ technology. Moreover, you’re not just improving the quoting process your eliminating data silos and streamlining the selling and fulfillments from the initial proposal presentation through invoicing.

On average, sales reps spend about 66% of their time on non-value-added activities, such as data entry, writing proposals, and getting approvals. With Salesforce’s CPQ technology your company representatives are empowered with real-time access to product information, pricing information, customer history, incentives and much more.  Check out these six benefits of Salesforce’s CPQ software:

The 6 Top Benefits of Salesforce CPQ Software*

1. Reduce time to generate quotes by 33%
2. Reduce quote approval time by 30%
3. Increase forecast accuracy by 29%
4. Reduce quote configuration errors by 35%
5. Reduce pricing errors by 38%
6. Ramp up new sales reps 30% quicker

*Source: Salesforce

How Does CPQ Software Work?

At its core, CPQ integrates your complex product considerations, pricing information, active incentive programs, and customer preferences into a single, powerful sales platform. Through CPQ technology, sales professionals can quickly evaluate multiple product combinations and prepare personalized quotes that align with your brand promise and unique business capabilities.

Yet CPQ’s benefits go well beyond better proposals. You’ll also gain error-free orders, faster delivery times, and more accurate invoicing. From the proposal to the receipt of cash, CPQ technology helps streamline and improve your business. With CPQ, Demand Chain can help you eliminate traditional quote reviews and approval bottlenecks with customer tailored products and pricing bundles. By some measures, you can see your close rates improve by 2.6%. According to Salesforce, “Quotes produced with CPQ software are automated according to a preprogrammed set of rules, ensuring error-free pricing that takes into account quantities, discounts, customizations, optional features of products, multiple revenue types, and incompatibilities.” As the name implies, there are three core functions within CPQ software that seamlessly come together in a simple, powerful sales tool:

C=Configure

Manufacturing sales teams can configure and customize orders with the perfect mix of deliverables and services to meet their customers’ needs (nothing is off-the-shelf). For instance, configure orders based on ship dates, material availability, prototype development and a myriad of other factors. It even suggests appropriate add-ons, such as extra training sessions, extended service contracts, or complementary products.

P=Price

Pricing for manufacturing companies isn’t an easy task. Every project is unique, every order one-of-kind. You must consider volume or quantity, schedules, raw materials, discount pricing, supply chains and much more. Keeping track of current pricing and discounting can be a major headache. CPQ helps manage pricing for everything; advanced pricing rules can be set to handle volume discounts, pre-negotiated contract pricing, and channel and partner pricing.

Q=Quote

Once your sales reps provide a quote, they can focus on closing. They don’t want to worry about losing a deal because of a pricing error or a poorly formatted document. Manually created quotes can have typos or other mistakes which reflect unprofessionally on your company. With CPQ, you can generate a quote, and email it with e-signature options to close a deal in a few clicks. Additionally, quoting is such a laborious process it’s not practical to run multiple quotes for a prospective customer that consider different feature sets and price points, which increase your chances to close a deal.

10 Signs Your Manufacturing Business is Ready for Salesforce CPQ

Still not sure Salesforce CPQ is the right move for your manufacturing business? Here are 10 indicators you may be ready to make the leap:

1. Your spreadsheets or homegrown systems are slowing you down.
2. Your growth is outpacing your ability to operate.
3. You’re sending inaccurate sales quotes to prospects.
4. You’re building a recurring revenue stream.
5. Your customer expectations outpace your ability to deliver proposals.
6. Your revenue potential is constrained by your proposal process or legacy practices.
7. You’re seeing breakdowns between proposal and order fulfillment.
8. You’re unable to properly cross-sell or upsell.
9. You’re witnessing breakdowns in the fulfillment and delivery of your products
10. You’re experiencing high warranty claims from missed customer expectations or solution shortcomings.

An ROI That’ll Help You Convince Your Company’s Leadership

For most manufacturing leaders, the ultimate question is always “What’s the ROI? Well, the data shows manufacturing companies that have adopted Salesforce CPQ are beyond satisfied. One large manufacturing company (Mitsubishi Electric) reported a 95% reduction in approval times. Another company reported a 10X improvement in quote speed! With its functionality and potential for excellent return on investment (ROI), CPQ software is on the horizon for many companies. CPQ adoption will continue to grow as manufacturing companies see the real benefits of using it in conjunction with their CRM and ERP systems.

Interested in learning more? Check out our recent webinar on Salesforce CPQ presented by Andy Boettcher, Salesforce MVP.

“We’ve found that CPQ implementation is one of the most impactful projects our manufacturing clients undertake. The improvements to quoting efficiency and accuracy deliver immediate ROI and position them for continued rapid growth.” 

– Wayne Latterell, CEO Demand Chain

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