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You’re in a high-performance sales unit with your team working long and hard to drive in leads, close deals, and make record-setting revenue targets. But in the shadows, a storm is developing.
Your salespeople are bogged down in long, ongoing email threads, typing out long, full-day propositions, only to find out that pricing is wrong. Customers become frustrated. Deals fall apart. And in no time, your competition, leveraging cutting-edge automation, has moved in and captured your customers.
Sounds like a nightmare? That’s because it is for companies that haven’t optimized their sales process.
This is when Salesforce CPQ and Salesforce Sales Cloud come in. Two powerful tools have committed to streamline your sales process, eliminate inefficiencies, and generate top-dollar revenue. But a little-known fact: They’re not necessarily the same.
Pick the wrong one, and you’re investing in a tool that doesn’t fit your business needs. Get it right, and you can turbocharge your sales in a whole new way. In this article, we will break down the differentiation between CPQ and Salesforce Sales Cloud, and let you know when to use each and whether your business will need both.
Let’s dive in before yet another chance slips through your fingers.
What is Salesforce Sales Cloud?
- Salesforce Sales Cloud is a full-fledged Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software for sales processes that creates a single platform for sales pipelines, sales performance, and customer interactions in one location.
- With its real-time sales performance analysis and repetitive work automation capabilities, Sales Cloud empowers sales representatives to close deals most efficiently.
Key Features of Sales Cloud:
- Lead and Opportunity Management: Monitor leads through the sales funnel and manage opportunities in an attempt to maximize conversions.
- Sales Forecasting: Make fact-based decision with accuracy in sales performance prediction
- Collaboration Tools: Implement collaboration between departments with tools including Chatter, an in-house communications tool.
- Mobile Access: Have access and manage sales operations remotely with the Salesforce mobile app
- Pipeline Management: Map and manage your sales pipeline to maximize your closing deals. Sales Cloud is ideal for organizations that require simplifying CRM and enhancing productivity in terms of workflows, and collaboration capabilities.
What is Salesforce CPQ?
- Salesforce CPQ is a software tool designed specifically for simplifying the quoting function for companies with complex goods and/or complex service offerings.
- CPQ enables salespeople to develop proper quotes, customize product configuration, and apply pricing, all in Salesforce.
- CPQ enables salespeople to configure goods to meet a customer’s specifications, price them, and produce proper propositions or contracts on time.
Key Features of CPQ
- Product Configuration: Efficiently build complex goods and/or services by customer specifications, with high accuracy and minimum opportunity for human errors.
- Dynamic Pricing: Automatically apply pricing rules, discounts, and upgrades to generate quotes by business policies.
- Quote Generation: Get expert quotes and bids with one-click ease, with assured uniformity and professionalism.
- Contract Management: Manage terms, renewals, and contract amendments with ease in the platform
- Approval Workflows: Implement approval processes to ensure compliance with pricing and discount policies CPQ is best for companies with multi-product offerings, custom-configured items, and complex pricing cases.
CPQ vs. Sales Cloud: What’s the Difference?
While both CPQ and Sales Cloud work towards simplifying sales processes, both target two vastly different segments of sales processes:
- Core Functionality: Customer information, sales pipelines, and forecasting are managed through Sales Cloud, and an overall view of the sales process is provided. CPQ, on the other hand, deals with configuration, pricing, and quoting for complex goods and/or services.
- Use Cases: CPQ works best for companies with a simple sales process, but for high customizability industries, CPQ is a necessity.
- Integration: CPQ integrates seamlessly with Sales Cloud, and both tools’ capabilities can be leveraged in one platform by companies.
When to use the sales cloud?
Sales Cloud is best for companies that have a strong need for a successful CRM for managing customer relations, sales lead tracking, and forecasting sales revenue. It is best for companies whose spotlight is focused:
- Organizing leads and opportunities through numerous channels
- Forecasting and reporting for sales performance to understand
- Improving cooperation between sales departments and between branches for instance, in case your SaaS offerings have less in terms of customizability and format requirements, then your sales processes can most likely go with Sales Cloud alone.
When to use CPQ?
If your business deals with goods and/or services with custom specifications and sophisticated pricing structures (e.g., factories, technology, and subscription companies), CPQ is critical. It is best for processes in which:
- Product configurations have to be custom-made according to the individual requirements of a customer.
- Complex pricing structures must function automatically.
- Accuracy in quotations is important in avoiding pricing and availability errors.
- For example, in a communications environment offering packaged deals, or in a manufacturing environment with custom-engineered products, CPQ is a powerful tool for simplifying quotations and cutting paperwork.
- The Case for CPQ and Sales Cloud Integration
For many, the answer is necessarily in choosing between CPQ and Sales Cloud. CPQ and Sales Cloud work together beautifully. CPQ works beautifully with Sales Cloud, and companies can utilize both tools’ strengths in one platform.
By combining CPQ’s rich quoting capabilities with powerful CRM in Sales Cloud, sales professionals can:
- Capture leads and sales opportunities in the cloud
- Configure products, generate accurate quotes and seal deals with CPQ
- Benefit from processes optimized for both sales rep productivity and customer happiness
Conclusion
Both Sales Cloud and CPQ are strong and efficient platforms with the capability to restructure your sales operations, but your best option wholly hinges on the company in terms of requirements. In case you’re looking for a CRM platform for managing engagements with your customers, tracking sales performance, and forecasting ROI for your organization, then your best bet is Sales Cloud. But, in case your sales function entails complex configuration and pricing, then your best bet for accuracy and efficiency in quoting is Salesforce CPQ. In most organizations, organizations can gain an edge through the integration of both solutions, leveraging both capabilities of both Sales Cloud’s CRM capabilities and CPQ’s
