Read this post to find out how you can maximize the productivity of your sales team through a proper integration of your Salesforce Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Configure, Price, Quote (CPQ) platforms.

Over the last few years, the world of business is experiencing a paradigm shift. As companies slowly recover from the mayhem caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, they are faced with fears of recession – the uncertainties looming large over the corporate landscape is resulting in a significant growth in the adoption of novel technology-enabled solutions to meet the dynamic needs of the new-age customer and delight him in an efficient, cost-effective manner. In fact, a report published by Forrester shows nearly 6 out of 10 organizations plan to increase their spending on technology to deliver high-quality experiences to their clientele.

At the forefront of the technology stack used by modern organizations are Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Configure, Price, Quote (CPQ) solutions. CRM tools enable businesses to make the best use of data to get a comprehensive view of the customer and market conditions, enabling them to formulate winning strategies. On the other hand, CPQ applications allow firms to perfectly configure the products sought by their clients and provide the best deals in the shortest possible timeframes.

One of the most popular providers of CRM and CPQ solutions is Salesforce – more than 22% of all CRM users are customers of Salesforce, while the company has nearly a 20% share of the global CPQ market.  The immensely powerful, yet simple-to-use features of Salesforce solutions contribute to their widespread use.

Today, we will look at 5 key advantages of integrating your Salesforce CRM and CPQ systems. Let’s get started.  

5 Compelling Reasons Why You Must Integrate Salesforce CRM and CPQ Systems

A well-executed integration of Salesforce CRM and CPQ platforms enables your firm to augment the productivity of your sales team considerably. Here is a list of 5 major benefits of connecting the two platforms.

Benefit 1 – Hassle-free Flow of Business Data

This is inarguably the biggest benefit of linking the two Salesforce systems. You can ensure critical information in your CRM database such as details of clients and potential opportunities is shared with CPQ tools smoothly in real time – cutting-edge middleware such as MuleSoft can be used to integrate the two platforms; automated workflows can be set up to facilitate exchange of data between the CRM and CPQ systems eliminating the need to enter data manually (and problems associated with it such as errors and delays).

Benefit 2 – High Levels of Sales Rep Productivity

Staying on with automation, smooth flows of Salesforce CRM data into the CPQ platform make your quoting cycle extremely efficient. You can create highly accurate quotes much faster as product-related data and details of pricing can be captured in real time without any issues. This plays a key role in enabling your salespeople to fully focus on their ‘core job’ – closing deals, as they need not worry about mundane paperwork and cross-checking quotes to make sure no mistakes have crept in.

Benefit 3 – Smooth Access to Needed Information

Another key benefit of linking your Salesforce CRM and CPQ systems is you can provide the information required by your sales reps at their fingertips. They can access all data pertaining to client requirements and preferences, purchase histories and status of quotes without leaving your CRM system. This empowers the reps to take timely, appropriate steps to meet the customers’ needs with high efficacy, and thereby, delight them.

Benefit 4 – Error-free Pricing Based on Real-time Data

In many cases, sales teams grapple with problems in accessing the latest pricing information. This results in pricing errors and members of the teams spend considerable time correcting them. A smooth integration of your Salesforce CRM and CPQ systems allows your salespeople to pull pricing-related data in real-time from the CRM platform, thereby facilitating highly-accurate pricing.

Benefit 5 – Significant Acceleration of the Sales Cycle

You can streamline your quoting process and accelerate the process of their approval. Managers of your sales teams can review the quotes easily and signify their approval without any delay. This will result in enabling your team to speed up the sales cycle in a big way (and thereby, achieve your sales revenue targets much faster).

I’d like to conclude by saying a properly performed integration of your Salesforce CRM and CPQ systems will be very beneficial. As we have seen earlier, many companies use the Salesforce CPQ system and the immense popularity of the platform stems from its ultra-powerful capabilities and highly user-friendly features. However, most firms especially those in the Small and Medium Business (SMB) spectrum seldom utilize all the cutting-edge capabilities of the CPQ powerhouse but end up paying even for these capabilities. In order to help firms overcome this problem, our team of highly experienced CPQ specialists has come up with CPQLite, a cost-effective solution that leverages the Salesforce platform but allows you to pay only for those features that you actually use.

Hope you liked this post. Tell us how you use Salesforce to boost your selling efficiency in the comments box below.

About Solunus

Solunus is a leading Salesforce consulting company, based in Dallas, TX, USA. Our proven ‘needs-first’ approach coupled with our unrivaled expertise of the Salesforce platform enables us to provide the perfect solution to help you deliver delightful services to customers and achieve rapid growth.