Salesforce CPQ: Document Generation

Jessica B.

Seasoned technical writer giving you top Salesforce Tips.

Updated: Jan 9th, 2025

Salesforce CPQ Documentation: What is Salesforce CPQ?

Let’s start with the first question, what does CPQ even stand for in Salesforce? CPQ stands for Configure, Price, and Quote. Now that we have that covered, what is CPQ in Salesforce? This is the Salesforce Quoting tool you can implement in your business to streamline your sales processes regarding your compiled service and product offerings. This Salesforce quote tool seamlessly integrates with other Salesforce products and third-party apps. By integrating these apps you can approach your customer data and sales processes in a more holistic way.

You can configure your products and services according to the customer’s needs, including product options, bundling of different offerings, and customizing features. This ensures that your quote is directly related to the customer and only offers what is feasible. Using this quoting tool, Salesforce allows you to dynamically calculate prices so you can factor in volume pricing and quantity discounts.

Ensure that your quotes are always professional-looking and customized to your business by implementing CPQ tools for Salesforce. A key benefit of Salesforce CPQ is automation, which streamlines the manual and time-consuming tasks that are involved in the quoting process. This reduces errors and can help save you valuable time.

The Benefits of CPQ for Salesforce

Still not sure if this is the right move for your business to make? Keep reading to learn more about the benefits this tool offers.

CPQ can assist your sales reps in creating error-free and accurate quotes through automation of the quoting process, this can help close deals faster. By providing a more interactive and personalized quote for customers, they will have a better understanding of the products and service value. CPQ helps your business control your pricing by enforcing restrictions and pricing rules. This ensures there are no pricing errors in your quotations. CPQ can be seamlessly integrated with your CRM system to improve productivity and efficiency.

Worried that your business is too big or small to benefit from this? CPQ can be scaled to meet the needs of businesses of all sizes. You can also customize your CPQ tool to ensure you get the most out of this solution.

CPQ can help improve the quotation process saving you time, providing a better customer experience, and improving accuracy.

CPQ Functionality

The CPQ functionality incorporates a range of Salesforce CPQ capabilities and features to streamline the sales process. We have summarized a few core functionalities.

First, we have product configuration, which allows you to configure your products and services based on individual customer requirements and specifications. Pricing management means the correct pricing including factors like special promotions, tiered pricing, quantity discounts, and currency conversions are reflected on your quote. Salesforce automates the creation of quotes, contracts, and proposals this streamlines the process and ensures consistency when sending quotes. Your CPQ system should be integrated with your CRM platform to ensure your data remains consistent and accurate.

Implementing CPQ also allows you to create approval workflows, this ensures that all quotes sent out adhere to your business rules and pricing policies. Depending on the CPQ system, you can offer guided selling tools to ensure your sales reps recommend the most suitable products and services to customers. You can even suggest complementary products and services that can boost your sales revenue.

Your CPQ tool should offer analytics to gain insights into trends and gauge the effectiveness of pricing and marketing strategies. All previous proposals, contracts, and quotes should be stored to ensure you can access historical data.

Quoting Tools for Salesforce

There are a number of tools CPQ available for Salesforce, each tool has strengths and weaknesses to consider.

First up we have Salesforce’s very own CPQ tool, this native tool can be integrated with your other Salesforce tools to ensure a seamless experience. There is a wide range of features like pricing and quote automation on offer. SteelBrick CPQ is a cloud-based option that is flexible and easy to use.

Apttus CPQ is known for its extensive customization options and scalability, with its wide range of features you should be able to produce quote generation for CPQ to match any customer’s needs. Callidus Cloud CPQ offers sales enablement features that can assist sales reps when closing deals.

PandaDoc is a document automation platform that you can use to create and send quotes. Qwirl offers proposal software that offers features like templates, interactive features, and branding. Finally, there is QuoteWerks an affordable software that is easy to use.

Make sure you consider all the factors when choosing your quoting tool. As always, the best solution always depends on your business requirements and needs. Your selected Salesforce document generation tool should integrate seamlessly with the CRM platform so you can create and send quotes within Salesforce. The tool should be easy to use for both customers and sales reps. Ensure that your tool has all the features you require to produce accurate quotes. Most importantly, your tool should be affordable for your business so you don’t go bankrupt before you can send your first quotation out.

Salesforce CPQ and Titan

Both Salesforce CPQ and Titan are configure, price, and Salesforce quote tools solutions you can implement to automate the quotation process. There are a few differences between the two platforms. The Salesforce CPQ is the native Salesforce solution while Titan is a fully integrated third-party app. The Salesforce CPQ can be more tightly integrated with your other Salesforce products but Titan does offer more flexibility and customization options.

Titan is available as both a cloud-based and on-premises platform while Salesforce CPQ is only cloud-based. If your business has specific compliance and security measures then Titan is the better option for you. Another difference is the all-too-important price factor, pricing of Salesforce CPQ is the more expensive option so ensure you consider your budget.

If you are looking for a flexible, easy-to-use, and customizable Salesforce document generation solution at a lower price tag then Titan is the option for you.

How to Create a Quote in Salesforce

Creating a quote in Salesforce does require you to have Salesforce CPQ or another quoting tool (like Titan) installed and configured before you can complete any of the steps listed below:

The above steps are a general guideline only. These steps and options will depend on your Salesforce setup and the CPQ tool you have chosen.

How to Create a Salesforce Quote Template

To help streamline the process you can create a Salesforce CPQ quote template to ensure your quotes are always professional-looking and consistent. You can define the formatting, content, and layout of your quotes. We have listed the general steps when creating Salesforce Quote Templates.

To use your quote template, when creating a new quote there will be an option to choose one of your created templates.

Salesforce CPQ Objects

The Salesforce CPQ tool offers a set of custom objects that are signed specifically for pricing and quotes. There are a few objects for you to keep in mind. The central object is the Quote object which will represent the proposal or quote you created for a customer, you can edit this object to include additional fields that your business may require.

Quote Line is used to represent items and products included in the quote. The Quote Template is useful for defining the formatting and layouts of your generated quotes. Each Product record represents the service or product that your business offers. Using the Product Option you can configure the products within the quote.

Price Books store the price information of each product and service. If you require different currencies, markets, and pricing structures you can make multiple price books. The Discount Schedule will define the pricing rules like discount structures that can be products and services.

These are just a few objects in Salesforce CPQ, remember that you can always customize these objects to match your business needs.

FAQs

How do I create a quote document in Salesforce?

Generate and send a quote document:

How do I create a CPQ template in Salesforce?

How do you create a quote document?

What format is a quote document in Salesforce CPQ?

CPQ in Salesforce creates quote documents as PDFs by default. You can add an option that lets users choose between Microsoft Word or PDF.

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Disclaimer: The comparisons listed in this article are based on information provided by the companies online and online reviews from users. If you found a mistake, please contact us.