💃 CPQ, Salesforce, and You🕺

Good morning, Salesforce Nerd! 1 in 4 Salesforce professionals have been exposed to CPQ.

That’s Configure - Price - Quote to the 75% of you who’ve not had the pleasure to spend a few seasons in the abundance Quote Line Item records 🫠.

Here are 3 examples of CPQ strategy that will help frame the spectrum of complexity that is CPQ 👇

KEEP IT SIMPLE, STUPID

Salesforce CPQ + Cars

Starting with the simplest example of CPQ is a good opportunity to layout the underlying components of this solution.

Configure

The Toyota Grand Highlander Hybrid comes in 4 trims-

1. LE

2. XLE

3. Nightshade

4. MAX Limited

These trims are Configurations of the car. Each configuration has a predefined list of options that roll up to it.

The lowest model, the LE, has 18” wheels, 6-speaker audio system, and 2nd and 3rd row bench seats, plus other options.

The highest model, the Max Limited, has 20” wheels, a more powerful motor, and 2nd row captains chairs, plus other options.

You order the LE, you get what has been predefined. Same with the Max. Say you want 18” wheels AND 2nd row captains chairs. Too bad. This is configuration is not available.

Price

Each of the 4 Toyota Grand Highlander Hybrid trims has a predefined price

1. LE @ $44,210

2. XLE @ $45,380

3. Nightshade @ $52,610

4. MAX Limited @ $54,690

So if a buyer selects the XLE, then their price will show as $45,380. Easy peasy!

Quote

With this simple example, we get a simple quote 🙌.

We’ve configured the car and all the options through the trim selected, then the price was pulled based on the trim level.

Finally, a customer-facing quote, invoice, proposal, LOI, whatever you wanna call it, is generated. This could a one-pager, 75-pager, or a single line-item. Whatever the business defined during the implementation process.

Pick a single trim, price of that trim is applied, a pretty, customer-facing quote is generated. Boom 💥 super basic example of CPQ!

Ready for something heavier?

WOULD YOU LIKE TO LARGE SIZE THAT?

Salesforce CPQ + Chickfila

Configure

“I’d like a chicken sammich meal. Add bacon and extra pickles. Large size the fry. Instead of a soda I’d like a cookies ’n’ cream shake.”

Price

Let’s break this down, and use whole numbers for easy math.

The chicken sammich combo @ $12 | Total $12

Plus bacon @ $1 | Total $13

Plus extra pickles @ free | Total $13

Plus large size the fry @ run special logic to manage combo pricing and subsequent upgrade | Total $14

Replace medium drink with shake @ run special logic to manage combo pricing and subsequent change | Total $17

Quote

A little more complicated. There’s exceptions like FREE upgrades (pickles), flat-rate upgrades (bacon), and do this, not that, and price it with this logic calculations. All of this to a base price book that had multiple products rolled up. And an ability to make custom changes to it 🙌.

A team of minds just like you had to develop a solution for that!

THIS ISN’T ROCKET SCIENCE. BUT IT IS JET SCIENCE!

Salesforce CPQ + Custom Home

Configure

“I’d like a private submarine. I want the abilty to reach 3,000 meters depth, both luxury guest quarters and a research lab, room for 12 people, a hybrid propulsion system, sonar designed for arctic exploration, and walls reinforced to withstand underwater volcanic pressure.”

😅

You’re no longer talking about trim levels here.

This is a la carte madness. Every decision affects the next. The hybrid propulsion system? That changes the weight profile, which affects buoyancy, which changes the energy options, which affects battery size, which limits cabin space, which means you may have to downgrade the wine cellar 🍷.

Price

There’s no “submarine base price,” there’s a parts library, a catalog of capabilities, and a warehouse of constraints.

You’ve got dependencies (“you can’t have X if you chose Y”), logic-based markups (“reinforced hull + arctic sonar = $200k hazard surcharge”), and custom engineering estimates that come out of the ERP or are manually created Quote Line Item records.

Add in dynamic bundles, usage-based add-ons, and custom SLAs, and you’re now doing math that makes spacecraft cost estimation look like ordering off a menu.

Quote 

This quote isn’t a simple PDF. It’s a proposal document with diagrams, dependencies, and legal disclaimers.

It needs approvals from Finance, Legal, and Engineering.

It’s iterated upon in phases, includes non-standard terms, and requires version control because the customer's procurement team is sending back redlines.

And yes, someone on your team will accidentally clone the wrong quote line and spend three days debugging a zero-dollar sonar.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Takeaway

The above fictional examples are pretty happy path (minus the submarine 🥵).

It’s important to understand that CPQ can do the same thing a dozen ways - 6 of one, half dozen of the other. The Chickfila example of large-sizing fries? Many ways to fry that fish.

Then, there’s order of operations, dependencies, validations and other rules to be considered and implemented.

You can imagine how complex it can get, to the point sales people can’t generate a quote or a customer isn’t able to decipher the quote - “I can’t tell if this matches the discussion I had with the salesperson! And why does the total not match the line-items? 

How did we get here?

Coming soon - Part 2 of Salesforce CPQ - Inputs and Origin Stories. Stay tuned!

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