What is guided selling in Salesforce CPQ?

Many successful salespersons don’t sell products, but they help their customers in selecting the right products to buy. Guided selling within Salesforce CPQ is like an experienced salesperson. Moreover, the tool helps them to ask questions about the customer's needs. But instead of forcing the salesperson to select the suitable product and options that match the customer needs, the tool helps them automatically to choose an optimal solution based on customer needs.

It creates a prompt that asks sales representatives about the different products they want while adding products to a quote. Salesforce CPQ training reviews their answers and takes them to the Add Products page. It shows a product list that matches their answers. The whole process we call “guided selling.”

With the passing time, many sales tools got much complexity and made the lives of the sales representatives much easier. Furthermore, most of these tools were useful for administrative efficiency. But now they help intelligently to guide the sales teams to close deals much faster. Salesforce CPQ makes it possible to get their goals to reach.

Salesforce CPQ quoting process

The Salesforce CPQ involves a quoting process that drives the sales team to complete a quote within time and make it intelligently. The Quote Process object defines how the prompt appears and how it adds products based on user inputs. Moreover, the quote process record includes a complete list of process inputs. These records include several questions and their answers that the guided selling prompt shows. Besides, each of these process inputs includes one question.

This process input record manages a related list for process input conditions. The feature is much useful if the user wants to create a complex guided selling prompt that guides them based on their needs. Moreover, it also keeps its guided selling prompt organized by presenting only the required questions list.

Further, we will discuss some important fields for each of the above objects. It includes;

Quote Process Fields
Process Input Fields
Process Input Condition Fields

The quote process fields include default process, auto select product, product configuration initialize, sort order, and guided only options. All these represent the quote process in various steps.

The process input fields include the label, input field, operator, product field, conditions meet options.

Moreover, the process input condition includes process input, master process input, value, & operator.

Creating a quote process record:-

At first, the user needs to define all the questions that the prompt asks sales reps. then he must create a process input for each of the questions asked.
If the user wants a question to appear based only on the answer to the question, he needs to create a process input condition on the questions he wants to control.
Later, he can copy the ID section of the quote process record’s URL and paste the value into the Quote Process ID field on the quote or quote line group. It shows the guided-selling prompt created by the user. Moreover, the user can also make a workflow process to automatically add the record ID to the Quote Process ID field.
Finally, when the user opens a quote for the first time, the Quote Process ID makes the display of the guided selling prompt.

Guided selling examples Salesforce

Here, we look into a simple sales process that includes guided selling. For instance, a customer has the interest to buy a motorcycle. The customer visits the website, reads the features of the motorcycle, and fills in a demo form. Later, he visits various forums, communities and makes enquire about the motorcycle's performance, color, and other feedbacks. Now the customer visits the showroom for the scheduled demo he got in a message. There, a connected system would recognize the person and present a customized quote according to the captured profile details of the person.

Moreover, the intelligence system from the CRM guides the salesperson to address any concerns. And then he starts the pricing conversation with the person from a point where specific preferences are already added. Furthermore, this drives a quick closure of the buying process by reducing unnecessary communication.

The use of the Salesforce CPQ process is much in this session that helps the sales reps to complete a better deal with ease.

Evolution of Guided Selling

Guided selling is not a new concept, but today the need for it is emerging because of more complexity in sales than ever. Many companies started their journey of guided selling when the sales cycles replaced with customer thinking. Before the sales tools exist, the salespersons were selling items based on their understandings of customer needs. With the emergence of sales tools, they become knowledgeable about their products, prices, and competition. Moreover, the later time changed the way of sales. Now, with the help of intelligent sales tools, customers have many choices on products and prices, and their past reviews. The Salesforce CPQ makes this happen much better in the upcoming days.

This has moved the sales team a step ahead in the competition and made the business grow much better.

Today, customers are driving the need for guided selling much more. The evolution presents that the customers:

Have a lot of information or misinformation about the products they want.
Have more choices, and they can change their loyalty anytime
They want better experience during and after the sales process
Moreover, they also need instant recommendations and have little patience to wait for sales quotes they want.
Expect the sales team to help them make the right choice among different products and prices. These expectations are pushing guided selling to a different path and making it a brand one to the upcoming eras.

Future of guided selling

Guided selling has a better future that it seems now. It is said that by the coming times, more than 50% of the sales teams have intelligent quotes and plans to deploy guided selling.

The CRMs, Salesforce automation tools, and the Salesforce CPQ have helped sales teams to improve customer engagement drastically. Moreover, Artificial Intelligence is taking it to the next level. The powerful integration of AI and sales data provides sales with intelligence on the fingertips. This helps the sales team to predict customer needs and complete deals much faster.

The introduction of guided selling in e-Commerce is well-known. However, there is still a gap coming to its integration with commerce sites, like SaaS or product companies that sell their products online. These product companies don’t have the pricing data on their websites. Even they lack guidance for the buyers. Today, most customers are not willing to wait a long time to get their information that will help them during the buying process.

The integration of learn Salesforce CPQ with the guided selling and sales teams and services will minimize the time spent by sales reps on high profile leads.

I hope the above information on guided selling in Salesforce CPQ may help to know much better about the functions of Salesforce. It has the potential to change the future of the business by enhancing sales and the value of its products. It brings more value to the customers also by making their buying process much easier with guided selling. Salesforce CPQ is much useful to the current business scenario by implementing which industry may stand up strongly.

To get practical experience in learning the Salesforce CPQ process, get into the Salesforce CPQ Online Training from industry experts like IT guru. This learning may help you to achieve new goals in the professional platform by earning the latest skills.