Configure, Price and Quote - Sales tool for competitive markets

What is CPQ?

Configure, Price, and Quote (CPQ) is a sales tool that enables companies to create accurate and highly configured quotes for their orders quickly by automating their complex product, pricing, and business rules that are made available to the sales team in real-time. This makes the CPQ tool an integral piece for any sales process. Hence, having an efficient and reliable CPQ tool can play a crucial role in increasing the productivity of a sales team, thereby resulting in the firms’ success. A Salesforce CRM solution coupled with a Salesforce CPQ can work wonders for a firm by enabling them to achieve their sales targets.

Key Challenges encountered in the CPQ process.

As businesses start to grow, so do their business processes and their respective complexities. Such a change can be encountered in CPQ processes as well. A variety of issues like pricing errors, lengthy approvals, missing business data updates, error-prone orders etc. can result in issues in the firm’s quoting process thereby creating a roadblock for the sales team and driving down their productivity. All these hindrances would ultimately result in the firm not being able to achieve a smooth and seamless turnaround between a customer requesting a quote and receiving it. Some of the key challenges encountered in the CPQ process are

1. Defining and subsequently building a strong and efficient sales process
2. A broken pricing system arising out of price discrepancies because of the data being decentralized and stored in multiple systems which results in errors while creating the quotes
3. Opportunities missed by the sales team to maximize their sales impact while they are busy fixing the issues of an erroneous or slow CPQ process 
4. A long and tiring process to review and approve a quote
5. Customizing a quote for the unique needs of specific clients or line of business
6. Ensuring legal and process compliance across the board
7. Training users and facilitating the adoption of technologies
8. Error-prone processes that lead to providing excessive discounts, or missing out to sending complimentary offers

How can Salesforce CPQ help?

Even though there are multiple CPQ products available in the market, Salesforce CPQ  is one product that can seamlessly automate the sales process of a firm and together with Salesforce CRM can ensure a strong, reliable, accurate and efficient sales process thereby ensuring the firm’s success. Following are some of the key benefits of using Salesforce CPQ.

Improves Forecast Accuracy

Since everyone on the team is using the same tool to build quotes, it becomes possible to maintain a clearer view of what’s going on in the pipeline. And since Salesforce CPQ is connected to Salesforce, the tool also automatically populates opportunity values, helping to forecast more accurately.

Increases Deal Visibility

No matter how good a sales leader is, there’s no way to manage the sales team properly if the leader is in the dark. Being able to see changes, discounts, and the status of quotes (not to mention the analytics to monitor and track them all) will help the sales leader to plot a course to success.

Ensures Compliance with Pricing and Configuration Rules

Pricing and configuration rules are necessary, but it can be tricky to get everyone to stick to them all the time. There are always those customers that want sweetheart deals or salespeople that weren’t quite listening when they were told what products have to be sold together. In order to stay consistent and compliant, rules-based configuration and pricing tools are the only way to go. After all, it’s tough to select a non-compliant option if the system won’t let it happen.

Improves Productivity

If a firm already has Salesforce CRM, adding a tool that looks and functions similarly will help new salespeople pick it up faster, and help ramp up productivity. Everyone from new reps to existing ones will benefit from automated configuration rules, discount limits, and approvals. An automated CPQ system means reps don’t have to try and find information buried in some folder or spreadsheet. They save time, customers save theirs, and deals move more quickly. Everybody wins!

Reduces Errors

In addition to increased productivity, the automation present in Salesforce CPQ will also help reduce the team’s error. Manual effort not only takes time but also leaves room for errors. Every part of the CPQ process starting from configuring the deal to finding the right price for creating the quote creates a probability for an error to occur. Fixing those mistakes can create cost-efficiency for the firm and maintain customer goodwill. 

Conclusion

CPQ is a very important tool available in Salesforce suite of products which enables firms to provide their consumers with accurate sales quotes by automating the entire process, thereby making it highly efficient and error-free. It helps firms to generate quotes in a timely manner and also allows them to customize the quotes to suit their customers’ unique requirements. These are some of the primary benefits of having Salesforce CPQ which ensures a robust sales process and increased profitability for the firm. 

Please reach out to us on support@winobell.com for a free demo on how Salesforce CPQ can help you take your firm to the next level. You can also follow us on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/winobell/ for updates in various Salesforce products.

Role of DMP in Digital Marketing

DMP “Data Management Platform” is a centralized platform that facilitates:

• Creation of target audiences based on a combination of in-depth first-party and third-party audience data
• Accurately target campaigns to audiences across third-party ad networks and exchanges
• Measure with accuracy which campaigns performed the best across segments and channels to refine media buys and ad creative over time

DMP enables brand to reach precisely defined audiences with relevant messages at the right time in the purchase funnel.

Challenges Faced by Marketers in Digital Era:

• Targeting personalized content marketing
• Precision multichannel marketing driven by result
• Data stored in separate systems with little or no synchronization
• Disconnected systems failing to reach the customer at the right time
• Unreliable analytics based on inconsistent data
• Getting the ROI for marketing initiatives
• Meeting compliance around customer data security

Key Capabilities of DMP:

1. Data Collection - DMP facilitates collection of data from wide range of systems
2. Data Classification- DMP allows marketers to “slice and dice” their customer data by taxonomy, tags, campaign, and/or ROI outcomes enabling creation of thousands of highly relevant segments to reach audiences with the right message at right time
3. Data Analysis – DMP includes visualization tools to provide data driven insight and make sense of data efficiently
4. Data transfer - An advanced DMP allows marketers to easily share their audience segments with ad networks, trading desks, portals, partners and DSPs to serve targeted ads and reach audiences in real time.
5. Scalability - DMP facilitates analysis of millions of datapoints and provide business critical insights

Benefits of DMP:

Re-engagement – Easily implement customized re-engagement campaigns based on specific activities and behaviors

Prospecting – Seamlessly integrate with third-party audience data source to acquire anonymous data to achieve higher precision and scale with targeting campaigns

Site Personalization – Use first or third-party data to determine customized content for different consumers when they visit your website

Audience Intelligence – Contrast your site audience against third-party data sources to learn more about specific audience attributes to target with precision

Better ROI – Use centralized media performance analytics to determine which audience performed and can be chosen for further investment

Salesforce DMP / Audience Studio:

Is one of the best DMP solution available which allows to capture, unify, and activate data to strengthen consumer relationships across every touchpoint. Audience Studio is not one product it’s a complete platform catering to all the needs in and around digital marketing.

For more information on how Salesforce DMP can fit in your digital marketing strategy reach out to us at support@winobell.com

Thank You

Winobell Inc.

Website: www.winobell.com

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/winobell/

Agile Sales - A new approach for Sales

With the emergence of technology, there has been a paradigm shift in the way people communicate

and do business with each other. Hence, tools and techniques which sales teams used a few years back are more or less unproductive. Companies who fail to adapt in this fast paced world driven by technology, more often than not find themselves in trouble.

 Also with the rampant usage of internet, search engines and other tools which are easily accessible, the consumers are in a better place to determine the products which fulfill their business needs instead of having to depend on sales personnel to guide them.

In today’s world, business decisions are driven by data. A company with a significant amount of business data is in a better position to make effective business decisions provided the data is in a centralized location and is easily accessible by stakeholders who have the capability to make decisions.

What needs to change?

Companies need to adapt to this changing landscape and agile sales is an optimal solution to address the sales needs of companies in today’s world. Agile sales is an approach which helps sales team to work efficiently as well as at a faster pace, while minimizing waste and delivering better and faster results. It is driven on the four crucial values of Agile methodology in software development i.e.

⮚      Sales team members and their respective interactions with customers hold more value than established tools and processes.

⮚      A working sales model is much more effective than exhaustive documentation.

⮚      Collaborating with customers to determine their needs is much more effective than negotiating and winning a customer contract.

⮚      Responding to a customer’s need is much more effective than creating an aggressive sales plan to achieve yearly targets.

  

How Agile Sales works?

Agile is a methodology which came into prominence in the software industry by streamlining the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC). It provided an alternative to the traditional methodology i.e. Waterfall. Following are some steps to implement Agile methodology in your sales team.

⮚      Set Short-term Goals: Achieving annual sales goals is more often than not a very daunting task and can be overwhelming for the sales team. With the market shrinking with the emergence of various new tools like online marketplaces, the task gets even more challenging. Hence, breaking down the sales goals into smaller and flexible targets spanned over shorter time intervals, makes it appear easier to achieve and hence can boost the confidence of the sales team.

⮚      Building small, multi faceted  and cohesive agile sales team: It often happens that members of a sales team are highly competitive and individualistic when it comes to achieving sales target. However agile methodology advocates just the opposite i.e. a supportive, cohesive and collaborative team where the sales target can be achieved as a team and not as individuals. The methodology advocates that a team should set realistic goals and should try and achieve it together. They should win as a team or lose as a team. It also advocates that the team should be multi faceted comprising of members with various skill-sets like marketing, data analytics, sales etc. who can work together to achieve the goals.

⮚      Scaling the sales team as a team of teams: The methodology advocates that the scaling of sales team shouldn’t happen by adding members to the agile sales team. Instead a new small agile sales team should be created with a different set of goals thereby forming a team of teams which is lead by a senior associate as required. When different teams working under a large team and having different goals, it results in the teams working with more cohesion and less friction, thereby contributing towards achieving the overall sales goals of the company.

⮚      Having the right agile processes set-up for the agile sales teams to follow: The agile methodology will work fine if the relevant processes are set-up correctly. The critical processes to be considered are:

●        Sprints: The block of time decided by the agile team to complete a set amount of work

●        Daily Stand-ups: 15 minute meeting among the agile team to provide a status update of what was done on the previous day and what needs to be completed on the particular day

●        Sprint Reviews: The meeting to discuss about the targets met in the current sprint and set targets for the next sprint.

●        Sprint Retro: The meeting among the agile sales team facilitated to discuss about the challenges faced by the agile team in the recently concluded sprint and what changes need to be done in order to overcome those challenges in the subsequent sprints.

●        Maintaining the burndown charts: Burndown charts graphically represent the tasks left to do versus time. It paints a picture of what has been completed and how much outstanding work is left.

⮚      Using the right tools to measure the team performance:  Accountability is a major factor in the success of any agile team. Without an automated system, it becomes very challenging to track the performance of a sales team and it becomes very difficult to hold team members accountable for their activities. This is where the Customer Relationship Management (“CRM”) system comes into play.

Sales is one of the most crucial factors for the success of a company. In this ever-changing landscape, companies have to adapt to get ahead of their competitors. Moving towards agile sales, will help leverage the most out of the sales team and provide the best possible results in the foreseeable future.

Please reach out to us on support@winobell.com for a free demo on how agile sales can be implemented in Salesforce.

Splunk for Enterprise Documentation (Salesforce)

1.      Download and install Splunk for Enterprise from the website depending on your system specifications

2.      On installing and choosing Splunk to run as a localhost, open it in the default browser and login using the default credentials.

3.      Click on the “Plus symbol” under Search and Reporting , which is placed under the Apps Tab

4.      Search for Splunk app for Salesforce, and install it.

5.      Open Splunk App for Salesforce. If it’s the first time it’s being opened, you will be prompted with the connection page for salesforce. Fill in the necessary details and save.

6.      Restart splunk (Under Server Controls - http://localhost:8000/en-US/manager/splunk-app-sfdc/control)

7.      Open the application, and go to settings. Click on Data inputs under the Data tab.

8.      (OPTIONAL : enable only if you want splunk to store event logs) Go to “Salesforce Event Log” and enable EventLog. (http://localhost:8000/en-US/manager/splunk-app-sfdc/data/inputs/sfdc_event_log)

9.      Go to “Salesforce Object” and enable the required objects under it. If a new object is needed to be indexed by splunk, it can be registered by clicking the new button and following the required steps. (http://localhost:8000/en-US/manager/splunk-app-sfdc/data/inputs/sfdc_object).

10.  Go to settings and choose “Access Controls”, and choose Roles. (http://localhost:8000/en-US/manager/splunk-app-sfdc/authorization/roles)

11.  Choose the admin role and goto “Indexes searched by Default”.

12.  Default set of indexes : Splunk Enterprise comes with a number of preconfigured indexes, including:

·         main: This is the default Splunk Enterprise index. All processed data is stored here unless otherwise specified.

·         _internal: Stores Splunk Enterprise internal logs and processing metrics.

·         _audit: Contains events related to the file system change monitor, auditing, and all user search history. If enables audit logs will start showing up under search.

·         Fishbucket: For Splunk engineers trying to decipher file input issues. It contains seek pointers and CRCs for the files you are indexing, so splunkd can tell if it has read them already.

·         _introspection: This is intended to collection information about your systems running Splunk and give you more data to help diagnose Splunk performance issues.

Setting up a new salesforce object in Splunk

1.      Select “Salesforce Object” under data inputs in settings for a new entry.

2.      Provide a name for the input.

3.      Paste the SOQL query you want to index. (without order by clause)

4.      Choose the field you want the data to be ordered by.

5.      Select the time you want to start querying data from. Default is 90 days.

6.      Select the number of records you want Splunk to index in each query.

7.      Select the interval you want Splunk to poll. Ex – Every 60 secs

8.      Let the host name and Source Type be the default values.

9.      Choose the destination index to sfdc.

Setting up Alerts for Events

1.      Alerts for an event can be set in Splunk in 4 different ways. (1) It can be just added to triggered alerts. (2) Can be sent in form of emails (3) Can be triggered in the form of running a script. ( Note : The script needs to be saved in the Splunk bin directory under the Scripts Folder) (4) Lastly can be triggered in the form of a web hook.

2.      To set up alerts for email, the Mail server configuration to send the email needs to be set up with the respective SMTP server along with the port details, username and password.

To set up - http://localhost:8000/en-US/manager/splunk-app-sfdc/admin/alert_actions/email?action=edit

3.      On searching for the required events from Splunk, the search can be saved and can be used to alert in a pre-defined timeline for any new events. To save a search as an alert, Click the “Save As” Button and choose Alert.

4.      Give a suitable title to the alert, and choose whether the alert should run at a scheduled time or should run real-time.

5.      Choose the appropriate Trigger Conditions required for your search.

6.      Choose the appropriate trigger actions. Multiple trigger actions is allowed for a single event.

7.      If the fields in the result needs to be sent in the alert, the field keyword needs to be explicitly used in the search formula containing the fields to be sent in the email alert.

The email alert can call this field using the token $result.<fieldname>$

Other email tokens that can used are - http://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/6.5.2/Alert/EmailNotificationTokens

Maximize ROI of Your Salesforce Implementation

Maximize ROI of Your Salesforce Implementation

After a Salesforce Implementation is completed, it must grow and evolve with your company. But before you grow you need to make sure that the current system is as efficient and robust as possible. If you let Salesforce grow without proper maturity, you’ll end up with outdated process and the chances of process errors will increase.

Below mentioned steps will help you determine where to optimize, where to automate, how to establish security and visibility, how to protect your data quality, and more..

                  Ø  Discovery:

·        Perform an audit on your Salesforce instance so you understand how Salesforce has been set up and extend to which various capabilities are used

·        Collect feedback from users via a survey to understand their experience.

·        Gather statistic on user adoption

·        Collect information on security and visibility pain points

·        Create an ER diagram representing key objects and their relationship

·        List and classify all inbound and outbound integrations

Ø  Design:

·        Prepare solution design for any issue that is reported during the discovery

·        Do an end to end impact analysis of the proposed solution

·        Prepare recommendations based on Salesforce best practices and coding standards

·        Translate the solution design to work item or user stories and organize them into sprints

·        Create a road map for Salesforce enhancements and adoption of recommendations

·        Formulate DevOps process for Salesforce

Ø  Deployment:

·        Undertake the development and implementation of the recommended solution

·        Test and validate your Salesforce configuration

·        Provide adequate training to educate users on best practices for using Salesforce and to review modifications made to it

·        Train the Salesforce administrator and super users on the application enhancements

·        Adopt the DevOps process for any future development

At the end of this process, you have a fully optimized Salesforce platform customized to support the goals of the company while allowing your team members to be more productive.

We at Winobell Inc provides Salesforce services to those who are New to Salesforce, would like to Optimize their Salesforce, and those who would like to expand Salesforce company-wide to maximize their ROI.

Our services range from fully customized solutions utilizing multiple Salesforce products to support hours used at the client’s discretion.

Winobell Inc.

Email: support@winobell.com

Website: www.winobell.com

Salesforce Platform Developer 1 Exam is Available Now!!

Salesforce Platform Developer 1 Exam is Available Now!!

If you have been waiting for the revised Salesforce Platform Developer 1 exam to be available then 

Ready..Steady..Go..

Step1. Go through the exam guidelines and overview Click Here

Step2. Register via the webassessor link to schedule exam Click Here

Step3. Prepare by following the trailmix link Click Here

Step4. Give the Exam 

Best Regards,
Roshan Dash
Winobell Inc.

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