With an 11% market share, Salesforce CPQ takes third place in the list of the most popular Configure Price Quote software. Over 3000+ companies worldwide use Salesforce CPQ, and approximately the same number of companies have taken advantage of the Salesforce standard quoting functionality.
Both solutions offer pretty similar functionality, but some vital differences make companies move from Salesforce standard quotes to Salesforce CPQ.
In this blog post, we compare Salesforce CPQ vs. standard quotes in terms of benefits, functionality, and pricing so you can choose the right tool for your quote management automation.
Salesforce offers a basic “built-in” Salesforce billing module called Salesforce Standard Quoting (available for Performance and Developer Editions or in Sales Cloud Professional, Enterprise, and Unlimited Editions). For businesses with more advanced quoting needs, Salesforce offers a solution called Salesforce CPQ.
Salesforce CPQ (Configure, Price, Quote) is software for sales teams designed by Steelbrick to provide accurate pricing and quoting for any product configuration scenario. In 2015 Salesforce acquired Steelbrick CPQ and integrated it with Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, and Einstein AI.
Salesforce Billing or Salesforce Standard Quoting is a natural extension of Salesforce CPQ. As it is based on the same data model as Salesforce CPQ, the quote automatically flows through to the order and invoice, making the billing process more efficient than quoting in Excel spreadsheets, for example.
In the next passages, we’ll compare Salesforce quotes vs CPQ based on their features set, quoting functionality, bundling, discounting, ways of product validation, quality of generated quote documents, subscription pricing, and more. Let’s start with CPQ features vs standard quoting.
Let’s start with an overview of common features of Salesforce CPQ and Salesforce Standart Quoting. These are: standard product and pricebook objects, standard contract and asset objects, multi-currency compatibility, integration with e-signature tools, and standard approval process.
In the table below, we compare distinguishing features of two solutions.
| Robust subscription product capabilities | Introductory list pricing, discounting, and bundling features |
| Dynamic quote document generation | Basic quote documents generation |
| Multi-record product validation | Standard product validation |
| Automated contracts and quote renewals | A drag-and-drop quote template editor |
| Advanced discounting options like volume, multi-tiered, automatic, and partner/distributor | Very basic discounting |
| Subscription pricing | Discounts do not calculate before you save the record |
| Renewal Quotes with Subscription Products | No $ Discount only % |
| Layers for Discounting, Partners, Reps, Multi Products | |
| Custom product bundling |
In Salesforce standard quoting functionality, it is possible to create and sync quotes with opportunities so that both records have the same information. It is also possible to have multiple sections in one opportunity, making it possible to view the whole history of the sale – but just one quote will be synced with the opportunity, so the user must designate which quote to sync.
While in the quote, the user can add the products available, choose the quantity, select the discount, if there’s any, and even change the sales price.
Example of Quote Line Editor in Salesforce Standard Quoting
Salesforce CPQ has everything that the standard version offers but with a more robust and extended line editor.
Example of Quote Line Editor in Salesforce CPQ
Additionally, in Salesforce CPQ, users can configure the quote process that serves as a “Guided Selling” experience for the user. The user answers some questions to determine what product suits them best. Those “questions” are configurable, dynamic and can be adjusted to each sales rep’s specific quote.
Example of a Guided Selling template in Salesforce CPQ
Salesforce standard quoting doesn’t offer product bundling as an out-of-the-box functionality. The user must look through the entire product list to add the options they want in the quote.
CPQ allows for building customized product bundles. A bundle is a product with optional features or components that you want to include on a single quote line.
Product bundling in Salesforce CPQ
The standard offers a percentage discount per product in the quote by default. As a result, users can make discounts on every quote line item they add to quotes. Unfortunately, there isn’t any automatic discounting. But it can be fixed by adding a flow to set up conditions for discounting.
Example of a manual flow to set up basic discounting in Salesforce Standard Quoting
CPQ allows “multi-tiered” discount schedules, like applying different types of discounts for a few products in the bundle (% or USD) or automatically giving discounts based on volume, rewarding the customer who buys large quantities of items with a more significant discount. CPQ also allows different types of discounts, such as partner or distributor discounts.
Discount tiers in Salesforce CPQ
For the Salesforce standard quoting, the product validation happens with the standard validation rules. There is a lack of flexibility in comparing tables, related records, etc. For the Salesforce standard quoting, product validation happens with the standard validation rules.
Product validation rules in Salesforce Standard Quoting
There are different product validation rules available in Salesforce CPQ. These rules can evaluate a product option, quote, or quote line to against user-made conditions and perform an action in response.
There are four different types of product rules:
Product validation rules in Salesforce CPQ
Salesforce standard quoting allows users to generate PDFs directly from Salesforce using various customizable templates. Salesforce standard quote templates can contain images, rich texts, lists (from the quote’s related list), and fields from quote, account, opportunity, contact, organization, and user.
Example of quote document generated in Salesforce Standard Quoting
CPQ offers a more powerful document generation for the user. The template is composed of sections where it is possible to customize individual content like line items, signature fields, and terms and conditions.
The CPQ quote templates are dynamic: users can add filters in the sections so that one section is included in the generated document for some customers and for others not.
CPQ templates also allow for quote template content translation, generate the document in Microsoft Word .doc output, and automatically generate the quote template and send it to the quote’s primary contact.
Example of quote document generated in Salesforce CPQ
Salesforce CPQ is designated to simplify subscription sales, automating pricing, prorating, and co-terminating subscriptions on contracts and renewals. And this makes it easy to amend subscription sales contracts as well. The Salesforce standard quoting doesn’t offer this feature natively.
In standard this functionality is similar to CPQ, but it lacks flexibility in quote line grouping. Users can customize the flow, however with much greater effort compared to Salesforce CPQ.
Salesforce CPQ can automatically create a contract when an opportunity is closed or won with all the products in the primary quote. Users can also create separate orders for different families of products, line groups in quotes, etc. Orders and assets can also be created automatically.
Renewing contracts can be quickly generated by CPQ. It also makes it easy to amend contracts, including add-ons, swaps, and upgrades.
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Consider moving from Salesforce Standard Quoting to CPQ when:
And what if I’m okay with my current quote management by Salesforce standard quoting? It is possible to build a functional sales process with standard quotes, but it will all depend on the customer’s needs. Salesforce standard quoting is ideal for customers who don’t have a high volume of quotes on a day-to-day basis, don’t have a lot of product selection, and don’t have a large budget.
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As Quote is a related object to opportunity, you can create directly from Opportunity (maybe it`s necessary to include the related list in the page layout/record page).
Yes! (for Professional, Enterprise and Unlimited editions) You can enable quotes on setup, look for Quote Settings and enable it. In CPQ, it already comes enabled.
Kateryna creates engaging content about Salesforce consulting, Ascendix products, and CRM best practices for the commercial real estate industry and legal services. Her articles provide readers with relevant data, stats, business tricks and overviews of new industry trends and CRM updates.
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