Ask a CPQ Expert: When does it make sense to show and hide products using selection rules?
ASK A CPQ EXPERT
What are selection rules and when does it typically make sense to show and hide products using selection rules in Salesforce CPQ?
Salesforce CPQ offers product selection rules that can automatically add, remove, hide, enable, or disable product options in a bundle on your quote.
Using these rules in your automation enables your sales team to create highly customized quotes for each deal through a guided process native to your CRM.
- Product rules in CPQ can improve usability by showing and hiding components where it’s relevant to the user and customer.
- Anything you can measure and document in Salesforce can be used to show and/or hide products during quote generation.
- Configuring these rules will always require thinking through the pros and cons of having additional complexity in the system.
- Knowing some typical uses for showing and hiding components can give your sales and sales operations teams some quick wins with CPQ.
They draw on the data that exists within the system, so your sales reps can provide your potential customers a smooth experience when it arguably matters most — when deals have a high likelihood of closing.
It’s one of the ways CPQ can focus your organization’s sales process by aligning your process with your CRM system.
Understanding what these selection rules do and how they can provide value to your organization is crucial to making the most of them.
After all, adding more rules to your system doesn’t necessarily mean more value — it could just mean more complexity in an already complex system. And CPQ is a complex system no matter your chosen vendor.
Let’s work through the thinking behind show and hide rules in Salesforce CPQ to understand when it makes sense to use them.
We’ll cover:
What show and hide selection rules do to product bundles.
How using show and hide can add value to your sales process.
When to use show and hide selection rules and three common uses cases.
What do show/hide rules do? Why is that valuable?
Both of these selection rules sound fairly straightforward. When adding the component products of a bundle to a quote, show will show a hidden option while hide will prevent an option from showing.
These show and hide rules can be applied however they might benefit the sales process, which can sometimes lead to interesting and creative applications.
As long as the way your system is built supports the real process your sales team uses to sell, that’s fundamentally what will determine the success of the tool and your team’s use of it.
Thinking through what these particular rules can do, the pros and cons of using them, and how they might benefit your sales operations is key.
When are show/hide selection rules useful?
In our experience configuring Salesforce CPQ for organizations, we’ve found certain scenarios where show and hide are typically useful as a solution. As always with Salesforce technology, your specific organization’s needs should dictate the changes you make.
Think through what you’re trying to accomplish, why that matters to your organization, and then design your system purposefully to meet those needs.
There are multiple ways to accomplish different needs in the system, though some are more common scenarios than others.
Three common cases where show and hide selection rules are useful include when:
Product type eliminates certain potential products and/or dictates others.
Buyer demographics change what products matter to a bundle.
Product seasonality makes products time-sensitive.
Use Case One: Product Type
Certain product types are not compatible with others. Likewise, other products may be only compatible with that initial product choice.
Consider a company that sells computers and their peripherals. Certain brands and parts may not play well with others — not that any big brands immediately come to mind…
If a customer wants to purchase Computer A then only the printers, keyboards, and mice that work with Computer A need to show.
Likewise, the printers, keyboard, and mice that aren’t compatible with Computer A don’t need to be visible during the quote generation process because they’re irrelevant in this specific situation.
This is where show and hide rules can streamline what products are visible and suppress the ones that aren’t going to work based on the customer’s initial decision.
The moment computer A is chosen from the lineup of computers A, B, C, D, and E, Salesforce CPQ selection rules can use that data to then automate what else is shown and what is kept hidden from view.
With this process in place, it may take a few more clicks to generate a quote and that’s not always what a sales team wants to hear when they’re trying to make deals fast. Hear us out though, it will save them a significant amount of time and frustration to click rather than configure each deal.
If your pricing information currently lives in a complicated spreadsheet that the sales team references during quoting, then clicks are a much more desirable and consistent way of assembling a quote. It won’t take long for automation to prove it was worth the initial effort.
Use Case Two: Demographic Data
Buyer demographics change what products matter to a bundle due to industry regulation or other requirements.
Consider a SaaS company that sells to multiple different industries including financial firms, insurance companies, and hospitals. The software is in high demand and the sales team needs the ability to quickly quote what’s relevant to each industry and their buyers.
A buyer for a regional hospital system may only need to be quoted the software that’s HIPPAA compliant. Anything not HIPPAA compliant would be non-negotiable. They simply could not use it due to industry regulations.
CPQ selection rules can look at the profile of the buyer to automatically show and hide these products so that each salesperson can quickly quote the products that are relevant to each deal.
Products that aren’t relevant can be eliminated based on the data in your CRM. It also eliminates any potential issues around quoting products that would be an issue for your customer when they are about to give you their business.
Using your CRM data to provide a seamless customer experience is one of the main reasons your organization made the initial investment in that technology, so bringing that into the quoting process is shrewd.
Use Case Three: Seasonality and Time Sensitivity
During different times of the year, you want to suppress products that aren’t in season or relevant to a certain timeframe.
Similarly, there may be time-sensitive products you want to prioritize selling over others.
Consider a media company that sells time-bound digital advertisements to other companies. If their products don’t sell in time, then they expire, losing potential revenue for the company while creating downstream consequences.
Management knows that the sales team needs visibility into what’s closer to expiring so the team can focus on selling those products more immediately.
Using show/hide selection rules, your organization can suppress products based on time of year in the system.
If a particular product is in season and needs to be visible or is out-of-season and needs to be hidden, your CPQ system can be set up to capture that for your sales team when they generate a quote.
This is an excellent solution for organizations that have a clear picture of how the calendar affects the sales cycle and their customer’s needs.
For our example here, it can also drive revenue by highlighting what products remain to be sold in a given timeframe and will need to be prioritized.
Don’t leave revenue on the table if CPQ can be set up to help your sellers maximize it.
Determining Your Organization’s Needs
Anything that you can measure and document in Salesforce can be used to show and hide products during quote generation.
Product ID may be a clear choice and as the above examples demonstrate, there are many other ways the data can be used to shape the process. Buyer profile details like industry field on an account, time of year based on dates in the system, and even incentives based on inventory levels can all tell the system which products should be visible and which should be suppressed.
Determining what’s most important to capture for your business is the key to getting value from any CPQ system. Which stakeholders should be involved in these conversations and decisions? How will your organization make sure the true sales process, products, and prices are reflected in the system when it’s built?
Once built out, the system is designed so your sales team doesn’t have to remember every step, process detail, or rule. It will guide them while enforcing the parameters that senior management would typically need to enforce without a CPQ system in place.
Without the need to manually enforce the process, senior management is free to work on strategy and refine it regularly, strengthening the ways the process and technology inform one another.
When the sales team can focus on selling what matters most to their customer as well as their business and leadership can focus on strategy instead of enforcing the process, then the system is worth every dollar spent on it and every minute invested in it.
