Learn About Configuration in the Sales Process

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

Describe how product bundles help sales reps in the sales process.
Explain the difference between a bundle and a configurable bundle.
Add a configurable bundle to a quote.

Choices, Choices

We have more buying choices today than ever before. Many buyers expect an array of products to choose from, but for sales organizations, offering a lot of options can come at a cost. Your sales reps have to make sense of a wide variety of products, and there’s a real possibility that they’ll quote products that just don’t work together. Thankfully Salesforce CPQ makes selling complicated product offerings easy by giving sales reps premade product bundles to choose from, and even tweak as needed. With bundles, your sales reps can create accurate quotes in record time.

Bundles of All Shapes and Sizes

Creating a quote means choosing products, and some products must be sold with other products. This fact brings us to a central concept in Salesforce CPQ: the bundle. A bundle is simply a group of products we know should be sold together. When the sales rep chooses to sell the bundle, all the related products come along for the ride. There are three types of bundles. We use a food analogy to describe each type.

Static bundle: These bundles always have the same products together, in the same quantities, with no changes allowed. Imagine a BLT sandwich. We always need bacon, lettuce, tomato, and two slices of toast. Otherwise, it’s not a BLT anymore!
Configurable bundle: This bundle can be customized to your liking, with some limits to prevent impossible configurations. It’s like a build-your-own burrito. You choose the type of beans you want, the heat of the salsa, and if you want sour cream or not. Each customer gets a burrito with just the right fillings, which are probably different from the fillings chosen by the next customer.
Nested bundle: This is a bundle inside another bundle. You might have a configurable hamburger bundle nested inside a combo meal bundle. In Salesforce CPQ, you can nest bundles as much as you want, but we recommend only going one or two levels deep.

Follow Along with Trail Together

Want to follow along with an expert as you work through this step? Take a look at this video, part of the Trail Together series on Trailhead Live. You can find a link to the full session in the Resources section.

To complete this module, you need a special Developer Edition org that contains Salesforce CPQ and our sample data. Get the free Developer Edition and connect it to Trailhead now so you can complete the challenges in this module. Note that this Developer Edition is designed to work with the challenges in this badge, and may not work for other badges. Always check that you’re using the Trailhead Playground or special Developer Edition org that we recommend.

Sign up for a free Developer Edition org with Salesforce CPQ.
Fill out the form.
1. For Email, enter an active email address.
2. For Username, enter a username that looks like an email address and is unique, but it doesn't need to be a valid email account (for example, yourname@cpq4ever.com).
After you fill out the form, click Sign me up. A confirmation message appears.
When you receive the activation email (this might take a few minutes), open it and click Verify Account.
Complete your registration by setting your password and challenge question. Tip: Write down your username, password, and login URL for easy access later.
You are logged in to your Developer Edition.

Now connect your new Developer Edition org to Trailhead.

Make sure you’re logged in to your Trailhead account.
In the Challenge section at the bottom of this page, click the playground name and then click Connect Org.
On the login screen, enter the username and password for the Developer Edition you just set up.
On the Allow Access? screen, click Allow.
On the Want to connect this org for hands-on challenges? screen, click Yes! Save it. You are redirected back to the challenge page and ready to use your new Developer Edition to earn this badge.

Now that you have a Salesforce CPQ-enabled org, you’re ready to learn how to use Salesforce CPQ to make and sell bundles.

Add Your First Bundle to a Quote

From a user perspective, working with bundles is really easy. Sales reps can add bundles to quotes just like any other product, and that’s because they are products themselves. We’ll see more about the inner workings of bundles in a later unit, but for now all you need to know is that you can add bundles to quotes in a familiar way. Let’s see what it’s like to add a configurable bundle to a quote.

For this example, your customer Edge Communications wants a very fast laptop. AW Computing has a bundle for the laptop that includes things like processor and RAM options. So you add the laptop bundle and deck it out with the best options.

Click the App Launcher ( ), and then click the Salesforce CPQ tile.
Click Accounts in the navigation bar, then choose the All Accounts list view.
Click Edge Communications.
Click the Related tab.
From the Opportunities related list, click Laptop for Front Office.
From the Quotes related list, click Q-00000.
Click Edit Lines.
The first time the page loads, it can take a few minutes. Subsequent page loads are faster.
Click Add Products.
Check the box next to the 15" Laptop product.
Click Select.
The configuration page shows the choices you can make to upgrade the laptop.
Select the most expensive upgrades for Processor, Memory, and Storage.
Click Save.
Your Quote Line Editor shows the bundle, which includes the 15" laptop, CPU 2.8GHz i7, RAM 16GB, and SSD hard drive 512GB products.
Click Save.

Excellent work. You customized a laptop for Edge Communications, just like they needed. You follow a similar process to add any bundle to a quote, so you’re now ready to configure like the best of them.