The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly of Salesforce CPQ

There is absolution no denying that CPQ solutions - whether Salesforce or otherwise - are powerful, necessary tools for B2B companies; however, these platforms, in particular, cause orgs so much trouble. How did it get this way?

Max Rudman says it's due in large part to the product's inherent complexity. Very few Internal Tools touch so many separate business units within a company and CPQ brings Marketing, Finance, Product, Sales, and Service to the table. Additionally, the entire purpose of the tool requires it to evolve in lockstep with changes to the business. "Still, it needs to be better in terms of usability", Max Rudman says.

Max Rudman founded SteelBrick before he sold it to Salesforce - now Salesforce CPQ. In this interview, Max Maeder & Max Rudman chat all-things-CPQ: how it got started, how has the market evolved, why so many companies struggle with CPQ, and how to ensure successful adoption.

Watch the Full Interview Here.

Rudman feels that companies must adopt a different mindset when implementing CPQ. It's not just set it and forget it.

He says, "if you're not changing CPQ often, why do you have it?". Salesforce CPQ, as Max establishes in this interview, is a product that encourages companies to ask themselves how they can evolve their business on an ongoing basis. If you're not taking advantage of that simple fact, you'll never realize its full potential. 

Here are some of our favorite parts of this conversation:

• Why so many CPQ projects fail

• Why there's an overall lack of Dev Ops within Salesforce (and how vendors are solving it)

• What an ongoing investment in CPQ should look like within an organization