Standard Objects in Salesforce Sales Cloud [+ PDF Guide]
This article was originally published at Twistellar.com
Salesforce is renowned for its robust suite of standard functionalities that empower organizations to streamline their sales processes. However, not every business may be fully aware of the potential benefits and capabilities of these out-of-the-box features.
With the right training and support, businesses can harness the full potential of the standard Salesforce pricing flow and drive their success in a more efficient and sustainable manner. Let’s dive into an overview of these processes.
What Are Opportunities in Salesforce Sales Cloud?
When a sales opportunity arises, you create an Opportunity Record in Salesforce. This record captures details about the potential sale, such as the customer name, products of interest, and expected revenue.
Creating an Opportunity Record
The Opportunity object contains various standard fields, such as Account Name, Stage, Close Date, and custom fields that capture essential data, including products of interest, expected revenue, and other relevant details.
Adding Meeting Notes and Products
The Opportunity Notes related list can be used to record meeting notes and important interactions with the client. These notes are linked to the opportunity record, providing a comprehensive history of communications.
To associate specific products with the opportunity, users can leverage Opportunity Line Items. This related list allows adding products, quantities, and prices, which are essential for quote preparation and calculations.
Forecasting Expected Revenue
Salesforce facilitates revenue forecasting by using Expected Revenue, a standard field in the Opportunity object.
Expected Revenue can be automatically calculated using formulas that take into account the probability of closing the opportunity and the total deal amount.
With this data, Salesforce can provide accurate revenue forecasts and generate pipeline reports, enabling sales managers to make informed decisions.
What Are Products, Price Books, Price Book Entries in Salesforce?
In Salesforce Sales Cloud, Products, Price Books, and Price Book Entries play a crucial role in managing and organizing the sales process. Let’s explore the relationship between these elements and their functionalities:
Products
Products can represent any item, service, or subscription that your company sells. You can create product families or groups to categorize similar products together.
Best Practice for Handling Variations
If a product has multiple variations (e.g., different sizes, colors, or features), it is recommended to use product options or product attributes rather than creating separate products for each variation. This keeps your product catalog clean and avoids duplication.
Note: Product options and option sets are commonly associated with Salesforce CPQ, which provides more advanced and automated configuration, pricing, and quoting capabilities.
Price Books
A Price Book is a collection of products along with their corresponding prices. They are essential when you have different pricing structures for various customer groups or regions.
You can create multiple Price Books to accommodate different pricing scenarios. Each Price Book can be associated with specific Accounts or Opportunities to determine the appropriate pricing for those records.
Price Book Entry
A Price Book Entry is a record that establishes the relationship between a Product and a Price Book. It defines the price of a specific product within a particular Price Book. When you add a product to a Price Book, you create a Price Book Entry with the product’s price, currency, and other related details.
Why Price Books Are Necessary
Price Books allow you to offer different prices to different customers or regions, ensuring accurate pricing for each scenario.
For example, if your company sells products internationally, you can have separate Price Books for different countries to account for currency differences and local pricing strategies.
Automatic Price Book Updates
Price Books don’t update themselves automatically; you need to manually update prices when they change.
However, with the Salesforce platform, you can implement automation using Workflow Rules, Process Builder, or Apex triggers to update prices based on specific conditions (e.g., date-based discounts or quantity-based pricing).
Value of Price Book Entry
Price Book Entries are essential for determining the correct pricing information for a product in a specific Price Book.
They are integral to generating accurate Quotes and tracking Opportunities with the correct pricing details.
How to Create a Quote in Salesforce Sales Cloud?
Within the opportunity record, you can generate a quote. A quote represents a formal proposal with specific pricing and terms for the opportunity.
Preparing Quotes and Calculations
Salesforce’s Quote object enables users to generate professional quotes based on the opportunity’s associated products and quantities.
When creating a quote, Salesforce calculates the Amount field using predefined formula fields or custom calculations based on product prices and quantities from the related Opportunity Line Items. This native automation ensures that the quote’s total amount is accurate and dynamically adjusts as product details change.
Pricing Fields
The following fields are typically used for price-related values in the Salesforce Quote object:
- Subtotal. Represents the total amount before applying any discounts or taxes
- Total Price. Reflects the final price after applying discounts and taxes
- Grand Total. Represents the total amount including taxes and other additional charges
How to Add a Discount
Discounts can be added to a Quote as line item discounts. Each product or service added to the Quote can have a specific discount applied to it. There is usually a field, such as “Discount,” on the Quote line item object, where you can enter the discount amount or percentage.
Number of Quotes on Opportunity
By default, Salesforce allows multiple Quotes to be created for a single Opportunity. This can be useful when you want to provide different pricing options or when multiple quotes are required for different scenarios.
How Quotes are Synchronized
Quotes in Salesforce are not automatically synchronized with the Opportunity. Any changes made to the Quote will not be automatically reflected in the Opportunity or vice versa. The Quote is an independent object, and its relationship to the Opportunity is based on lookup fields.
How Quotes Can Be Sent
Quotes can be sent to customers through various methods:
- Email. Salesforce allows you to email the Quote directly to the customer from within the platform
- PDF. You can generate a PDF version of the Quote and send it as an attachment via email or other external communication channels
How to Set Up a Letter
Salesforce provides functionality to generate letters related to the Quote object. You can create templates for these letters and use them to generate personalized documents containing Quote information and other relevant details.
How to Set Up Template PDF
To set up a template PDF for Quotes, you can use Salesforce’s built-in Document Generation feature or create a Visualforce page with PDF formatting to present the Quote data in a customized layout.
Importance of Adding Products to the Quote
Adding products to the Quote is crucial as it allows you to accurately calculate the total price for the customer. By associating specific products or services with the Quote, you can apply the correct pricing, discounts, and any other relevant details to provide an accurate quote to the customer. This ensures transparency and helps in closing deals more efficiently.
What Is the Difference Between Quote Line Item and Opportunity Product in Salesforce?
For each product added to the quote, you create a quote line item. This captures details such as quantity, discounts, and any other applicable charges. The line items are linked to the opportunity and the specific price book entries associated with the products.
Quote Line Item (QLI) and Opportunity Product (OP) are both objects in Salesforce used to represent products or services offered to customers. Here are the key differences between the two and their respective characteristics:
Quote Line Item (QLI)
Represents an individual line item or product listed on a quote. QLI is specific to a particular quote and captures details such as product name, quantity, price, and any associated discounts.
Opportunity Product (OP)
Represents a product or service associated with an opportunity. OP is not tied to any specific quote, but instead represents the product catalog or a list of potential products that can be added to an opportunity.
Why have both QLI and OP
Having both QLI and OP provides flexibility and modularity in the Salesforce platform. While Opportunity Products define the available products and their details in the catalog, Quote Line Items allow sales reps to create customized quotes with specific quantities, prices, and discounts for a particular opportunity.
Necessity of QLI and OP
In certain scenarios, you might not need both QLI and OP. If your sales process is straightforward and you don’t require the ability to create detailed quotes, you may choose to work only with Opportunity Products. However, using both objects is recommended when you need the ability to create and manage quotes with specific line item details.
Consequences of Not Adding QLI or OP
If you don’t add QLI to a Quote, you won’t be able to create detailed quotes with individual product line items. Without Opportunity Products, you won’t have a predefined catalog of products to choose from when creating quotes.
What Are Discounts and Adjustments in Sales Cloud?
If necessary, you can apply discounts or adjustments to the quote or individual line items. This could include percentage discounts, specific price overrides, or additional charges. The system recalculates the total pricing based on these adjustments.
If you’re using standard Sales Cloud without Salesforce CPQ, you won’t have access to the more advanced quoting and pricing features like block discounts, discount schedules, and one-time charges. However, you can still leverage some basic discounting options and adjustments in Sales Cloud. Here’s what you can do:
Standard Discounts
It’s possible to calculate manually and apply standard discounts to individual Quote Line Items.
You can enter discounted prices directly for specific products in the Quote Line Items. This process would require manual calculation based on the desired discount amount or percentage. For example, if a product has a list price of $100, and you want to apply a 10% discount, you can manually adjust the price to $90 for that particular line item.
Adjustments
Without Salesforce CPQ, you can add one-time charges or adjustments to the Quote as separate line items. These could be used to account for additional fees, taxes, or other miscellaneous charges related to the entire Quote rather than individual products.
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