Overcoming 9 Common Sales Challenges With Salesforce Revenue Cloud

Is your sales cycle longer than desired?

Do you find yourself investing excessive time and effort in closing each sale, and is prospecting like looking for a needle in a haystack?

If so, you’re not alone.

While prospecting remains a daunting task for over 40% of salespeople, navigating through extended sales cycles and intricate product bundling processes only adds to their burdens.^[i]

The frustration of feeling stuck in a loop, endlessly trying to resolve issues and secure deals, is all too familiar for many sales professionals.

Perhaps you’ve experienced the disappointment of meticulously planning and strategizing for a sales call, only to find it doesn’t yield the expected results.

But here’s the thing – while certain sales challenges may seem insurmountable, dwelling on them won’t lead to progress.

If you’re struggling with slow sales cycles and finding new customers, a powerful solution is key. It should streamline finding leads, speed up closing deals, and solve other common sales problems.

That’s where Salesforce Revenue Cloud swoops in as the hero solution!

But how exactly can it help you tackle those common sales challenges?

Let’s uncover this in this blog post.

9 Common Challenges Faced by Sales Team and How Salesforce Revenue Cloud Solves Them

1. Lengthy Sales Cycle Due To Manual Processes

“Sellers want to sell, but they spend more than two-thirds of their time distracted by record keeping, broken processes, tool management, and tasks like data entry and lead management.”^[ii]

Challenge: Sales teams often struggle with manual processes, disparate systems, and lack of insights, resulting in delays in closing deals. These delays hinder revenue growth and productivity, leading to missed opportunities and increased costs.

• Streamlined Processes: Revenue Cloud automates repetitive tasks like data entry, quote generation, and contract approvals. This frees up valuable time for sales reps to focus on building relationships and closing deals.
• Unified Platform: Revenue Cloud integrates various sales functions like CPQ (Configure, Price, Quote) and billing into a single platform. This eliminates the need to jump between different systems, saving time and reducing errors.
• Actionable Insights: Revenue Cloud leverages AI tools like Einstein Discovery and Lead Scoring to analyze customer data and identify buying signals. This equips sales reps with real-time insights to prioritize leads, personalize interactions, and close deals faster.

2. Complex Product Bundling

Challenge: Complex product bundling processes can confuse customers and your sales reps, prolong sales cycles, and increase the risk of pricing errors. For sales teams, it’s tricky to navigate intricate product catalogs and select the right solutions for each customer’s unique requirements.

• Guided Selling with CPQ: Salesforce CPQ (Configure, Price, Quote) streamlines the product bundling process. It guides sales reps through product configurations, ensuring they present the most relevant and appropriate bundles to each customer.
• Automated Pricing and Discounts: CPQ automates pricing rules and discounts for bundles, eliminating the risk of human error and ensuring consistent and accurate quotes.
• Visual Configuration Tools: CPQ can offer tools like product configurators, allowing sales reps and customers to easily visualize different bundle options and understand how each component fits together.
• Personalized Recommendations: AI-powered tools like Einstein Discovery can analyze customer data and recommend the most suitable bundles based on their needs and past purchases.

3. Lengthy Product Adoption Periods

Challenge: Lengthy product adoption periods can result in customer frustration, reduced usage, and churn. Often organizations find it tough to onboard customers effectively, deliver value quickly, and drive successful outcomes post-purchase.

• Simplified Onboarding: Revenue Cloud streamlines the onboarding process by providing tools like guided workflows and pre-built templates. This helps customers get started quickly and understand the product’s value.
• Data-Driven Insights: AI tools like Einstein Analytics within Revenue Cloud can analyze customer usage data. These insights help identify areas where customers might be struggling and provide targeted support or training.
• Self-Service Resources: Revenue Cloud can integrate with self-service knowledge bases and communities. This empowers customers to find answers and troubleshoot issues independently, reducing reliance on support teams.
• Value Realization Framework: Revenue Cloud can provide a framework to track customer progress and measure the value they’re getting from the product. This data can be used to demonstrate the product’s impact and motivate continued usage.

4. Complex Discount Approval System

Challenge: Managing a complex discount approval system manually, can lead to delays, errors, and inconsistent pricing decisions. This can impact sales team productivity and result in revenue leakage.

• Automated Workflows: You can define rules and approval processes within CPQ. This automates the flow of discounts for approval based on pre-set criteria like deal size, product combination, or customer segment. This eliminates delays and ensures consistency in decision-making.
• Real-time Visibility: CPQ integrates with your CRM system, providing sales reps with real-time information on discount limitations, approval status, and past discount approvals for similar deals. This transparency empowers reps to make informed decisions and avoid errors.
• Guided Selling With Guardrails: CPQ can be configured to set guardrails on discounts. These guardrails can prevent reps from exceeding pre-defined discount thresholds or offering unauthorized discounts. This ensures adherence to pricing policies and minimizes revenue leakage.
• Approval Hierarchy and Audit Trails: CPQ allows you to establish clear approval hierarchies for discounts. This ensures deals requiring larger discounts get routed to the appropriate approvers. Additionally, CPQ maintains a complete audit trail of all discount approvals, providing valuable insights and ensuring compliance.

5. Lack of Sales Insights

Challenge: Without access to timely and actionable sales insights, organizations may struggle to identify trends, track performance, and make informed decisions. This can hinder sales team effectiveness and limit revenue growth opportunities.

• Centralized Data Hub: Revenue Cloud acts as a central repository for all your sales data, including CRM information, opportunity details, and historical performance metrics. This eliminates the need to juggle data from multiple sources and ensures everyone has access to accurate information.
• Real-time Reporting and Dashboards: Revenue Cloud provides a suite of customizable reporting and dashboard tools. These tools allow sales managers and reps to visualize key sales metrics in real-time, like pipeline health, win rate, and quota attainment. This empowers them to identify trends, track progress, and make data-driven decisions.
• AI-powered Sales Analytics: Salesforce Revenue Cloud leverages Einstein Analytics, a powerful AI tool. Einstein analyzes vast amounts of sales data to uncover hidden patterns and predict future outcomes. It can identify which sales activities are most effective, forecast sales performance, and even recommend the best actions for closing deals.
• Forecasting and Pipeline Management: Revenue Cloud offers advanced tools for sales forecasting and pipeline management. These tools allow for scenario planning, what-if analysis, and real-time adjustments to forecasts based on the latest data. This helps businesses anticipate potential shortfalls and make adjustments to maximize revenue opportunities.

6. Defiance of Pricing Rules

Challenge: Pricing rules are often violated due to manual errors, lack of visibility, or inconsistent enforcement. This can result in revenue loss (For example, if a salesperson accidentally applies a 15% discount instead of the correct 5%, the company loses on the difference), margin erosion, and dissatisfaction among customers and stakeholders.

• Automated Pricing Engine: Salesforce CPQ (Configure, Price, Quote) automates the application of pricing rules. This eliminates manual errors and ensures consistent pricing across all deals.
• Real-time Price Validation: CPQ integrates with your product catalog and pricing data. During quote creation, it validates pricing against defined rules in real-time. This prevents reps from accidentally offering discounts or exceeding price thresholds.
• Guided Selling with Guardrails: CPQ can be configured with guardrails that prevent reps from offering unauthorized discounts or exceeding pre-defined limits. This enforces pricing discipline and minimizes margin erosion.
• Approval Workflows for Exceptions: For situations requiring deviations from pricing rules (e.g., high-value deals), CPQ can establish approval workflows. This ensures proper oversight and minimizes the risk of unauthorized pricing decisions.
• Audit Trails and Reporting: CPQ maintains a complete record of all pricing decisions and approvals. This data can be used for auditing purposes and identifying trends in pricing exceptions.

7. Consumption of High Costs and Resources

Challenge: Managing high costs and resource consumption in finance operations can strain budgets and limit scalability. Manual processes, legacy systems, and inefficient workflows lead to increased operational expenses.

• Automation of Manual Processes: Revenue Cloud automates many repetitive tasks in finance, such as data entry, invoice generation, and approvals. This frees up valuable time for finance professionals to focus on strategic initiatives and value-added activities.
• Streamlined Workflows: Revenue Cloud integrates various financial functions like billing, order management, and revenue recognition into a single platform. This eliminates the need for manual data transfer between disparate systems, streamlining workflows and reducing errors.
• Improved Visibility and Control: Revenue Cloud provides real-time access to financial data and reports. This empowers finance teams to identify spending trends, track performance metrics, and make informed decisions about resource allocation.
• Subscription Management: Revenue Cloud offers tools for managing subscription billing models, including automated recurring charges and dunning management. This reduces manual work and ensures timely revenue collection.
• Reduced Errors and Improved Accuracy: Automation and integrated workflows minimize the risk of human error in data entry and calculations. This improves the accuracy of financial data and reporting, leading to better decision-making.

8. Accelerating Selling for Partners

Challenge: Accelerating selling for partners can be challenging due to complex partner programs, manual processes, and limited visibility into partner performance. This can result in missed revenue opportunities and strained partner relationships.

• Partner Relationship Management (PRM): Revenue Cloud includes PRM functionality that streamlines partner onboarding, training, and enablement. This empowers partners to sell your products or services more effectively.
• Automated Incentives and Commissions: PRM automates the calculation and distribution of incentives and commissions based on pre-defined rules. This eliminates manual calculations and ensures partners are rewarded promptly and accurately.
• Real-time Deal Insights and Collaboration Tools: PRM provides partners with real-time visibility into deal progress, opportunities, and customer data. This fosters collaboration and helps partners identify and pursue win-win opportunities.
• Co-branded Marketing Tools: PRM can offer partners co-branded marketing materials and resources. This allows them to market your products or services to their customers.
• Performance Management and Analytics: PRM offers tools to track partner performance metrics and identify areas for improvement. This helps you work collaboratively with partners to optimize sales strategies and maximize joint revenue growth.

9. Shortage of Repeat Customers

Challenge: A shortage of repeat customers can impact revenue stability and hinder long-term growth. Without effective customer retention strategies and personalized experiences, organizations may find it challenging to cultivate loyal customer relationships.

• Customer 360 Platform: Revenue Cloud integrates with the Salesforce Customer 360 platform, which provides a unified view of all customer interactions across different touchpoints (sales, marketing, service). This allows businesses to understand customer behavior and preferences better.
• Personalized Engagement Tools: Salesforce Marketing Cloud, integrated with Revenue Cloud, offers tools for creating personalized marketing campaigns based on customer data and purchase history. This fosters stronger customer relationships and encourages repeat business.
• Subscription Management: Revenue Cloud offers tools for managing subscription billing models, including automated renewals and upsell/cross-sell opportunities. This helps ensure recurring revenue and encourages customers to stay engaged with your product or service.
• Customer Success Features: Revenue Cloud can integrate with customer success platforms. This allows for proactive outreach, personalized onboarding journeys, and targeted support to address customer needs and prevent churn.
• Net Revenue Retention (NRR) Tracking: Revenue Cloud provides insights into NRR, a key metric for customer retention success. This helps businesses track their progress and identify areas for improvement in their retention strategies.

The Bottom Line

Salesforce Revenue Cloud stands as more than a mere solution for today’s sales challenges; it is a strategic ally poised to redefine the future of sales. Its integration and automation capabilities streamline operations and reduce errors, while its advanced analytics provide critical insights for informed decision-making. The platform’s scalability and customization foster innovation and adaptability, ensuring businesses can grow and evolve seamlessly.

By enhancing customer experiences and aligning sales strategies with overarching business goals, Salesforce Revenue Cloud empowers organizations to thrive in a competitive landscape. Embracing this revenue management solution signals a commitment not just to survival but to excellence and leadership in the future of sales.

Need Help Setting Up or Optimizing Salesforce Revenue Cloud? Talk to Us!

Statistical References

^[i] Spotio
^[ii] Salesforce