How to: Letting Reps Know Their Quote Needs Approval

“Does My Quote Need Approval?”

Letting Reps Know Before Quote is Sent

“It’s the end of the quarter and I need to generate a quote within the next half hour for the customer to sign. I’ve created my quote and hit submit for approval. Oh-no! It has to go to the VP of Sales and he’s on a plane right now!”

Sound familiar? This happens all the time—a Sales rep is rushing to meet quota, and the customer is ready to sign! Fantastic. But the rep adds just a bit too much of a discount, so the sales Quote has to go to a superior for review, first.

“Is there some way to get the quote out the door faster? If only I knew that it needed approval before submitting, I’d avoid this altogether. ”

She sits, and waits, and waits, and waits…

The waiting game

As a Salesforce administrator, you know there is room for significant improvement to the process. You also may be encouraged by others at the company to “just make Salesforce work.” So how do we make this “waiting game” a little shorter and make life a little easier for you and your colleagues in the Sales department?

We’ve found it to be extremely helpful to add visual indicators in the quoting process. The visual indicators show the user ahead of time whether their quote will require approval.

Nix the waiting game

If the sales rep doesn’t have the time for the quote to be renewed, they will then always have the option to adjust the quote to ensure it is auto-approved.

Visual indicators also provide a great way for new sales reps to learn discounting thresholds without needing to pull open the last quarterly sales slide deck or ask another sales rep that is on the phone closing his or her own deal.

Let’s get visual, visual

Creating visual indicators is an easy two-step process that will improve the quoting experience for end users.

Creating a Formula Field that Returns Visual Indicators

If you are newer to creating formula fields, no problem. There is a handy function called Image() that you may want to tuck away for later. The Image() function returns an image instead of text, which can be any image you want to use.

In our case, we need three different images to illustrate our process.

1. ✔️ Good to Go: We need a positive image that is easily understood to indicate the quote is within the acceptable discount range.
2. ⚠️ You’re Getting Close: We’d want to use this indicator to identify one of two things: either the quote is getting close to the threshold; or, the quote needs approval from the immediate supervisor. But nothing beyond that.
3. 🛑 OVER THE LINE!: The quote went over the acceptable discount threshold. The quote definitely needs approval.

Images for visual indicators

You can use any image you’d like as a visual indicator.

To use your own images: You can upload your own images to Salesforce. This step makes your images available to add as visual indicators to enhance your quoting process.

To use Salesforce’s library of images: Salesforce also has its own library of images available to add as visual indicators for quotes. (Access the images in the example above: Check mark, Exclamation, Stop sign.)

For a simple example, let’s say a sales rep can discount up to 15% without needing approval. If the rep discounts between 12-15%, the rep should be warned. You could use the following indicator formula:

Add Indicators to your field set

Now that we have our indicator logic set up, it’s time to make the logic show up when quoting: All we need to do is as follows:

1. Add the logic to the field set. If you created your formula on the Quote Lines, you’ll update the Line Editor field set.

With this in place, Sales reps at your organization will be confident in knowing whether their quotes need approval, before sending a quote to the customer.

Happy Quoting!

Have a unique formula to build out, or need help optimizing your Salesforce quoting experience? Let’s get in touch: Contact Us