This guest post is shared by Anisha Chawla, the CEO of Beyond Tech Media. She formerly worked at Google and Facebook, across Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand. She helps businesses grow through powerful digital marketing solutions. 

As a Salesforce admin or sales operations professional, you know how
important it is to have accurate product and pricing information in your CRM system. However, adding this information to Salesforce is not straightforward. Read on to explore some of the common challenges that organizations face when adding products and pricing to Salesforce, and some helpful tips and solutions to overcome them.

The Benefits

Once you have added all your products and pricing to Salesforce you can
record exactly what was sold to whom. This digital record can be used
throughout your business by sharing with departments like provisioning,
delivery, finance and billing.

This data is of immense value and will enable you to make better decisions
long term.

Data Complexity

One of the biggest challenges of adding products and pricing to Salesforce is
the complexity of the data involved. Depending on your organization’s size and industry, you may have hundreds or even thousands of different products, each with its own pricing structures, discounts, and configurations. To further compound this challenge your pricing data is almost certainly in a different format than Salesforce requires. Worst of all if you need to get this data into other systems they will almost certainly have a different format again.

Product Line Items and Price Books

Salesforce requires a product line item (all the product data except price) and a price book entry for every price you need to add. You can have multiple price books per product line item if you have multiple sell prices (retail, wholesales etc) or sell in multiple currencies.
If you sell simple products this is relatively easy, if you sell products with
recurring charges or lots of options or variations it is much harder.

EXAMPLE

If you have 20 products that must come with one of 3 different service level
agreements (Gold, Silver Bronze) do you add the products and the three SLAs separately (23 product line items) or do you create all the possible versions as a single line item so that sales can’t forget to add the SLA (60 product line items).
Both options have pros and cons so you will need to check with your
stakeholders to determine what will work best for them.
Getting this structure right is important and if you have not done it before
getting the assistance of a Salesforce integration partner can be a great
investment.

User Adoption

Adding products and pricing information to Salesforce is only half the battle – the other half is ensuring that your sales team actually uses the information. If your team finds the process of adding or updating product/pricing information in Salesforce confusing or time-consuming, they may be less likely to use the system.
To overcome this challenge, focus on user adoption from the start. Ensure
that your Salesforce training program includes clear instructions on how to
add and update product and pricing information, and provide ongoing support as needed. Consider whether you would benefit from implementing automated tools or workflows to simplify the process of adding and updating records.

On-going Management

Finally, keeping the pricing in Salesforce in accurate and up-to-date can be a
challenge. As your organization grows and your product and pricing offerings evolve, you may find this an ever-increasing burden.
To overcome this challenge, plan for ease of management from the start.
Regularly audit your data to check for errors and inconsistencies, and invest in tools and resources that can help you automate and streamline the process of adding and updating records such as ProductEngine.

Conclusion

Adding products and pricing information to Salesforce can be a challenging
task, but by understanding the common challenges and implementing
proactive solutions, you can overcome these obstacles and ensure that your
Salesforce records accurately reflect your product and pricing information. By investing in the right tools, working with a Salesforce implementation partner, focusing on user adoption, and planning for ease of management, you can set your organization up for success and achieve your sales goals more effectively.