I have been working on different CPQs for quite some time and wanted to take up the Salesforce Certified CPQ Specialist certification.There were very few resources to prepare for the same, other than the Exam Guide. Special thanks to this Vandevelde Jan’s tips to pass this exam since it is the first of the experience sharing blogs which I found.
I completed my Salesforce Certified CPQ Specialist (SP17) recently and thought of sharing some of the resources which were very useful in my preparation. (Spoiler alert..! None of the links have any exam questions). If you are not working specifically on Salesforce CPQ, but want to get an expertise on the same, you may have to spend about 175 to 200 hours (assuming you work on other CPQs). It would always be nice to keep comparing different CPQ features.
Without wasting further time, and with a “safe harbour” statement that this is my experience sharing, let me list down various resources in a sequential way.
Salesforce CPQ Package Installation
The best way to get started with preparing for such an exam is to spawn a sandbox specifically for learning purposes and using different features in Salesforce CPQ. You can install Salesforce CPQ from the links given in SteelBrick’s Package Installation Links page. You can install only Salesforce CPQ. Service Cloud for Salesforce CPQ and other packages can also be installed, but I didn’t install while I was preparing for this exam. It is to be noted that the license is valid for 3 months only (it does give some motivation to learn faster). Install the latest version of the package in you developer instance.
My blogs on understanding each part of CPQ
C: Configure products & bundles
P: Pricing & Discounting capabilities
Q: Quote process, document generation & post sale transactions (renewals, add ons, etc)
Salesforce CPQ Basics
Salesforce Trailhead for CPQ Basics
Video: Intro to SteelBrick CPQ
For all video tutorials, please pause wherever required and do the exercises mentioned. They are extremely useful, and this covers the Salesforce CPQ Basics well.
Products
Video: Create Product Families
Video: Creating Products
Video: Product Customization
Video: Account Level SteelBrick CPQ information
Check Prior Purchases & Option Constraints (To Avoid Creating Product Rules)
How to create exclusion rule between products?
Pricing & Discounts
Video: Pricing Methods
Video: Discounting
Video: Discount Schedules
Video: Complex Discounting Scenarios
Combine Block Pricing with Discount Schedules
Discounting Methods: Compound Discounts
Discount Schedules with Slab option
Term and Volume Discount schedules on one product
Video: Customer specific Pricing
Bundles
Video: Product Bundles
An Overview of Product Bundles
Video: Product Features
Video: Product Related List Layouts
Video: Create Options
Video: Create Option Constraints
Bundle & Feature Level Field Sets
Bundle Structure Preserved on Opportunity Products
Configurator
Configuration Attribute Layouts
Apply to Product Options — When does it work
Rules Execution:
Product rules
Validation Rules in Nested Bundles
Create a Product Rule Based on a Prior Purchase
Lookup Queries on Product Rules
Pricing rules
Price Rule to add a product option based on another product option being selected
Price rule with lookup queries
Summary Variables
Video: Summary variables demo
Summary Variable Data in Quote Fields
Twin Fields
Q/A: Auto-Mapping: Twin Fields
Twinning a picklist from Product Option to Quote Line
Quotes
Video: Basic Opportunity creation
Video: Quote creation
Video: Importing Quote Products through CSV
Video: MDQ
Guided Selling (Quote Process) Overview
Dynamic Questions in Guided Selling
Quote templates & document generation
Video: Dynamic Quote Terms
Video: Quote Templates
Video: Storing Logo in documents
Video: Creating Quote templates
Video: Creating Template Content
Video: Creating Template Sections
Video: Line Columns
Video: MDQ Doc Gen
Subscriptions / Assets
Order Management
Translations
Localization with SteelBrick – Translation Overview
Translating Product & Bundle Fields
Finally,
If any of the links which are required are missed, please feel free to mention it in comments. Would like to hear your views on how you learnt Salesforce CPQ. Happy learning, all!!
Next Edition: Salesforce CPQ – C in CPQ – Products & Bundles
Rampalli Sarma's blog 
Awesome resource, Rampalli! I want to recommend another resource for migrating reference data from a staging sandbox to production. Reference data like products, pricebooks, discount schedules, etc. are very relational and therefore very time-consuming to migrate with a data loader. Prodly Moover can do this job in one pass. It is a native “relational data migration” app that was developed with the SteelBrick Professional Services team (Gilles Muys was the VP, at the time) and a number of SIs swear by it (Mike Ackerman at Coastal Cloud in the US says they use Moover on every CPQ implementation). There is even a CPQ template (script) to speed things up further. Here’s a link to the Prodly website: http://www.prodly.co. It is also listed on the AppExchange here: https://appexchange.salesforce.com/listingDetail?listingId=a0N30000000q5oPEAQ
Rampalli, one more resource from Prodly: we also have a CPQ objects external ID reference document. Please contact me for details.
Very detailed information….do you have practice test for this exam?
Thanks Pal. Practice tests, I couldn’t find any. I am preparing some training content to upload on YouTube which will help in understanding most important CPQ concepts and implementing in Salesforce CPQ.
Hi Rampalli, any success in posting the training material on youtube. If yes, please share the link, I am planning to learn CPQ and appear for exam.
Hello Nitish, I posted some training material in ‘My blogs on understanding each part of CPQ’ section of the same page. Feel free to let me know if more information is required. Hope it helps in your learning journey.
Hi Rampalli;
I don’t have access to Sandbox environment, is it possible to install the Steelbricj CPQ package free fo cost to Developer instance?
Please guide me.
Thanks
Hello Santanu.. It is possible to install SteelBrick CPQ free of cost (and use it for 3 months) in developer instance. We can do so from here.
Hi Rampalli,
Very detailed and helpful information. Thank you for sharing. Please share youtube videos and sample tests for CPQ certification.
Glad these resources were useful to you. I am getting a cheatsheet / technical notes which we can go through. Will only be helpful after going through the above resources though, which you already did.
Will share it once it is done. If you found a few other pages not mentioned here, feel free to add here.
Hi Rampalli,
very good information .Is salesforce cpq and steelbrick cpq are same.Iam confused with some videos seeing the package name as steelbrick cpq but i can’t find any package with name steelbrick cpq .
Thank you Sankar. Salesforce acquired SteelBrick in Dec 2015, so both are one and the same.. The latest version URL for sandboxes is https://test.salesforce.com/packaging/installPackage.apexp?p0=04t61000000gYzhAAE
please tell about configure option after installing salesforce cpq.What fields are required in Documents Groups,LineEditor,Plugins,Pricing and Calculation,Subscriptions and Renewals,Quote,Order,Additional Settings
Hi Rampalli,
Do you know how to access the Knowledge articles which you have linked above? Now that the Steelbrick Community has been merged into Salesforce, all the above links are broken.
Cheers,
Leanne
Hello Leanne, Working on an update for the same. It must be done soon.
Updated the broken links. Please checkout the post.
Hi Rampali,
I am preparing for CPQ specialist exam and your site is very helpful. Thanks for the efforts!!
Recently, the links redirecting to community.steelbrick.com doesn’t work. And some of other links that direct to salesforce help goes to Salesforce home page. Is steelbrick community retired?
Any thoughts?
Working on it, I will share it soon, Miruthula. However, the following posts must cover those concepts already
https://rsbsarma.wordpress.com/2017/12/03/salesforce-cpq-configure-products-bundles/
https://rsbsarma.wordpress.com/2017/12/03/salesforce-cpq-pricing-discounts/
https://rsbsarma.wordpress.com/2017/12/12/salesforce-cpq-quote-process-document-generation/
Thanks for your nice words.
Updated the links. Please checkout the post. The posts mentioned in earlier comment covers most of the core concepts though.
Hi Rampalli,
Do you to CPQ one-on-one training? If so, how do I get in touch with you about it?
Thanks!
Hi Rampalli ,
Thank you for your awesome blog on CPQ. Kindly help to understand how we can create attributes to the Product in Sfdc cpq. I am asking this question as i have worked in Siebel Crm products. Thanks
Should we have a call around this? I can give some info around Salesforce CPQ and then we can see about attribute creation?
Hi Rampalli,
Thank you for your reply. My Whats app no is +65-90531160.
Kindly remove my no from this blog once you have seen the message.
Thanks
HI Sharma Garu,
Thanks for sharing the knowledge.
One question I have, before learning salesforce CPQ.
What is the difference between salesforce CPQ and Apttus CPQ?
HI.. your content is good. I’m very new to salesforce cpq and I’m doing in lighting mode, here I’m following trailhead content also for practice,
I can able to create products but not able to add them into any of the quote / opportunity. Do I need to change any objects, please guide me
Hello Rampalli
The knowledge base study material link is broken, please send the PDF file if you have.
Click to access CPQ_Knowledge_Base_Study_References.pdf
Thank you.
Did you find this resource?