Author: Brian Ferber 

If you’ve tried Salesforce CPQ, Conga, or another legacy platform, you probably don’t need a sales pitch to know what not to do.

You’ve probably already lived it:

• Implementation dragging 6–12 months

• Approval flows hardcoded by consultants

• Pricing logic that breaks every time Product Management makes a change

• Sales reps reverting to spreadsheets after go-live

Whether you’re switching from a legacy CPQ—or implementing one for the first time—this guide will help you avoid the most common mistakes and run a smoother, faster rollout.

Mistake #1: Buying a Platform That’s Too Complex for the Team Using It

A CPQ tool is only as good as the team managing it. If every change requires a developer, the tool gets ignored—or worse, weaponized.

How to Avoid It:
Prioritize platforms your business users can own. Vendori is built to be managed by your business leaders—no certifications, no code, no Jira tickets. Products & bundles, pricebooks, pricing rules & workflows, templates and automations and approval workflows are all editable in a friendly UI.

Mistake #2: Treating It Like a Feature Checklist, Not a Workflow Platform

Legacy RFPs are bloated with features no one uses. They focus on edge cases, not the real day-to-day motion that needs support.

How to Avoid It:
Before you look at vendors, document your actual quote-to-cash process:

• Who creates the quote?

• How are discounts applied and approved?

• What happens after the contract is signed?

Use that to guide your evaluation—not a 42-point checklist.

Mistake #3: Underestimating Implementation Time, Cost, and Internal Lift

Ask anyone who’s implemented CPQ: the timelines never match the pitch deck. Projects often stretch past 6 months, require paid consultants, and still don’t deliver what was promised.

How to Avoid It:
Ask vendors: “Can we go live in 30 days with no consultants or dev support?”

Vendori customers typically go live in under 14 days. We’ve designed onboarding around speed and simplicity—not services revenue–to deliver immediate time-to-value.

Mistake #4: Forgetting That CPQ Doesn’t Stop at the Quote

The handoff from quote to order and invoice is where most CPQ tools fall short. Custom invoice schedules, renewals, mid-term edits. They all become spreadsheet workarounds if your CPQ isn’t built to handle it.

How to Avoid It:
Vendori includes:

• Custom invoice scheduling (upfront, periodic, usage-based, etc.)

• Subscription lifecycle workflows (upgrades, downgrades, renewals)

• Quote-to-renewal automation

No more Sales-to-Finance ping-pong.

Mistake #5: Not Involving Finance and Operations Early Enough

Too often, CPQ is driven by Sales—and everyone else is looped in too late. That’s how you end up with sloppy deals, invoice mismatches, and misaligned systems.

How to Avoid It:
Bring in Finance and RevOps from day one. Make sure the platform gives them the controls and visibility they need. Vendori was designed to give all teams a shared source of truth.

What a Successful CPQ Implementation Looks Like

If you’re approaching this proactively, here’s a high-level roadmap for getting it right:

Week 1: Prep & Configuration

• Align stakeholders across Sales, Ops, Finance

• Connect your CRM sandbox (Salesforce or HubSpot)

• Configure pricing waterfalls, discount logic, quote templates

• Set up your product catalog, SKUs, and bundles

Week 2: Testing & Go-Live

• Finalize test records, import subscription data

• Build approval workflows

• Training and enablement

• Migrate to production and begin quoting live deals

Vendori customers are often fully live and quoting within 10–14 days.

From Fire Drills to Full Control: Kurrent’s Implementation Story

When Michael Decker joined Kurrent—a fast-growing data platform company—quoting was chaotic. Pricing lived in spreadsheets. Order forms required ticket submissions. And any change risked breaking three other files.

“One price change could mean updating three or four files. If something got missed? That’s a deal delay—or worse.”

They considered vendors like DealHub, Subskribe, and Cacheflow. But most felt bloated—trying to be CPQ, billing, CRM, and revenue recognition all in one.

Vendori stood out by staying focused: No code. Fast deployment. Total control for RevOps.

Michael and the Vendori team worked closely to configure their pricebooks, approval flows, and integrations with HubSpot. Because of that collaboration, Kurrent was fully live within days.

“We’d been testing internally for a while, so when it was time to go live, it took a day or two. Everything just worked.”

The result?

• Sales reps now generate their own quotes in minutes

• No more Slack threads or tickets to make changes

• Finance and Services get clean, accurate deal data—automatically

“Vendori removed the bottleneck. Sales is self-sufficient now. That’s huge.”

No consultants. No code. No fire drills. Just quoting that works.

Considering Salesforce Revenue Cloud Advanced?

If you’re being asked to migrate from classic Salesforce CPQ, ask yourself:

• Do you want to pay for another long implementation?

• Do you have the internal resources to manage the migration?

• Are you confident it’ll actually simplify your workflow?

Vendori gives you an off-ramp—with CRM sync, no-code pricing control, and fast deployment.

Final Thought: Fit Over Flash

Most CPQ projects don’t fail because of features. They fail because the tool doesn’t fit the team, the process, or the reality of how your business sells.

Vendori was built specifically for companies with dynamic pricing, lean ops teams, and a need for speed.

If that sounds like what you need, you can book a quick demo or grab the free CPQ RFP toolkit to help guide your evaluation.

About the Author

Brian Ferber is the Chief Operating Officer at Vendori, where he leads operations, customer success, service, and technical support. A seasoned SaaS executive, Brian has spent his career designing and scaling complex order-to-cash processes for high-growth and enterprise companies. He previously led global supply chain operations at Citrix and played a key role in large-scale M&A integrations, subscription platform launches, and automation initiatives driving billions in ARR. At Vendori, Brian brings that same rigor to simplifying CPQ—empowering RevOps, Finance, and Sales teams to quote faster, with fewer bottlenecks.