Sales Quote Automation: The Ultimate Guide

Quote creation might be one of the most arduous parts of sales work. Okay – slight exaggeration. But it’s one of those tasks that can take forever.

You've progressed through the deal stages until it's finally time to talk pricing, then you have to manually go through all of your products and prices and cobble them together into a quote. Maybe you're really old school and still rely on spreadsheets (no judgement). Then, you need to send the quote upwards for approval. Once the quote comes back, maybe with some adjustments, the customer wants to make some changes too. It's a lot of back and forth. And for what?

Thankfully, quote creation is a task that can largely be automated, without sacrificing accuracy, so that you can send them out in far fewer clicks and speed up the approval process. In this article, we will explore how AI can improve the quoting process, and look at how AI-powered solutions like Agentforce are helping sales teams reduce errors and increase efficiency.

What you’ll learn:

• What sales quote automation is and how it works
• The benefits of AI-driven automatic quotes
• Steps to implement automation in your sales process
• Best practices for using AI-powered quoting tools
• Automated sales quote examples

Sales quote automation uses AI and sales CRM tools to generate accurate, customized quotes in fewer clicks than the traditional method. Traditionally, quote creation is a largely manual process. Reps pull from spreadsheets and price books, which can be inefficient combined with long approval times. AI-powered tools for quoting, like Salesforce Revenue Cloud and Agentforce quoting help reps centralize pricing, discounts, and approvals to automate the process.

Sales quote automation streamlines the quoting process by using AI and predefined pricing rules to instantly generate, adjust, and approve quotes, reducing manual effort and improving accuracy​​.

For businesses that use Agentforce for automated quoting, an agent is configured using the Agentbuilder platform, with actions driven by your own pricing rules and the product catalogue. Once it is deployed in Revenue Cloud, a rep can ask for a quote to be generated in simply asking or prompting in natural language.

Instead of the rep manually clicking through and adding products to a specific quote, they're able to describe exactly what they want the quote to be in a conversational interface, saying, for example, “I want a new business quote for this opportunity with a term of six months."

Step by step, this is what it looks like under the hood:

Step 1 - Input request: A sales rep receives a customer request for a quote. The rep opens the Agentforce panel and asks for a quote to be created with the customer’s specific requests.

Step 2 - Agent analyzes data: The AI agent autonomously pulls product details, customer history, pricing rules, and applicable discounts​.

Step 3 - Quote generation: The agent generates a detailed quote customized to the customer’s requirements in seconds.

Step 4 - Approval and adjustments: If needed, the agent modifies the quote based on feedback.

Step 5 - Quote delivery: The final quote is sent directly to the prospect in a streamlined email.

Quoting can be a time-consuming process. That’s why so many sales leaders strive to improve it. These are some of the primary benefits of automating the sales quote process.

Faster turnaround: Agent-generated quotes reduce manual work, allowing reps to respond to prospects faster​. For example, Agentforce comes with pre-configured quoting skills, allowing reps to generate quotes in a single prompt instead of multiple clicks​.

Increased accuracy and compliance: With guardrails, agents aren’t prone to human error. Automated pricing rules ensure quotes always comply with company policies​, reducing time spent in rounds of approval.

More time selling: According to the State of Sales, sales teams spend 72% of their time on non-selling tasks. AI and automation frees them up to focus on closing deals​. The less time sellers spend on tasks like quote creation (among other things!), the more time they can spend on higher-value conversations.

Improved customer experience: Faster, more accurate quotes enhance customer trust and increase deal closures​. AI-powered agents ensure consistency in pricing and terms across all quotes​, and can be easily adjusted on the fly to meet customers’ expectations.

If your team is currently managing their pricing strategy across a number of different spreadsheets and documents, check out this guide to revenue management. If you already have a handle on the right tools and strategies, the following steps will help you get started on quote automation.

Consolidating all product data and pricing into a single, accessible system ensures consistency and accuracy from your agent. Use a system like Salesforce Revenue Cloud to store product details and pricing rules​. Later down the line, the AI agent will reference these details to generate quotes.

Pricing strategy can be complex, but it doesn’t have to be. With a centralized product catalogue in place, a pricing strategy can be identified that works best for your business. Once pricing strategy is nailed down, you can automate factors like bulk discounts, seasonal promotions, and special pricing for repeat customers​.

Agentforce integrates data across Revenue Cloud and Sales Cloud to create autonomous and assistive AI agents. Using Agent Builder, sales teams can combine pre-configured quoting skills with their custom pricing and packaging data to create an application that generates quotes quickly.

A rep can open the Agentforce panel inside Sales Cloud, and enter a natural language prompt into a chat window. They could say something like "Create a business quote for this opportunity, starting today, with a 12 month term." Within seconds, the quoting agent pulls real-time data (products, pricing rules, discounts, and deal history) to generate a complete, accurate quote. The rep can make adjustments on the fly, like: "add a 10% discount".

The agent flags any necessary approvals and once ready, can draft an email and send the quote as a PDF straight to the customer. The result? Quotes pulled together in minutes, fewer clicks, quicker approvals, and more time spent in conversation with the customer.

Here at Salesforce, we streamlined our own complex quoting process using Agentforce. With thousands of SKUs and intricate pricing models, reps previously spent hours manually building quotes, navigating approvals, and adjusting for customer needs. Losing times means losing deals – and we were losing a lot of time.

We configured an AI quoting agent using Agent Builder, setting up predefined rules and workflows. Because Agentforce is built into the Salesforce platform, it pulls real-time data from product catalogs, past sales conversations, and deal terms to generate accurate, customized quotes in seconds.

When a sales rep needs a quote, they simply open the Agentforce panel in Sales Cloud and type a natural language request—for example, "Create a business quote for this opportunity starting today for 12 months. Summarize it and open the quote." In moments, the agent processes the request, applies pricing rules, and drafts the quote. The rep can then review, adjust, or request a PDF to send directly to the customer, with automatic options for applying discounts or making modifications.

With automatic quoting powered by AI, Salesforce reps are now generating quotes with 87% fewer clicks, reducing turnaround time from hours to minutes. More importantly, automation ensures accuracy and compliance, while freeing reps to focus on high-value activities—strengthening relationships, closing more deals, and enhancing customer satisfaction.

Quoting shouldn’t be so arduous. Thanks to tools like Agentforce, it no longer is. With reps easily able to configure automated quoting for sales, then make requests in natural language, they can spend less time pulling all of the data they need together, and more time on the conversations that actually close deals. Agentforce quoting eliminates manual errors, speeds up sales cycles, and enhances the customer experience, all while productivity rises and revenue grows. If there was ever a time to adopt AI-powered quote automation to stay ahead of the competition, it would be now.

To learn more about Agentforce for sales, and how you can save time on other tasks like prospecting and coaching, click here.