Salesforce CPQ Is Sunsetting. This Is a Strategic Reset, Not Just a Migration.

An analysis grounded in the experiences of GTM
and Systems leaders who have already made the move.

When a vendor sunsets a mission-critical system, it’s not just a technical event; it’s a strategic inflection point. With Salesforce ending support for its legacy CPQ (Steelbrick), thousands of established companies are now facing a high-stakes decision that will define the agility and resilience of their revenue engine for years to come.

To understand the real-world implications, we spoke directly with GTM and systems leaders who have already navigated this transition. Their experiences, shared throughout this brief, offer a practical guide for what to expect and what to ask. As one Business Applications Leader, who recently migrated off the platform, told us:

“For those still on Salesforce CPQ, their hand will be forced sooner or later. Salesforce has made the decision to deprecate Salesforce CPQ and to basically sunset it as a standalone product… Within Salesforce CPQ, the writing was kind of on the wall because the updates came fewer and fewer and there were just no more features being added. So that’s why we decided to look at alternatives.”

This isn’t a niche problem. It’s a market-wide reset that forces a choice between two fundamentally different architectural philosophies: treating CPQ as a legacy System of Record or embracing it as a modern System of Work. The choice of what comes next will shape your GTM execution, commercial flexibility, and long-term risk profile.

What We Learned: The Critical Questions Every GTM and Systems Leader Must Ask

A forced migration isn’t just an IT project; it’s a direct threat to business continuity. Leaders must quantify the impact of replacing a legacy system like CPQ on every aspect of go-to-market execution:

• Revenue forecasting and margin predictability: How will changes in quoting logic, approval flows, or pricing models affect your ability to forecast and protect margins?

The reality is clear: most organizations are now being forced to unwind years of technical debt, custom objects, and embedded workflows that were built to fit a single vendor’s model. The question isn’t just how to untangle; it’s whether you want to risk repeating this cycle.

​​The sheer complexity of this task was a recurring theme. As one VP of Sales Operations described it:

The immediate pressure will be to adopt another Salesforce-native solution. But leaders must weigh the long-term implications of deepening ecosystem lock-in against the need to support a multi-channel GTM strategy that extends beyond a single CRM. The right answer isn’t always “stay native,” especially for organizations with complex, evolving commercial models.

“Our company was really afraid to get stuck in a system. So Salesforce CPQ, we had to be all in 100% for Salesforce. And like I said, Salesforce isn’t even our full CRM for our entire business. We can’t get out of this if we’re not going to move forward with Salesforce type thing.“

— Salesforce Administrator

This is a rare opportunity to architect for the future. The most critical question is not “What replaces our old CPQ?” but “What kind of commercial engine do we need for the next five years?” This means evaluating a new solution’s flexibility, its ability to integrate into a composable stack, and whether it can function as a true System of Work, the independent, channel-agnostic execution layer we defined in our foundational post.

“I had our chief accounting officer telling us we had to use Oracle and then I had our head of Salesforce being like, you need to use Salesforce. I’m like, neither are the best solutions for what we need.“

— VP, GTM Business Operations

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Two Architectural Philosophies, A Strategic Comparison

	Platform-Native CPQ	System of Work CPQ
Focus	Admin simplicity & UI consistency within a single platform.	GTM agility & commercial logic orchestration across all channels.
Architecture	Subordinate to the host CRM/ERP.	Independent, channel-agnostic execution layer.
Best For	Orgs with a single, direct sales channel & standardized processes.	Orgs with multi-channel GTM (direct, partner, PLG) & dynamic models.
Lock-In Risk	High, data and process tied to a single vendor.	Lower, easier to pivot as business needs evolve.
Future-Proof	Roadmap is dictated by the platform vendor.	More control over destiny, but requires more strategic ownership.

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3 Red Flags to Watch in Your Migration

1. Underestimating Data Complexity: Legacy customizations and integrations are rarely documented as well as you think.

“We basically had 2 versions of CPQ running within the same CPQ, created a ton of custom code, a lot of custom calculations to try to balance all the different acquisitions and the different metrics that needed to be captured.“

— Business Applications Leader

2. Assuming “Native” Means Simpler: Deepening lock-in can limit future GTM flexibility and increase long-term TCO.

“It was a slow degradation, every update added more complexity. When we saw [a new solution], it checked all the boxes we were looking for.“

— VP, GTM Business Operations

3. Treating Migration as a Technical Project Only: The real risk is to business continuity, not just IT. The financial and operational cost of this mistake can be staggering. One Director of IT shared their experience:

“After spending $750K and two years failing to connect Salesforce CPQ, Conga, and DocuSign, we switched to a new CPQ… and we went live in 6 weeks“

— Director IT & Enterprise Business Applications

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Next Steps for CIOs Facing a CPQ Reset

1. Map Your Current State

• Inventory all customizations, integrations, and dependencies tied to your existing CPQ.
• Identify which business processes, revenue streams, and reporting functions are most at risk during migration.

2. Engage Cross-Functional Stakeholders Early

• Involve sales, finance, operations, and IT in requirements gathering.
• Document pain points and “must-haves” from each group and don’t assume the new system should simply replicate the old.

3. Define Your Future-State Criteria

• Decide if you need a platform-native solution or a composable, system-of-work approach.
• Prioritize flexibility, ease of change, and support for multi-channel GTM

4. Pressure-Test Vendor Claims

• Ask for references from organizations with similar complexity and migration timelines.
• Request a live demonstration of critical workflows (not just a canned demo).

5. Build a Realistic Migration Plan

• Budget for data cleanup, parallel system operation, and user training.
• Set clear milestones for business continuity, not just technical go-live.

6. Establish Success Metrics

• Define what “success” looks like: reduced manual work, improved forecasting, faster quote-to-cash, etc.
• Plan for post-launch reviews and continuous improvement.

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Analyst Takeaway

The message from leaders who have navigated this transition is unambiguous: the pain of being trapped by a rigid system far outweighs the perceived comfort of staying within a familiar ecosystem.

This isn’t a CPQ migration story. It’s the redesign of the revenue engine. The Salesforce CPQ sunset is a mandate to finally decouple your core commercial logic from the constraints of any single platform. The leaders who seize this opportunity to build an independent, agile execution layer will not only survive this transition, they will be positioned to win the next decade of GTM innovation.

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Note: All operator quotes are captured from actual conversations and are used to illustrate real-world pain points, evaluation criteria, and lessons learned. No product is endorsed; the goal is to help CIOs and GTM leaders make an informed, future-proof decision.

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