Most complex quotes don’t turn into closed sales.
In fact, only 1 in 8 quotes (around 12%), that take hours to create, actually close. That’s rough!
But if you dial in your process for creating quotes that convert into sales, by standardizing your pricing, products, and proposals, you can increase your sales volume by as much as 15%-25%.
This checklist will show you the 7 important changes you need to make to give your complex quoting process the best shot at converting as many prospects into clients as possible.
None of these take a lot of time, but each of them can make a dramatic difference in the number of clients you acquire each month.
— Dennis Eckman, GleanQuote.com
Create a centralized place or folder for pricing, products, and customer data so that you don’t need to hunt for them. It’s like having a place for everything where everything is in its place. Companies who don’t do this can add up to 2 hours more time spent per quote because they need to find all the people involved and all the information needed.
Make sure your pricing and product selection for your quote are up to date. It’s like dotting your i’s and crossing your t’s. If you aren’t doing this, you might be pulling in out-of-date information from a spreadsheet from many months ago. Ensure you’re using the most up-to-date info to avoid ending inaccurate or incorrect quotes to potential clients.
Lock edit access to your pricing and product spreadsheets so that your reps don’t modify your pricing or terms without approval. It’s a bit like protecting the keys to the castle. Companies who don’t do this leave money on the table with different reps controlling varying levels of discounts or terms. If you allow copy and paste as part of your process, this is impossible to manage.
Make sure everyone on your team is clear on the approval process by communicating it properly. Expectations that aren’t communicated are just thoughts. Companies that don’t do this will see more mistakes per rep and quotes will take longer to send out as your teams grow. If you give your team an easy method to get approvals, your chances to catch mistakes will increase exponentially.
Check all of your pricing spreadsheet formulas to ensure they make sense and are vetted by the right people (eg: your product or pricing manager). Assuming they are correct doesn’t mean they are. 1 in 5 companies have pricing calculation errors in their spreadsheet, and most don’t even know that they do. The best way to protect the pricing calculations is to build them once in an environment or using a tool that only allows the right person to make edits.
Make sure all of the prospect data you’ve included in the email and quote is accurate and up to date. This means checking their email, address, billing contact, and other important data. Measure twice, cut once. If you don’t have a process for checking you have done this accurately, the wrong person gets your quote, or you lose the sale because your quote looks unprofessional and is marred with errors.
Add a date to your calendar to follow up to ensure that the prospect received the email, and can open the quote properly. Never let a good prospect fall through the cracks. A little over half of the proposals sent are never followed up on! Make sure your team has an easy tool that is linked to the customer, contact, and proposal and they will actually use it!
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