Losing out on a sale is genuinely one of the toughest parts of a business. Lost sales could be a result of overcrowded products in marketplaces. This brings in the need of having solid and personalized sales quoting software that helps businesses make better deals.
When a prospective client approaches your business for a sales quote, it is a sales opportunity. A make-or-break situation. With the right response, your business can definitely “seal the deal.”
The great news here is that technology can now help businesses respond to prospective clients better and faster to make that sale happen. Having a well-functioning sales quoting software set up in the right place can surely help businesses to make their space in the competitive market and make more sales.
This article should be a good read on what is quoting and proposal software, its key benefits, and some substantial considerations you should make before choosing the right software for your business.
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What is Quoting and Proposal software?
Quoting and proposal software is a platform that helps sales representatives create the right kind of sales quotes or proposals in less time. It can also be defined as a platform that allows businesses to manage and streamline the process of quote and proposal management in the sales cycle. The functionality is provided when these quoting solutions are paired with CRM tools.
As simple as it sounds, quoting software will help businesses figure out the sales quotes efficiently and proposal software will streamline and automate the creation of proposals and presentations in response to RFP’s (request for proposals).
Quoting solutions, in general, tend to help businesses a lot. They automate the whole process of sales, enabling a faster turn-around time, customizing sales offers, and reducing any possible errors in the whole process.
With the numerous benefits that quoting and proposal software has, in this blog, we have picked up the 5 key benefits for you.
5 Key benefits of quoting and proposal software
Every department in your business should be dynamic and equipped with the latest technological trends to deliver the best experiences. Cloud-based quoting solutions help businesses in reducing costs and improving the accessibility of information. The users can access the software with a good internet connection. No need for any server or infrastructure. This way cloud-based quoting solutions are cost-effective too.
1. Quicker quote and proposal generation
Sales teams from both B2B and B2C sectors deal with multiple RFQs every day. The sales representatives generate and track multiple quotations. If done manually, it can be very time-consuming.
Quoting software and proposal software makes the process faster using ready templates and access to the relevant product, cost, and discount information. The quote or the proposal that your business is generating does not only represent what you are selling but is also an added extension to your brand image.
According to sources, quoting software helps businesses with a 33% reduction in time needed for quote generation, a 30% reduction in time in quote approval, and a 20% reduction in time from delivering the quote to closing a deal.
The numbers show how important is the use of quoting software and proposal software in maintaining the focus of the sales reps on actual sales than spending time on other activities. This will make your business more efficient, professional, and competitive.
2. Integration with multiple platforms
A business is made up of various departments and successful processes unite them with tight integration. Integration of quoting and proposal software with other business fronts will help your company have standardized processes. Quoting solutions have also proven to be a link between various departments allowing frequent communication.
For example, once a quote is approved, the quoting software will recognize and notify it. So when the customer has signed the quote, the concerned departments will be notified through the software and the process of sealing the deal will begin.
When an order will be generated, the finance team will send an invoice, payments will be received, the revenue will be recognized, audit trials will commence and the order will be fulfilled by the logistics department. This is how quoting software links all the departments of a business together.
Such quoting solutions also help businesses with more accuracy. They provide accurate pricing strategies and make better quotes or proposals. This is vital because the accuracy of the quote plays a substantial role in the whole process. The accuracy might affect all the departments so it is always better to let technology help you. These quoting solutions help businesses reduce the number of errors in quotes by 35% and increase the forecast accuracy by 29%.
A quoting software that is integrated with platforms like CRM and ERP makes the process smoother across all business channels. All the units of the business can access uniform data. Sales reps can manage the orders and the operations team can analyze the trends to plan for better future deals. These integrations of quoting solutions with third-party platforms make the life of businesses a lot easier.
3. Simplifies negotiations with higher consistency
Negotiating can be a very difficult task for sales reps. If a customer doesn’t get the right attention, price, or service they were looking for, it might lead to a lost sale. Contract life cycle management can be integrated with the quoting solutions to help the sales reps with better experiences. This will result in streamlined processes in terms of pricing, timelines, and other such factors.
When quoting software or proposal software is considered, they need to maintain consistency. Predefined formats or templates are used to maintain consistency and help simplify the processes.
4. Proposal software helps your company stand out!
Business proposal software can offer a variety of time-saving features that can help businesses with creating, tracking, and updating proposals. Proposal software can help businesses thrive no matter what the environment is.
Proposal software allows businesses to replicate and automate sales processes. Through this, businesses won’t have to spend a lot on hiring extra manpower to do the same activity. Proposal software makes sure that they include the right pricing the first time of sending a proposal out.
Not only that, proposal software will enable you to take follow-ups at the right time. A perfect example might be receiving an alert after the proposal is viewed and following up with the prospective client on the following day. This will bring in a lot more efficiency in the business.
In uncertain times, proposal software can also offer multiple payment options which can be a great selling point.
5. Quoting solutions help in higher sales and revenue
Quoting solutions have a strong positive impact on the efficiency of a business. You save on the resources earlier dedicated for generating manual sales quotes. The sales team can now focus on bringing in more customers. Also, as the quotations are accurately generated, the time taken in closing the deal reduces substantially.
All this put together has the ability to bring in great sales and revenue. Use of quoting software and proposal software aids organizations in selling and replicating some of the best sales practices in the market rather than perpetually hiring new staff and or retraining them.
Key Takeaways
Quoting solutions also enable businesses with configurations. Rule-based calculations help businesses with a faster-quoting experience. Price, tax, freight, discounts all of it can be calculated automatically. It also provides ready-to-use sales templates that make the process smoother. As a business, you can send in the sales quotes in any format you like which includes PDF, Excel, Word, etc. This makes the whole process way more functional and accessible. Maintaining price histories and unlimited user-defined fields is such an add-on.
Well, by now we definitely know how essential it is to have a quoting solution for the smooth functioning of a business. Use these software solutions to make the first impressions that will make or break the deal.
