A quote is a fundamental commercial document for your business. Once signed by both parties, it materializes an agreement in principle to start a sale.
A correct and clear quote makes it easier for your customers to understand your offers. It limits friction and doubts. It is therefore an asset to trigger a sale more efficiently and quickly.
In this article, we will quickly review the very definition of a quote. Then, we will see together what are the advantages — often underestimated — of establishing a clear quote. We will conclude with a recommendation to accelerate the customer needs assessment process thanks to CPQ.
What is a quote?
Buyers can request a quote from companies, to know the price or the specificities of an offer. Thus, the quote details the essential characteristics of the goods and/or services in question, their price, the date, or the deadline for delivery or execution.
For the buyer, it is a useful document to understand the main details of a sale and to compare different offers. It can also be used to put together a financing file. For the supplier or the service provider, the quote is used to explain his offer and to secure a sale.
When the quote is signed by both parties, it commits the customer to pay for the services in question and the supplier to respect the correct delivery of the goods and/or services mentioned in the quote.
For certain types of services, the quote is obligatory.
Why make an intelligible and precise quote?
The quote is a key document, because it allows you to reassure its recipient. Every detail of your sale or your service can be explained (in particular the price and the characteristics).
If the services or the requested service are complex or personalized, the quote is an excellent way to limit the complexity. To do this, you need to give a maximum of characteristics, while remaining intelligible.
Quotes are often used by buyers to benchmark and compare offers between different suppliers. An intelligible, personalized and clear quote will distinguish you directly from the competition. This is a very important point to improve your sales.
How to facilitate the edition of relevant quotes and improve your sales cycle, despite a complex offer?
To establish your quotes, you must rely on a powerful software with a modular service offer.
We advise you to equip your company with a CPQ solution, directly connected to the catalog of your offers. Especially if you sell complex, customizable products or services, with multiple options.
A CPQ solution (Configure Price Quote) is a software that allows sales teams to increase sales efficiency. This is thanks to the optimization of the price of offers and the creation of accurate and consistent quotes.
The CPQ software is an integral part of the CRM (Customer Relationship Management). It is responsible for selling the right product, according to the needs of each customer. Its main benefit is to accelerate the sales cycle, while increasing the productivity of sales teams.
The 3 pillars on which a CPQ is based are the following:
Configuration: the software searches for the best configuration in the catalog, and allows sales representatives to easily build a tailored proposal. The work of sales representatives is simplified and customers have personalized offers.
Pricing: the CPQ calculates the fairest price, based on the configuration established upstream. It takes into account a very large number of criteria, and defines in real time the most coherent price.
The quote: the application automatically generates accurate and consistent quotes, which include the elements of the configuration and the price. In addition, when the quote is edited, sales representatives can track the approval process in the tool. They thus have an overview of the sales made.
Thanks to the automation of tasks, the CPQ limits the risk of human errors, when creating quotes. And obviously, it saves sales reps a lot of time. The entire sales process is simplified and accelerated, which facilitates the engagement and conversion of your prospects into customers.
Around our powerful and versatile valuation and invoicing engine, our Opencell platform provides all the features you need to make your sales more reliable, simpler and faster. Our powerful and versatile invoicing engine can be configured to work with a complex marketing model (product combinations, bundles, pricing plans, or customer-specific pricing). With Opencell, updating prices and offers becomes an easy task, allowing your teams to gain autonomy and reactivity.
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