The Challenge:

Many of your customers receive quotations that consist of a price, item/service description and cost …. not too exciting…. especially sending spread sheet like quotes. How do you stand out ?

The Solution:

Add color/images to your quotes.

Depending on your industry, embedding product pictures, html images, pictorials or graphs to your quotes and sending them by email can strongly increase buying interest from your customers and may significantly distinguish your quotations from your competitors.

A University of Minnesota study proved, that including a simple graphic with text increases the persuasiveness of a message by 47 percent !

Please click here for an example of sample quotes with embedded images.

The Challenge:

To make sure your customers remember your value proposition… in addition to your product/service descriptions and pricing.

Scenario: You've just spoken to your customer about a purchase and you are about to send the quotation for him or her to review. The person receives the quotation regarding your products and services. Other than the basis of price, your customer has a difficult time differentiating your quotation from your competitors.

The Solution:

Provide a value statement on your quotations.

Prior to sending your quotation, ask your customer exactly what they want to accomplish as a result of purchasing the products and or services from you.

On the front of the quotation (not the cover letter) briefly outline the objective of the Quotation, and the deliverables that purchasing from you will provide. iQuote's 'Quotation Summary' can store and display your value proposition text on the quote.

This will remind the buyer as to why you stand out from the competition, and will help significantly to put your quote in good favor.

The Challenge:

Ensure that your quotes are optimized to encourage customer buying behavior.

When you provide your quotation to a customer, some may pick at the pricing of each line item, while others just want a high level investment summary for your product and service offering.

The Solution:

Present your quotations in a way that fits your buyers' purchasing temperament. Provide pricing layout with or without line item totals, an investment summary, quote sections and or options.

It is often easier for your customer to understand the quotation when you break it into several sections.

For example: Primary Equipment, Installation, Support, Accessories, Options and applying sub totals to each section, "Without showing line item pricing". This will empower your customer to look at the "Big Picture" of the quotation rather than
minor item by item pricing.

A second strategy is to show sub total pricing, without a final grand total at the end of
the quote. Click here for an example.

This strategy can help your customers to avoid sticker shock when tallying the entire investment. In addition, this approach reduces the likelihood of your customer 'shopping the deal' with line by line price comparisons.

The Challenge:

How can I close more of my quotes and improve customer relations at the same time?

Scenario: You've sent the sales quote to your customer and you are waiting
for the various decision makers to have a meeting to review the documentation. You then follow up with the customer only to find out their internal meeting was canceled, yet they went with your competition.

• Why did you lose ?
  
  
• Was it your pricing ? Was it your products or services ??
  
  

The Solution:

Address your customers' questions and potential objections before sending the quote.

No matter who your client contact is, there are people influencing the purchasing decision site unseen that will review your quotation.

Before sending the quote, suggest to the customer that you wish to
present the quote for review by means of a brief online meeting before you officially
submit the quote.

In addition, ask who else will be involved in reviewing the quote and offer to have a one on one online meeting with each participant or at your discretion (based on the corporate culture of your client's organization) recommend a group online meeting.

An iQuote online meeting will allow you to identify all the quote influencers, and
resolve/answer quote questions, objections and make any necessary changes to the
quote output… thus increasing the likelihood of quote acceptance.

iQuote online meetings are fast, non obtrusive to your customers and provide a very effective way to gain customer census on your quote prior to official submission.

The Challenge:

How to identify a customer's positive buying signals for your quote.

The Solution:

End user involvement questions regarding your quote are asked by your customer.
In many quote scenarios if you're going to win the order, your customer will be sharing information with you that you will need for implementation of your product/service.
These 'involvement' questions are things the customer must ask him/herself once the've already purchased your product/service.

Depending on your industry, If they're not actively sharing that kind of information with you, you're going to lose.

The strategy:

After you've sent your quote, start asking your customer 'involvement
questions' they would have to ask themselves after they say yes to you,
eg, "Frank, what do you plan to do with the old system once you've
replaced it with the newer version ? Is there anything you can salvage from
it ?"

Well intentioned involvement questions can go a long way to increase the close rate of
your quotes.