Many businesses are asked to produce quotes for customers.
Each quote represents an opportunity and has taken time to
produce. Unfortunately, many businesses put copies of the
quotes into a ring binder or filing cabinet and leave it at
that.
There are two obvious drawbacks to this approach. First of
all, the quotes are probably forgotten about and not
actively converted into orders. The second drawback is that
the customer may ring back and request a copy of the quote
or ask for a new quote based on different materials. With a
manual paper based system this means looking through filing
cabinets to find the original quote, and then photocopying or re-typing to send
it out again.
Even if a business uses a semi-computerised approach such as
using a word processor and systematic storage using
filenames to store the quotes in a logical manner, there are
still problems. The main problem is that this system does
not make life easy in terms of managing the recent quotes
and converting them to orders. The second drawback is that
if the customer requests changes, the document has to be
edited and sometimes the calculations of totals etc. have to
be worked out again and typed back into the correct places.
An easy to use quotes management system can solve
these problems.
If your customer calls back with a question, it is
easy to bring up all the information. This gives the
customer confidence that their business is important
to you, and that you are organised.
Once your customers are stored in a database, it
becomes much easier to send out marketing materials
by email or post.