The quoting process needs to be afforded a psychological strategy and continuous training. It should not be as easy as hiring someone, giving them cubicle, phone, email address and a chair.
Its one thing when people see your company’s awesome and attractive advertisement, and when they do call in to enquire.
Sit down with the whole of your team regularly (especially marketing and product development/innovation); discuss how the quotation process should go to catch sales. It’s in understanding what your product can do versus what the prospective customer wants to achieve. Business is about offering value which clients use to leverage their business dealings, not ripping people off.
Respect and courtesy are intertwined with business, kindred spirits as some say. Being courteous gives assurance to prospective clients as to why they should stay with you. It humbles them to your brand.
Training. Whoever handles the quotation process, after being part of the discussion mentioned above, has to understand your company and its product offerings. Their duty sounds easy as just capturing what marketing (even word of mouth) has caught, but it’s totally delicate. The fish brings itself to their attention; all they have to do in not scare them away but give a good impression of the company.
They are the ones that execute what is being preached in this post, amen.
As the manager, you have to make sure they are humble to: respect and courtesy (following up and updating enquirers).
Points to note:
- Nice and short welcoming greetings: “…this is Tiisetso at your assistance”.
- Listen to what they need, and for what they are going to use it for. Don’t force it out of them though; it might be for discreet purposes.
- Confirm what they just said they need.
- You are at service here, get their contact number first, and then email address, so that you can email them what you require in order to prepare a quotation. Ask them if they are ok to listen to the requirements over the phone.
- The trick is not to scare them off by requesting too much detail at first. Avoid giving them anything that they could procrastinate over, if possible.
- Travelling to clients. It depends on how much you can make from each sale. Evaluate your company’s ability against the possibilities. Maybe try it on a couple of clients, as a test.
- Help them to use your company’s product offering effectively to match their need/use. This is how you keep them close; this is how you stay in their mind as a good supplier/service-provider, this way they will come back and refer others.
They need a service rendered, not for you to rip them by selling them more than they need.
Formulated training. Make the quoting stage as part of your business model; it has to be documented in some form of a training manual. For each learning point, give a reason as to why.
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