Your service business is already creating and sending quotes to prospective clients, and you’ve likely even seen some success from the quotes you’ve presented. Still, as your business grows this quoting process may need to be reevaluated and perfected in order to create more professional quotes for your business.
Quotes are one of the first impressions your business makes on a prospect, and while a great quote can encourage a quick and easy sales process, a quote lacking critical details or containing inaccuracies could be the reason a prospect looks elsewhere.
Because these documents can set the tone for your business, its future client relationships and its profit potential, it’s important to make sure your quoting process is as efficient and effective as possible.
To help you do that, we’re sharing the following:
Quotes are formal documents that detail the goods or services you’re offering along with the pricing for that work. The document outlines your work so your prospect or client knows the services you will provide, how long it will take and the cost of your services.
Your quote sets clear expectations in a concise, professional document, providing all the information needed for the client’s decision-makers to make an informed decision about working with your business.
At a minimum, your quote should include the following:
In addition to this critical information, your quote should also look professional and consistent with your brand. Make sure to include your company logo and other aspects that help align the quote with your brand identity. When you use a unique quote template you can better distinguish your company from your competition — a step that’s incredibly important as clients are still evaluating your business.
The quote-to-cash process spans your entire sales process for your organization. Starting with quote configuration and customer approval and leading to fulfilling your service agreement and invoicing your client and receiving payment, this process encompasses all aspects of your service business and can easily become a complex process.
TIP: To simplify this process, many service businesses find digital tools that can support a more efficient quote-to-cash workflow — saving your team important billable hours and creating a more consistent sales process for your clients.
When you see your quote-to-cash process in its entirety it’s easy to see that the quality of your quotes can directly affect your revenue and profitability. Take the time now to evaluate your quotes, what you’re doing well and what common problems may be impacting your quote-to-cash process.
The quoting process can be fraught with issues and without taking steps to mitigate those errors they could be preventing you from filling your pipeline and growing your business. Let’s take a look at some of the most common quoting issues facing professional services businesses.
Quotes are the beginning step of your revenue cycle. Streamlining your quoting process is a proven way to reduce time waste, create more accurate business records and improve professionalism in the eyes of your clients.
Creating quotes for your business is more than just a way to keep your pipeline filled, it is the start of your revenue cycle and one of the first impressions you make on a prospective client. Improving your quoting process can help solidify your brand, build professionalism and create a more solid foundation for your client journey beyond your sales pipeline.
Developing a professional quote is the start of a successful quote-to-cash cycle, keeps your business profitable and delivers a better customer experience. But many companies still rely on manual quoting systems that waste valuable time and can be highly inaccurate.
A study by McKinsey & Company shared that subscription-based service businesses that optimized their quote-to-cash processes had greater success in adding new accounts, growing existing accounts and reducing customer churn — resulting in a growth rate four times higher than other similar businesses.
Quoting is the start of your quote-to-cash process and it will have a direct impact on your revenue and profits. You can optimize the process by implementing digital tools that can help you more efficient workflows and demonstrate your value to your clients
When you’re first starting out, a simple quote template may be all your team needs to support a successful sales process, but as your business grows so does the effort it takes to balance attracting new clients with your existing client work.
Manually creating quotes may work if you’re offering a physical product or a standard service, but in the professional services industry, you’ll likely need to customize every quote to a specific client or client project.
Introducing quoting software can bring automation to your quoting process and reduce the time and effort needed to create professional, consistent quotes for your clients. In addition to resolving some of the common quoting issues we share above, using quoting software can also provide some additional benefits to your service business.
While some businesses may get by with the addition of a simple quoting software, most professional services businesses benefit from connecting their quotes to the other aspects of their client journey through a more robust client work management system.
A platform like Accelo connects your sales and quoting, project management, tickets, retainers and billing to streamline your client work and collect your business data in one centralized tool. With the ability to build custom quote templates and unique features like the quote-to-project conversion that converts approved quotes to projects in just one click, Accelo streamlines your entire quote-to-cash process in one platform.
Automating your quoting process is the best way to ensure that you consistently create and share professional and accurate quotes with your prospects and clients. From custom templates to better client records, quoting software will save your team time, improve accuracy and help you stay informed about the profit potential of new client work.
Advanced quoting software like Accelo allows users to easily create new branded quote templates with the flexibility your client work requires, share new quotes with internal stakeholders for review and forecast the potential revenue of your sales pipeline.
Interested in seeing how you can transform your quoting process? Request a demo to see how you can create better quotes for your prospects and clients using our end-to-end client work management system.
