channelcentral Blog

One of the costs of running a sales force is the cost of managing quotations. By ‘managing’ we include activities such as scoping, researching, product selection, creating, pricing, re-pricing and technically validating. By ‘costs’ do we actually mean time? If Sales are preparing quotations or re-pricing an old quote are they selling? Is it an opportunity cost rather than an actual cost due to the way sales people are remunerated?

Whether you consider quotation management as selling is an interesting topic in itself. It’s certainly part of the sales process and a good quotation will improve the conversion rate from quote to order.

So when a business like ours says ‘we could save you time’ you are probably both interested and sceptical. You are interested because if you can save time you can generate more opportunities. You are sceptical because many systems that are designed to save people time simply don’t.

channelcentral.net has invested time to speak to iQuote users to understand how they use iQuote, how they operate, what we could do better and where we can save them time. The sheer velocity, especially in broadline Distribution, that quotes are delivered sets the challenge. How could we speed up lightning? However, when we looked at the areas that Sales became hamstrung by process and complexity we started to appreciate how we accelerate the end to end experience.

To be continued…