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An online quoting system focusing EXCLUSIVELY on the unique needs of sales reps. |
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Articles
The Value of RepQuotesImagine you, a Manufacturer’s Rep or Agency, and a Principal are in the process of deciding to work together. Eventually you get down to the brass tacks of how the Principal wants you to submit customer order information to him. What if the Principal told you "If you have access to the internet, it’s easy, and not only will we get the information we need to fulfill the order, but it also helps you manage the order starting at the "Opportunity" stage, because it’s an online quoting tool that will generate a signature ready quote you can give to your prospect. We’ll set you up with a user name and password and you can submit the order information to us online. We have a screen that lets you add the prospect’s information, including multiple contacts and even attach documents electronically such as drawings, emails, spreadsheets, documents, etc. Enter as much or as little as needed. From there, you can actually create a quote to give to the prospect because this system actually helps you manage and execute the entire quote process. It has our latest product catalog, with thumbnail pictures of items and links to additional information. On the quote screen there’s a price field that you can adjust as needed, but we also have custom price books that you can assign a prospect to that automatically generates the appropriate price." "From there you can print or email a "Quick Quote", which looks like a typical Customer Order except it says Quote at the top and has an identifying quote number. As you’d expect, it includes a top section with your agency’s letterhead information and logo and the customer’s bill to and optional ship to information. There’s a quote date, a quote expiration date and an acceptance line for the prospect to sign. If you need more than a Quick Quote, the other options are to generate a "Proposal Letter" or a "Formal Quote". The Proposal Letter is a document with your agency information at the top and an open section where a text message can be added drawn from the External Notes section of the system. The "Formal Quote" has the "Quick Quote" information in it, but includes a preceding "Proposal Letter" and a concluding "Terms and Conditions" section. That’s good, but to make it even more flexible we allow you to add informational free form text in key areas in the Quote, including below each line, so that it’s clear to everyone what’s being quoted. These can be visible to the prospect when they receive the Quote or hidden from view. It’s your choice. These are commonly referred to as Internal and External Notes." "A big benefit of this system is that because you’re capturing all this information up front, once the Quote is accepted by the customer, we can easily convert the Quote into an order in our back-end manufacturing system. By using this system, it’s building a warehouse of information we can both use to better respond to sales opportunities. We end up with a database full of past quote, order, prospect and customer information that we can use as templates for future quotes and orders. We can generate reports on any of the data we’ve collected and we’ll both have visibility into our sales pipeline. We won’t need to call you to ask what’s going on in your territory because we can just call up the pipeline report to tell us that. It even has Win/Loss information fields available so that Quotes that don’t result in sales can be commented on and analyzed and close ratios can be tracked. Do you want to know more?" You’re hooked, so you say "Yes." "There’s another aspect of the system. It has a unique tool that allows you to manage the prospect from the "Raw Lead" stage all the way to a completed order. To our way of thinking this is what we always hoped a Contact Management or CRM system would be able to do, but can’t because it can’t process transactions because it doesn’t have product catalogs or price book capabilities. Our tool is called the "Quote to Order Pipeline" and you use it to promote the prospect through the system by clicking on the appropriate box. The Quote/Prospect can start at the "Opportunity" level, which is what a qualified lead could be entered as. You don’t have to immediately add detailed line information at this time, but you’ve established a "holding place" for the prospect. This information is now available for follow up and reporting purposes. As you start working with the prospect, you can add internal notes to the Quote that document any contact or discussions you have with them and any follow-up tasks that need to be done. CRM systems typically won’t let you manage a Quote transaction because they’re simply not transaction management systems because they lack the built-in product catalog or price book functions. We’re very pleased with this system and we know that it’s made us more profitable by streamlining our processes and cutting down on the number of order errors we get from the field. We’ve also set a goal for ourselves of being the easiest company for any of our Reps to do business with and this is a big step towards doing that. We hope that by having state-of-the-art systems, our Reps wake up every day wanting to sell our products more than any other that they carry. We pride ourselves in giving you the best tools to do your job. In this case, these tools don’t just help you, but everyone involved in the sales chain. We think you’ll like it for a lot of reasons and we’re happy to offer it to you." "Finally, because we want you to use this system in a way that works best for your agency, we’re going to let you add to it. We want you to use it for all your other prospects and customers and all the catalog information for all the other lines you represent so you can combine all your products together in one system and generate single Quotes to prospects that include all your products. You’ll also be able to create custom output reports so that you can split the order out to the different Principals you represent. Security in this system is solid and you can assign different levels of access to everyone in your agency. They only see what you want them to see and that applies to Prospects/Customers, Product Catalogs, Price books, Quotes and Orders. The system also has commission calculating capabilities so you’ll be able to get a download of that information for entry into your accounting or commission tracking system." You pause because this sounded great up until this point. You’re wary about putting all your proprietary information into somebody else’s system and that just killed your interest. Prospect/Customer and product information from other Principals is too valuable to put in the hands of another Principal. If you did do it and your relationship ended with that Principal, how would you get back all of your proprietary data? Too bad, because it sounds like a really slick system and something that could really markedly improve the efficiency of your agency. You could make quoting more seamless and streamlined and say goodbye to doing quotes on spreadsheets and word processing programs. With its ability to attach electronic documents to any quote, order or customer, everything would be in one place, accessible from anywhere. It would make forecasting for your Principals almost automatic and it would give you an edge in representing other lines of product because you could show that you were a responsive Rep who could generate Quotes to customers efficiently and quickly as long as you had an internet connection available. Arrgh. Nothing’s easy! You pause again... and a thought strikes you! What if...? What if instead of the Principal "owning" this system, you could "own" it? Why not? It involves gathering your prospect/customer information and product catalog information and pricing and most of that already exists in an electronic file format anyway. Isn’t there a system out there that can just suck all this information into it and you could quickly start producing and managing quotes? What if there was a system out there that you, as an agency, could buy, or better yet just subscribe to, so you don’t have to buy the software, which could do substantially all of the things that the Principal mentioned?
There is such a system and it’s called www.RepQuotes.com. It’s available today and was developed to focus exclusively on the unique needs of Manufacturer’s Reps and Agencies "Unlike other online Quoting Tools, RepQuotes.com is first and foremost focused on the needs of the Manufacturer’s Rep. The Rep is our customer and we serve him by solving his problems in dealing with customers, quotes and representing multiple Principals and product lines. We give the Rep an online home, "owned" by the Rep, where he can manage customers, products, catalogs, quotes and orders. It’s his forever. RepQuotes.com is tailored so we deliver exactly what satisfies the Rep in the Quote-to-Order management process, understanding that in order to do that we must give the Rep exactly what he needs in order to satisfy the needs of the customer AND the Principal." Tony Mcconn RepQuotes is a hosted Sales Force Automation (SFA) tool and is powered by WrightTools, an enterprise level front-end solution for ERP systems and a sophisticated quote to order management system and product configuration tool originally developed for manufacturers and service entities. TrueSales Corporation leverages 15 years of experience gained in deploying WrightTools systems and utilizes the eTransact capabilities of that system to bring RepQuoes.com to market, the unique hosted sales force automation solution focusing on the needs of Manufacturer’s Reps and Agencies. |
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