Challenge 3: Copy and Paste: past tense
15 August 2011
Copying and pasting in quotations and contracts. We’ve all seen it. We all do it, because it’s just easy. But it’s also dangerous.
Tempting
Producing a new quotation can often take quite a lot of time. So it can be tempting to pull an old quotation from your records and to copy parts of the text and paste them into the new quotation. Of course you try to be careful. The old quote you chose was certainly for a comparable client with a comparable problem. But even then, danger can be just around the corner.
Top 5 hazards
To give you an idea of the things that can go wrong when using copy and paste on existing quotations, I have put together a Top 5 of hazards for you. Guard against these hazards – or better still – solve them. The solution is closer than you think and I will present it to you at the end of the Top 5.
1. Incorrect information
Is there anything more annoying than incorrect information? For example, you have given a client a big discount based on loyal buying behavior. This discount is not standard. Then you want to produce a quotation for a different client with comparable needs and – you guessed it – when copying the quote you leave the hefty discount in. The client will be pleased, but you won’t.
2. Inconsistent information
Sometimes information is simply inconsistent. On one page you made a change, but you forgot to make the change elsewhere in the text. This causes confusion for the client, but also for you.
3. Incomplete quotations
You have chosen a comparable quotation and add some options because the client’s needs differ somewhat. The risk that you will forget to include part of it in the quotation is considerable. This could causing things to become confused, as you had already promised delivery of the part verbally, hadn’t you?
4. Lay-out problems
Lay-out problems may be caused when using old quotations. Existing text is supplemented with new text, with for example another type face. You remove a chapter – that does not apply to the new customer – from the quotation and then find you have a problem with the chapter numbering. Then you forget to adjust the table of contents.
5. Obsolete information
And then there’s obsolete information. How annoying can obsolete conditions, rates, texts and prices be? Remember, your quotation is binding as soon as the customer agrees to it. Can you still deliver what you have promised?
The solution
Copy and paste behavior can be a thing of the past. But to make this happen, you must offer your sales representatives a good alternative. Because it is certainly not an option to write out a quotation from scratch. As discussed in last week’s article, saving and defining knowledge is the first step to making information available. A next step is defining standard texts. When this information is in a fixed format, you can then use a smart configurator to put together a product that satisfies the client’s wishes and requirements. It is a matter of answering questions about the product, after which the answers not only lead to the necessary information to start production, but also to the content of a quotation.
Maintenance
Of course all fixed information and text needs to be kept up-to-date. But this now takes place in one place for the whole company and not at every random pc. From that time on, every sales person will have access to correct and up-to-date information and mistakes will start to be a thing of the past.
I’m curious about your experiences in this area. How do you organize the quotation process? Don’t hesitate to share your experiences and post a reaction!
Next week I will be discussing the production of good content for a quotation: the next challenge!
Judith Steinmeier is Communication Manager at Sofon - supplier of sales support software. As Judith has a lot of contact with clients, she has a clear insight into how companies that deliver customer-specific products and services can realize improvements within their sales and quotation process.
Comments
No entries
