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Quoting is The First Order of a New Line of Business

Business Process, Competitive Advantage, Entrepreneur, Productivity, Proposals, Quotes, Sales, Technology No Responses »

Jan 032012

A new line of business is usually a major investment of time and money – time in training, certification, and business process engineering as your company prepares to implement and support customers and a new product or service.

While sales training is also a part of this investment, there’s a significant component of a new business line that is often overlooked or “under”-looked: the ability to easily and naturally quote the new products and services.

To be blunt, I’ve seen many new lines of business fail before they get started simply because the sales team can’t propose it to their customers.

It’s natural enough to try to quote a new business line using your existing spreadsheets or word templates, and such is often the case. This results in a manual, half-baked, ill-understood proposal process that is first and foremost difficult – and that spells disaster for your new business line.

Do yourself and your business a big favor: Don’t just do a good job of setting up your proposals for that new business line: HIT IT OUT OF THE PARK. Go overboard. Make absolutely sure that your sales team can quote those new products and services while falling out of bed.

A few of the things that you should attend to:

Are you leaking sales?

Business Process, Competitive Advantage, IT, Kent, Knowledge Transfer, Managed Service Providers, Order Porter, Productivity, Proposals, Quotes, Sales, iPad No Responses »

Sep 092011

Five Major Sales Leaks That Could Be Affecting Your Company

My wife Anne gets after me because I’m not always careful enough with my spare change and bills, and they often fall out of my pocket. This often occurs in her car, and many a shopping excursion has been thus funded. She says I “leak money” (and does her best to restrict my access to the same).

Some of our customers leak sales rather than money, and this was brought home to me when I recently had a conversation with a good customer who had started using our Quosal Order Porter Mobile for the iPad application. He said he was doing three times as many quotes as he previously had been. Naturally, I think that’s great – but I realized, as he did, that he’d been missing out on two thirds of his sales opportunities before – he was leaking sales by writing them down on yellow sticky notes, or business cards, or just trying to commit to memory a customer’s request for a new product, or his own on-site observations of a customer’s needs. Now, he takes out his iPad and delivers the quote on-the-spot.

There are many ways to leak sales, and all of us do, sometimes on a daily basis. It’s a very costly habit. Here are a few ways that I see sales dribbling away for businesses of all types, but particularly our information technology audience. Continue reading »

Sales as a Service – A Perspective for Success

Business Process, Competitive Advantage, Proposals, Quotes, Sales No Responses »

Jul 082011

I’ve blogged in the past about the concept of “Sales as a Service” – in fact, one of the most important services that you provide to your new and existing customers. The concept applies to the overall sales process of course, but the quote and proposal aspect of the sales process is my focus.

Clearly, a properly, fully, and accurately configured solution is one of the most important services that the sales team can provide to the customer. In fact, it may be the most important service we ever provide – because a properly configured solution provides a smooth ride for the customer throughout the life of our relationship with them. A poorly configured, inaccurate solution will drive the need for far more services under less-than-optimal circumstances.

For those of us that provide services to our customers either as our primary business or in support of solutions we sell, it’s easy to draw the comparison between the “service of selling” to any other services we provide on a daily basis – and the customer’s reaction to those services is nearly the same. Continue reading »

Business Quoting Still Has a Long Way to Go

Competitive Advantage, Productivity, Proposals, Quotes No Responses »

Jun 132011

Quosal was formed on a foundation of beliefs that I had about the way business quotes are put together – a way that is sometimes not only not conducive to landing the deal, but can sometimes be counter to that purpose.

I believed then, and still believe today, that business quoting practices rarely put our best foot forward on a really basic professional level. Quotes and proposals are often shabbily prepared, not delivered on time, contain inaccuracies, are difficult to understand for the customer – you get the picture.

When we actively opened our offices and started Quosal rolling, I decided to use our own business startup as something of a research project. I set forth a few basic rules about our own procurement of anything bigger than a pen: that we would seek out at least 3 quotes for what we were purchasing, and that we’d track several “quote-based” metrics on each quote we were provided, such as:

Was the quote provided on time (we sought a time commitment from each vendor)
What was the format of the quote – hand-written? Verbal? Paper? PDF?
Did the quote contain inaccuracies? Math errors? Grammatical errors?
Did the quote accurately reflect what we’d asked for? Did it fill the need?

…and so on. Continue reading »

Quotes and Proposals: The Major Deliverable of Sales

Business Process, Entrepreneur, Kent, Proposals, Quotes, Sales No Responses »

Dec 132010

Throughout my career in sales, I’ve always felt a significant sense of accomplishment when completing and delivering a high-quality quote or proposal to a customer. This feeling continues through to this day, and is greatly augmented by our own product at Quosal.

The other side of this coin is the pressure I would feel as a salesperson when I had a backlog of proposals to complete. I know that many business people and their sales team labor under this pressure today. Indeed, I feel this even more intensely now, in those rare times when, despite our own tools, technology, business practices and policies, I don’t get my quotes and proposals turned around immediately. I feel this pressure more acutely because my own experience, research and expertise in the field of quote and proposal automation tell me that the sooner you get that accurate, attractive quote in your prospective customer’s hands, the more likely you are to win the business.

There’s a great reason for sales professionals and the entrepreneur salesman to feel a major sense of accomplishment when completing and delivering a quote: Quotes and proposals are indeed the major deliverable of the sales team. I can hear you out there saying, “No, CLOSED quotes are the major deliverable,” and of course that follows. However, you can’t close (win) a quote that has never been created, and you WON’T close an inaccurate, half-baked, ugly quote most of the time. Continue reading »

ConnectWise IT Nation: A Community Experience Unlike Any Other

Cloud, ConnectWise, Kent, Order Porter, Partners, Proposals, Quotes, Sales No Responses »

Nov 082010

Our team returned yesterday from a very full week at the ConnectWise IT Nation event in Orlando, Florida. This was our third trip to the event, and our best experience yet. Combined with our participation in and sponsorship of the HTG Q4 meetings at the beginning of the week, it was an incredibly, richly powerful experience.

Our levels of engagement with this event are unique in my experience. We are a ConnectWise user, AND a sponsor of the event and community, AND ConnectWise is also our customer and a user of Quosal. We’re not unique in this; the community has many such ties within the ecosystem that ConnectWise represents. It is one of the reasons, I believe, for the intense levels of energy-times-energy that I have not experienced in other communities – ever.

The event leaves one so overflowing with its vibrancy that the energy must have an outlet — therefore I blog, plan, strategize, sell, discuss, compare, analyze. The energy well has been replenished.

Among the standout experiences was the number of our Quosal clients that attended, and the rather amazing number of them that found me in the halls or in our booth, and related some version of, “Thank you for creating this product. You don’t know how much you’ve helped our business.” The sincerity and intensity of our customers was really somewhat moving, and surprisingly frank. This didn’t happen just a couple of times – dozens of our clients had this message for me. It was really a powerful experience.

Keith McFarland, author of “Bounce” and “The Breakthrough Company” was a real energizer. You know you’re listening to a good speaker when you want to launch out of your chair and enact the ideas that are cascading through your head, put fear aside and make bold moves into the future. This, combined with a general feeling of confidence among the ConnectWise partners, makes me feel great about the future.

I’m heading to Australia in Q1 2011 – and now it’s in writing. This is a big item on my bucket list, and a lifelong dream. It was an Australian-themed event, in any case – we dined with the Australian contingent of HTG (as well as their UK brethren) and had many great conversations and interactions with our good friends from Down Under (who universally feel that we are extreme lightweights in the partying department. I’m afraid.).

We had a great experience with Order Porter on the iPad in our booth at the vendor solutions pavilion. We processed more than 80 quotes, delivering them right then and there on the show floor. ConnectWise (who also uses Quosal and Order Porter) was doing the very same thing for add-on sales in its own booth. It was a great sales experience to do this, and we were delivering a great customer experience as well. It’s always a fun moment to see the startled look on a prospective customer’s face, when their cell phone vibrates as they receive their quote and Order Porter link. The revelation that they can do this themselves, for their own customers, is an “a-ha” moment for them.

A customer related to me the workflow he’d built into his sales process between Quosal and ConnectWise: “We’ve got it down to a science. I tell my salespeople, ‘Just mark the opportunity as Won in Quosal, and walk away!’”

I do not fear the Cloud, and I don’t believe information technology providers need to fear it either. On a high level, “The more things change the more they stay the same.” On an even higher level, imagine how many iterations we’ll continually go through over the years. From mainframes and timeshare to the disconnected PC to the Cloud and back again. I can hardly wait until my grandkids tell me about this awesome new technology called Local Area Networks. Arnie Bellini had a good message for the IT Nation on this very topic.

You know you’re getting old when you’re standing in the lounge thinking, “Who let all these kids in here?”

There were some terrific speakers and presentations at both the ITN and HTG events. The former, I witnessed; the latter, I heard about, as I’m not actually an HTG member. I definitely get presenter envy, as my own skill set in this area stopped progressing in the last century. I’m amazed at how much information can be presented in an hour with the preparation and technology brought to bear by talented people.

It goes on and on, the buttery goodness of such a well-executed event with the energy of true community. It’s great to witness and to be a part of it. I think a lot of people feel the same way. Congratulations to all involved, to the hosts and attendees alike. Can’t wait until next year.

Kent McNall

Kent McNall
President and CEO
Quosal LLC

The Craziest PowerPoint Slide Ever

Business Process, Competitive Advantage, Productivity, Proposals, Quotes, Sales No Responses »

Sep 202010

Look at that chart.

Just look at it!

That, according to Wired magazine’s Danger Room blog, is the Pentagon’s craziest PowerPoint slide.

It’s the The “Integrated Acquisitions Technology and Logistics Life Cycle Management” diagram, which purportedly describes the Pentagon’s process for developing, testing and acquiring new gear.

Stare long enough, and you’ll start to see why it takes a decade for the Defense Department to buy a tanker plane, or why Marines are still reading Web pages with Internet Explorer 6.

I recall a previous project of mine that involved seven different companies, each with its own agenda. I sat down and committed the project’s approval process to a PowerPoint slide, which I humorously titled “How a Bill Becomes a Law.” At the time, it was the ugliest thing I’d ever seen, with flow-chart lines going everywhere. But of course it was nothing compared to that Pentagon slide.

Does anything in your business resemble it?

We talk a lot about “personal productivity” and “lifehacking,” but we don’t spend enough time on company productivity, measured by the time it takes to turn a quote into an order, and how many steps are involved. And think about the steps it takes for a customer who wants to buy your product to get back to you. Print the quote. Sign the quote. Scan the quote. Get the scan into an email. Write the email. Send the email. Every step representing a moment where the customer can reconsider their decision.

Quosal and Quosal for ACT! will help you streamline this process, making it easy for your sales staff to get your approval, and Order Porter will make it even easier for your customers to say “Yes.”

But it’s all going to come down to you. How many flow chart lines can you delete from your process?

What does "seamless" mean to you?

Productivity, Proposals, Quotes, Technology No Responses »

Sep 032010

What does it mean to be “seamless?” In business software, we talk about a seamless integration, a seamless experience or a seamless workflow.

At Quosal, we’re constantly striving for seamless. We’re always looking for ways to remove the interruptions. It’s at the core of our experience. Quosal can turn quotes into ConnectWise service tickets. Quosal for ACT! can work independently of ACT! — you don’t need to remember to start one and then the other. Quosal saves everything in the background — there are no save buttons or error prompts asking you “do you want to save your changes?”

Let’s put some more stakes in the ground.

You should go from point A to point B without noticeable obstructions. There is no “point A-point-five.”

You shouldn’t have to start over when you move from one channel to the next. Everything contiguous.

The user should be thinking about the problem and not the tool. Carpenters drive nails — swinging a hammer is beside the point.

The system should have multiple component parts and interact with multiple systems — and the user should neither notice nor care.

Finally, here’s what seamless isn’t.

Seamless doesn’t mean I change my process to match your software. Don’t ask me to change to avoid your interruption of service. Providing a seamless experience doesn’t mean you force everyone to wear togas.

The real investment needed in your proposal processes

Business Process, Kent, Proposals, Quotes No Responses »

Sep 022010

Do you feel that you have a good understanding of the value of your quote and proposal processes to your company? Is it something you’ve really thought about?

I’m going to challenge those who might answer “yes.” The first challenge: You probably haven’t thought about it that much. The second challenge: You’ve probably dramatically underestimated that value.

The value of these processes is direct, daily and in some cases, virtually inestimable, as they enable and unblock the growth of an organization. They relate directly to the image of your organization — the customer perception of professionalism and quality. The accuracy of quotes and proposals leads to good, win/win business. Overall organizational productivity can be dramatically and positively improved.

All of this can be worth tens or hundreds of thousands to a company, yet some are unwilling to invest as little as the price of a laptop and a few hours of time, while others may purchase the lowest-priced solution to save a few hundred dollars.

What is the right investment?

There are three investments you should consider when improving the infrastructure of your organization in the area of quote and proposal automation.

1. The investment in your quoting platform and tools.
2. The investment of *your time* in full and proper implementation of that platform.
3. The investment in professional services that gets you all the way there, cost effectively. Being cost-effective also means an appropriate and effective use of your own time.

We work with many companies that really need (and would greatly benefit from) investment in all three areas, but invest in only one, or perhaps two. This will not lead to maximum ROI, and may not even lead to basic success.

Under-investment in your quote and proposal automation can negatively impact your business for years to come, since most of us tend to live with mistakes far longer than we should.

Don’t Be Ugly By Accident!

Proposals, Quotes No Responses »

Aug 122010

What does a dating site like OKCupid have to do with quotes and proposals? Plenty.

OKTrends is the official blog of OKCupid, and they must have a fantastic team of statisticians. Its fascinating stuff for stats geeks like me, who play fantasy football and eagerly debate whether Chipper Jones will make it into the Hall of Fame. He’s a lock. But I digress.

Don’t Be Ugly By Accident! was OKTrends recent blog post sharing its findings on the snap judgments based on a person’s photograph, and then compared the “yes/no” snap judgment against several variables — the time of day each picture was taken, shutter speed, depth of field, etc., which can be cribbed from EXIF data included in the digital files taken by most modern cameras.

What’d they learn?

If you want more dates, take better pictures of yourself. Don’t use a camera phone. Using a flash adds seven years to your perceived age. Make sure you’re the center of attention. Take pictures with good lighting.

In other words, don’t be ugly by accident. The little details pay big dividends.

“Technique can make or break your photograph, and the right decisions can get you more dates.”

So, again, what does that have to do with quotes and proposals? Just as technique can make or break your photograph, your technique with quotes and proposals can make or break your sale.

Etilize allows you to include product photos and specifications. People like to buy things they can see. If they can visualize your product, they can visualize how it will fit into their lives and their businesses, and they’ll be more likely to make a purchase.

Order Porter allows you to include video-based content. It could be a video of your product in action. Or a video of yourself going over the proposal in detail, or even simply thanking the customer for the opportunity to win their business. People buy from people.

Quosal and Microsoft Word can be used together to create true, repeatable, multi-section proposals.

Don’t be ugly by accident. Deliver attractive, accurate, and high-quality on purpose.

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