Automating quotes: from enquiry to signed quote without retyping

In many SMEs a quote goes like this: an enquiry comes in by email, someone copies the details into a spreadsheet or text document, looks up the prices, creates a PDF, sends it on and makes a note in their calendar to follow up later. When the customer agrees, the same details are entered once more in the accounting software for the invoice.

Every time information is retyped, it costs time and creates a chance of errors. A wrong VAT number, a forgotten discount, an old price. Automating quotes means first of all that data is entered once and then travels along by itself all the way to the invoice.

The steps from enquiry to agreement

Anyone automating the process starts with the steps that already exist today. At most companies there are six.

1. The enquiry. A customer fills in a form on the website or sends an email. The details land automatically in your CRM or quoting system, with a confirmation to the customer.
2. The qualification. Someone assesses whether the enquiry is a fit and what information is still missing. A good form asks for that information straight away, so there is less emailing back and forth.
3. The drafting. Based on the enquiry, a quote is put together from a template and a fixed price list.
4. The review. A responsible person reads through the quote and approves it.
5. Sending and agreement. The customer receives a link to the quote and can approve it online or sign it digitally.
6. The handover. After agreement, the data goes automatically to planning and to accounting, where it forms the basis for the invoice.

Automation mainly removes the retyping between the steps. The steps themselves remain.

Templates and a fixed price list

Most of the time saved comes from good templates. A template contains the fixed text that comes back in every quote: your company details, the general terms and conditions, the validity period, the payment term and the way the customer can give their agreement.

You also need a product catalogue or price list in which each service or product appears once, with a description, a unit price and the correct VAT rate. When drafting, you pick the lines and fill in the quantities. The system calculates the totals, the VAT and any discounts.

For companies with many variants it pays to work with bundles: fixed combinations of lines that often go together. A quote that used to take an hour then becomes a matter of a few choices.

Keep the price list in one place. As soon as prices also sit in old documents and loose spreadsheets, wrong amounts turn up again.

Follow-up with reminders

A quote sent without follow-up is a missed opportunity. Customers often request several quotes. Whoever follows up on time and clearly stays in the picture at the moment the customer decides.

An automated system helps in three ways.

• Visibility. You can see which quotes have been opened and which have not. A quote that has not been opened after a few days may have ended up in spam.
• Reminders to yourself. After a set number of days, the responsible person gets a task to call or email.
• Reminders to the customer. A short, friendly email when the quote is about to expire, with the link to approve it.

Set up those reminders deliberately. One automatic reminder to the customer is helpful. Three in a week is irritating. Personal follow-up by phone often remains the most effective, especially for larger orders.

What you keep in your own hands

Automation is strong at repeatable work. For the parts that need judgement, a person remains the best choice.

Estimating complex jobs. A renovation, a bespoke project or a service with many unknowns calls for a site visit or a conversation. The system can draw up the quote once the estimate has been made. You make the estimate yourself.

Reviewing before sending. Have every quote approved by someone before it goes out, especially at the start. Otherwise an error in a template repeats itself in every quote.

Pricing and discounts. Who may give which discount is a decision for the owner. Record that in the system with an approval step for discounts above a certain threshold.

The conversation with the customer. A quote is often the start of a negotiation. An automatic reminder can get that conversation going. Having it is up to you.

Where do you start?

Start with the quotes that come back most often. Create one template and one price list for them and let the team work with them for a month. Then connect the form on the website so that enquiries come in automatically. Only after that do you tackle the handover to accounting. Anyone who wants to connect everything at once loses track of what works.

What you can do now

• Take your last ten quotes and mark which parts were the same each time. That is the basis of your template.
• Put all the prices that currently sit in different documents together in one list, with the correct VAT rate per line.
• Agree after how many days an open quote is followed up and by whom.

From Ghent we build quoting processes like these for SMEs across Flanders. On our page about CRM and automation you can read how we approach it, while hetdesignbureau.be can design the quote templates in your house style.