In today’s business world, do you think selling without a quote is possible?
If it’s a YES, then your prospect might really be interested in you, the product, or the service. And they won’t bother to look at the price and would be hesitant in losing you. Admit it, there doesn’t exist a prospect who wouldn’t ever negotiate on the price.
It’s a NO when you know that you’re competing against thousands of service providers who are offering similar services as yours. And to keep the ball in your court, you must submit a quote that’s eye-catchy and increases your chances of winning the deal.
But how well do you write your sales quotes? Are your quotes equipped enough to win the deal? How do you optimize your quotes without losing quality? What’s the difference between a quote and a proposal?
In this blog, we help you find answers to all the above questions. So read along!
A business quote or quotation is a document where you provide your prospects with information regarding your services, product, and pricing. In most cases, a business quote is written as a response to an RFP, when an organization requests quotes from multiple vendors to avail of their services.
And majorly, a quote is different from a proposal and an estimate, but they are indeed used for the same purposes. But they surely have their differences that we’d like to highlight.
Both quotes and proposals are sent to the prospects to provide information about the services and products. A quote is mostly sent when the prospect is not interested to know about your organization and is focused on getting answers to questions such as ‘What, when, how, and how much.’
A proposal is a detailed version of your offerings which not only address the ‘what, when, how, and how much’, but also provide details about your organization, your capabilities, past experiences, authenticity, etc.
A quote and an estimate share the same objectives but are written and presented in different forms. When writing a business quote, you take a more formal tone and stick to explaining more about the pricing and legal aspects of the project, which when agreed upon is followed by an agreement.
An estimate is a document of guesswork. You name the approximate price of the product or the service. It neither contains any legal information nor is written in a formal tone. It’s more like giving information about something that the prospect is new to or has no idea about and educating the prospect about its prices.
When you’re creating your business quotes, you’re focused on providing the best price to your prospects for the services or the products. But you must also focus on creating quotes that will help you convert your deals.
And here are 4 useful tips to improve your process of quote writing.
1. Adhere to a proper structure
Any professional document that you send to your prospects must adhere to its respective structure. While there is no hard and fast structure to follow, there are templates that will help you craft a better-looking quote.
2. Use visuals to highlight the project
Sometimes words are not enough and can be considered monotonous, and an added task. If you’re selling services or products that are unique or rare, you might want to consider using images or videos to make the quote more attractive and understandable.
Using visuals benefits you in two ways: you don’t have to write and draft quotes with a lot of technical words, and second, you will submit quotes that are engaging, thus compelling your prospects to read the entire document.
While not many organizations follow this, but using images and videos will make you stand out.
3. Use of quote-to-cash software
You already know what’s a quote, but what’s a quote-to-cash?
Quote-to-cash is the system where your prospects not only signs the document for approval but can also make immediate payments. This process eradicates a step in where the prospect signs the document and then you send the invoice to pay. With quote-to-cash, you can convert prospects faster.
Of course, you will not be able to provide your prospects with this feature until you use a quote-to-cash software. So, if you want to close deals faster, get quote-to-cash software.
4. Build a template with a strong brand identity
If you’re someone who deals with quotes and proposals day in and out, you’ll want to create templates for each of these documents to save time. It’s important that you create templates demonstrating your brand identity at its best.
So, how do you make these documents get their best look in a short time? You can't. And that’s the reason you must avail quoting software that comes with multiple templates to choose from, and an editor to edit the templates when needed. You don’t have to create or edit the templates from scratch and reuse templates that suit your brand identity.
Yakkadraft outperforms the competition. We offer multiple integrations, document analytics, performance metrics, numerous templates for creating quotes, proposals and estimates, and a plethora of other features.
Think we are exaggerating? Then try us out!