Should a quoting tool be an SMB’s first step to digital transformation?

There’s a lot to consider for decision-makers at small-to-midsized businesses (SMBs), when choosing a first digital sales tool -there’s also a lot of programs to choose from. The biggest and flashiest programs tend to be customer relationship managers (CRM) like Salesforce and HubSpot, which focus on managing and analyzing customer interactions to improve customer experience.

But is that really where SMBs need help? Large enterprises rely on these tools because they’re too big to keep track of their customers. Smaller firms know their customers; their interactions tend to be more personal, more memorable, and therefore, easier to keep track of. While CRM tools might be helpful down the line, SMBs often benefit more immediately from something less flashy and more foundational: a solid pricing and quoting tool.

Build trust with clients and customers

Anyone celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary will tell you that a real relationship is built less on candles and roses and more on doing the dishes. That’s true for customer relationships too: customers buying from SMBs need to trust their business partners to follow up on their agreements and trust is built on consistency.

Imagine a sales rep gives you a demo of their product. They show you a PowerPoint presentation tailored to your business, show you their catalog, offer you discounts and bundles specific to your industry, make you feel like what they’re offering is a good fit for your business. At the end of the presentation, you’re sold-they obviously know exactly what they’re doing.

And then they send you a quote that lists the price of their product as 20 percent higher than you discussed. You point out the inconsistency and they apologize and sent a corrected version-but this one lists a version of their product that they discontinued two years ago.

Which would you care about more? The nice presentations, which will only happen once or twice, or the inconsistent quoting which might happen every time-or enough times for you to worry?

Quoting tools like QuoteCX help ensure that no-one is ever thrown for a loop, not the customer and not the sales rep who missed an error in their quote. And it helps save money too.

Increase revenue faster

Numbers might not be the flashiest part of sales, but decision-makers for SMBs know more than anyone how they can make or break the bank. Errors like the incorrect pricing mentioned above can cause revenue leakage but revenue is also threatened when employees spend too much time on minor tasks.

Research by Plum Consulting on the effectiveness of digitization in SMBs shows that simple administrative tasks like pricing and quoting can eat up more than 120 days of the work year for small-to-midsized businesses. Over 5 percent of any given SMB employee’s workload is simple tasks like these and they add up fast.

Imagine what your sales team could do with 50 more work days in the year, or 75, or even 100. They could follow up on leads, go to networking events, make appointments with potential clients. Or, they could even take their kid to a baseball game-Gallup reports that burnout can cost businesses a third of potential revenue per employee, due to reduced productivity.

Redundant tasks like pricing and generating estimates seem small but they can add up, which means that automating them through quoting tools can boost revenue within weeks or even days of installation. Eliminating costly errors only adds to those savings.

Conclusion

Quoting software may not be as shiny as other tools, but it’s the workhorse of digital sales. Programs like QuoteCX offer increased revenue right from the get-go and relieve pressure almost immediately, giving decision-makers and sales teams room to breathe and refocus on more fulfilling and more productive work.

Originally published at https://scalefluidly.com.