Microsoft Excel has been the go-to quoting, sales estimate, and fee-calculating software solution for UK businesses for over 25 years. Despite the reliability and ubiquity of the software, Excel isn’t without its drawbacks. A growing number of businesses are now transitioning to bespoke customer quote software in place of the dreaded ‘sale spreadsheets’. Not only does cloud software provide a more secure and reliable interface for customer quote access, but it looks more professional as well.
In this article, we’ll look at the four main signs that it might be time for you to switch from Excel to a more useful and scalable sales quoting software solution.
1. Manual Review And Approval Process
With spreadsheet-based quotes, you always depend on someone to review the quotes before dispatching them to your customer. This may not seem like a big deal, but relying on a manual review process can be time consuming and opens the possibility of mistakes and inconsistencies. This is an issue that is compounded by having more people involved in the quote process. Also, an essential quote may be delayed if someone is busy, on holiday, sick – or simply forgets – putting sales opportunities at risk.
In comparison to Excel quoting, cloud quoting software automates the review and approval process, saving you time and removing the need for someone to manually oversee every detail of your quotes to guarantee accuracy.
2. Inaccurate Or Inconsistent Quotes
Quotation templates often grow organically and become extremely complex, with each iteration increasing the risk of inaccurate formulae or user errors. Sending out an inaccurate quote creates a very poor impression on your customer and may cost you the sale – and at the very least makes you look unprofessional and incompetent. Bespoke quotation software simplifies your fee calculations to guarantee accuracy each time, avoiding the risk of mistakes.
3. Your Quote Process Is Too Slow To Accommodate Your Growth Plans
If your business is preparing for expansion, your quotation process must be efficient enough to accommodate your needs year on year. As your business grows, keeping up with demand for quotations and estimates for customers can become more challenging and time-consuming. This eats up in-house resources and often creates a quote bottleneck that is difficult to keep on top of. With scalable software architecture to seamlessly accommodate your growth objectives and current needs, your sales team will be equipped to provide a responsive service and immediately create accurate and personalised quotes in response to demand.
4. Your Sales Team Is Too Busy Issuing Quotes To Make Sales
In most SMEs, sales resources are limited. Therefore, if your sales team are spending a disproportionate amount of their productive time manually creating quotes and estimates through multiple spreadsheets, it will impact their ability to actively seize opportunities and close deals. A key sign that you may benefit from migrating to quoting software is if your sales team lack the time to follow up quotes once they have been sent! Investing in quoting software will remove this issue by enabling your sales team to devote more of their time to creating value for your business, and less time on manual sales administration.
Book A Free Consultation
At Quintadena, we offer a customisable and scalable CPQ solution for UK SMEs that is ideally suited to the sales objectives and priorities of IT MSPs. To discuss the potential benefits for your business, please get in touch today to book a free, no obligation consultation, and explore the benefits of our innovative software platform first-hand.
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