If you’re in the business of designing, selling, transporting, or assembly/installation of modular or prefab housing, you know that this market is growing faster than anybody expected, which has made the competition more prevalent and aggressive than anybody expected.
If there was ever a time to ensure that your sales proposal is better designed, perfectly priced, and first to arrive in a prospect’s inbox, that time is now. Which means if you’re not using quote management software to build, send, and track your proposals, the time to start doing so is right now.
Here are three ways you can close more sales in the modular housing market using a sales proposal automation solution, also known as configure, price, quote (CPQ) software:
Brand building for the prefab home building market: if you’re not setting yourself apart from the competition with proposals that 1) reflect and build your brand, and 2) are targeted specifically to the modular housing market, you’re likely to get lost in the shuffle.
Go global: modular housing is growing most quickly in the Asia-Pacific region. Taking advantage requires proper timing of every RFP follow-up, and no matter what time zone you’re living in, you should trigger your proposal and any and all replies/updates/follow-up to drop at your prospect’s local time.
Integrate CPQ with CRM: you’re using CRM to prospect, organize contacts, and forecast — add quote management software to it and use your CRM to create, send, and track quotes.
Let’s dig a little deeper into these three ways you can use quote management software to build a business in the building business.
Brand building for home builders
No matter what market you’re in, the strength and visibility of your brand matters just about more than anything. Just ask Manorwood, Excel, or Linwood.
As someone selling into the modular housing market, you need to build your brand with your prospects, and do so in every communication — especially your sales proposals, which will likely be reviewed alongside the competition’s.
While most CPQ systems include dozens, if not hundreds, of professionally designed proposal templates, the best of the quote-management-software bunch lets you modify these templates with your own logo, color schemes, and business graphics targeted to your vertical.
You can also (either on your own oy hiring a professional designer) create new templates that are even more unique to your company’s image and value proposition.
A branded sales quote is a memorable sales quote, and in a competitive market, you’ve got to be memorable — “Oh, yeah: I saw your proposal. You’re the company that sent us that cool infographic.” — or you can forget about sales.
Be on top of the global market
While not everyone working in the prefab housing market focuses on international sales… well… maybe they should. Because while the states are fairly saturated, the global market is starting to go BIG, especially in the Asia-Pacific region.
If you’re thinking, “Well, I don’t speak the language,” we have some good news: the language is money. Most buyers are focused on cost above all else, and if you can compete on costs, the language barrier will be easily cleared.
What does matter is timeliness. And when you’re on Pennsylvania time and your prospect is on South Korea time, ensuring timely communication can be a challenge — unless you’re using quote management software.
With a CPQ system automating every reply and follow-up in your RFP process, your prospects on the other side of the world will feel like you’re right next door.
Building on the foundation: CPQ on CRM
Every competitive sales org in the modular housing vertical should, by now, be running every critical task through its CRM system: storing and sharing all prospect contact info, tracking every interaction with every lead gen/nurture campaign, forecasting sales, and more.
Most sales managers start and end their day taking a look at the funnel: how many leads up top, how many sales at the bottom, how many quotes in circulation. That’s good, but it could be better.
When you add CPQ to your CRM system (and most CPQ solutions are CRM-system agnostic, and can work with Zoho CRM, Dynamics, Salesforce, and more), you gain visibility into every stage of every quote in circulation.
Additionally, you gain the ability to centralize pricing and product configuration, ensuring that your sales team is only ever selling your latest prefab offerings at the most optimal pricing.
Rising to the top of the modular housing industry means taking a proactive approach to the sales process. And quote management software empowers every sales organization with proactivity in the most critical part of that process: the building, sending, tracking, and signing of the quote.
