“This ain’t your grandma’s meatloaf.” That’s exactly what someone said to us about iQuoteXpress (IQX), which he considered the best proposal software he’d ever used.
When, naturally, we asked what he meant by that, he explained: “Grandma’s meatloaf may not be the best that’s out there, but you know what to expect. And that’s not always a good thing, because there may be something else out there — the greatest meatloaf the universe has ever delivered — but you might miss it because you settled for what you’re used to.”
Put in business-speak, he was saying how IQX exceeds his expectations. And if you’re in sales, marketing, or customer service, exceeding expectations is always job #1.
We’re delighted to have exceeded our customer’s expectations, and it led us to consider a few ways in which IQX — as it exceeds your expectations — can help you exceed your customers’ expectations, too.
Fast & good sales proposals
In advertising and marketing — and in most B2B product/service offering — there’s a simple equation for every customer: “fast, good, cheap: pick two.”
With a library of pre-designed sales proposal templates to choose from, you’re able to give clients both “fast” and “good” during the prospecting process (which may allow you to forego cheap down the line).
When the proposal that arrives first is also the proposal that looks best, you may rest assured you have exceeded expectations.
Win-win pricing: the best part of a proposal
But let’s not kid ourselves: no matter how good your proposal looks and how quickly it gets there, if your pricing is out-of-whack, your proposal is D.O.A.
Which is why perhaps the best proposal software feature is the ability to dynamically configure products and pricing.
The configuration engine at the heart of the IQX enables a sales manager to centrally administer both pricing and discount structures, which means every rep is always putting your best pricing forward and not promising discounts that devour your margins.
And pricing is optimized with each closed sales quote: as you learn exactly what the market will bear for any given product or service you offer, and can immediately roll that pricing info out to every rep.
Let’s go back to what our customer said: each rep working off their own spreadsheet, which likely has outdated and/or inconsistent pricing on it? That’s grandma’s meatloaf. Giving every rep real-time pricing and product updates from a centralized system? That ain’t.
Exceeding what CRM can do on its own
If you’re a Dynamics, Zoho, Salesforce, or other CRM user, you probably had a set of expectations when you purchased your platform: you’d be able to consolidate customer contact information, centrally store sales and marketing materials, run prospecting campaigns, and generally get a better feel for where your sales and marketing efforts are working best.
You may have also assumed that your CRM included a way to send and track sales proposals, and it does — assuming you’re ok with grandma’s meatloaf.
Most CRMs have primitive quote-building tools, or simply force you to build a quote in Excel or Word and then send through your CRM, tracking only “quote was sent” and “quote was signed/not signed.”
But adding a sales proposal solution to CRM gives you a faster way to build and send quotes (ideally, via a single sign-on, which IQX currently offers for both Zoho and Dynamics), and a greater level of insight on the status of each proposal in the system.
Instead of simply sent or signed, you can track replies, product and pricing adjustments, and every interaction a rep may have during the often time-sensitive signing process.
You can make adjustments of the fly, spot bottlenecks, and do for every sales proposal what CRM does for every customer relationship: improve the process, increase engagement, and exceed expectations — something you’ll never be able to do if you stick with grandma’s meatloaf.
