The Zoho CRM is a fully featured sales enablement powerhouse: you can manage every aspect of your customer relationships (including financials), run email campaigns, manage internal processes, and you can even do it via an AI-powered “sales assistant,” Zia (akin to “Alexa” or “Siri”).
For the sales proposal process, however, Zoho primarily turns to specialists, offering more than a few partner applications. Here’s what to look for when choosing the best quote management software for Zoho CRM:
Single sign-on integration: your quoting solution should feel like part of the CRM system.
Point and click product and pricing configuration: make it simple for your sales reps to bundle what’s best for each customer.
Targeted templates: each market has different needs re: products and services, and different notions re: professional communications — make sure you’re a fit across the board.
Quote management via a single sign-on solution in Zoho
Far too often, with new business applications, there’s a learning curve at best and an evasion or outright rejection at worst. And it’s not because your sales reps don’t want new tools or don’t have the skill sets to use new tools — it’s usually because they’re too busy selling.
Ensure the quote management software you roll into your Zoho CRM feels like part of the system itself via a single sign-on integration. Think about what it would be like in the bricks and mortar world if you did not have single sign-on:
“Honey, I added a new feature to our household: it’s a massage head shower nozzle.”
“I don’t see it.”
“That’s because it’s outside, and not fully integrated into our bathroom.”
“I’ll pass.”
Pricing/product configuration in Zoho
Another fast path to enterprise wide adoption of a quote management solution in your CRM is a simple, streamlined approach to adding proper product and pricing configurations to each quote.
It not only makes salespeople’s lives easier (so long spreadsheets!), it also helps drive more revenue as proven winners and best bundles are easily shared across the organization.
Your quote management solution should make it easy on both sides, too: sales reps can quickly customize each quote with targeted products, upsells, and upgrades, and sales and product management can instantly update pricing and discounting strategies to maximize returns.
Professional proposal templates:
On-brand & on-point
You don’t have to trade professionalism for speed. Just like Zoho CRM’s promise of helping you sell better, smarter, faster, your quote management software should help you create sales proposals in the same way — and it starts with templates.
Whatever quoting tool you choose, it should include different professionally designed templates for the verticals you serve (and if it doesn’t out of the box, it should be flexible enough to accomodate any you might want to add).
The point of templates is not just speed, though that’s important. It’s also about the opportunity to build your brand by looking good. In the sales proposal world, it’s not always the best price that wins — because some proposals look so terrible and dated that the prospect never even bothers to dig in and see the pricing.
You want your proposal to both stand out from the crowd and support your brand: professional templates that require salespeople to do little more than add customer information and products/pricing are the first, best step.
Because of its ease of use and flexibility, Zoho CRM is fast becoming one of the more popular CRMs in the world. One reason may be is that when it comes to certain business needs — such as quote management — Zoho doesn’t feel the need to start from scratch and instead leans on the power of its partners. LIKE IQUOTEXPRESS (yes, we finally said it; learn more about Zoho and integrated sales quote management).
