Remember the movie, “The Big Sleep” or [insert your favorite detective movie here]? There’s a reason people turn to the pros like Philip Marlowe to do a little digging, uncover the clues, and close the case: it’s because they’re professionals. Tracking down evidence and bad guys is what they do.
If you want to track sales quotes and track them well, hire a professional. Start using configure, price, quote (CPQ) tools to track sales proposals from creation to closing.
Sales proposal management made easy (and automatic)
Think of every sales quote you send as a living thing, something that needs TLC when you put it together, and that needs a close eye kept on it once it “leaves home” to ensure progress is being made.
And while the “living thing” analogy may be a bit strong, your sales quotes can indeed be living documents, dynamic in and of themselves, and part of a process that can be changed and optimized on the fly when necessary.
Build and send a quote the old-fashioned way (as an Excel sheet or Word doc) and you have a static document that cannot be revised in any way/shape/form after you send it. Worse, you have a tracking process that’s comprised of you simply waiting and watching your inbox to see if it was signed or not.
But use a CPQ solution to build your quotes, and you enter proposals into a fluid system with built-in milestones to measure progress and improve your closing processes over time.
And that’s the part that so many salespeople still seem to miss: it’s not simply about tracking an individual sales quote — it’s about monitoring and optimizing the entire sales closing process.
A CPQ solution empowers you to see what’s working at the start (e.g., what product and pricing configurations and sales proposal templates are salespeople leaning on most), in the middle (e.g., which reps are getting quotes out in a day, and which are taking longer), and at the end (e.g., which quotes are closing quickly, and which die on the vine). More importantly, it empowers you to immediately act on what you’re learning, and in real-time.
The take-away is that sales proposal management should not be an “after-the-fact” endeavor: it should be a real-time tactic focused on improving closing rates. By tracking every step of every quote using a CPQ solution, you’ll have the dynamic data required for active decision-making and driving more revenue.
Back on track
Back to The Big Sleep: Vivian Rutledge leaned on Philip Marlowe to help solve her situation because she needed a specialist with experience. She did not go to her best friend or her gardener. And she most certainly didn’t use her CRM platform. Because 1) it didn’t exist then and 2) even if it did, it couldn't do the kind of job she needed done.
Most salespeople lean on CRM to do an awful lot: store every contact, track every customer relationship, forecast sales, send email campaigns, etc. It’s good at some of these tasks, but not all.
One “skill set” CRM most often lacks is detailed quote tracking. You’ll find there’s a home for quotes in most CRM systems, but the tracking data attached is usually as static as the quotes you store therein: sent, signed/lost. That’s all the detail you’ll usually get.
Which is why (as Vivian knew) a specialist is required. CPQ can track every communication made during the closing process, every revision, every interaction that can hinder or further a sale.
Let CRM handle the lead nurturing and customer relationship-building stages of a sales relationship. But when it’s closing time, lean on an expert, like CPQ (and IQX).
