Follow-Up Ideas to Improve Your Quote Win-Loss Ratio

Following up on quotes starts with a solid customer relationship management (CRM) system that includes reports to monitor and track open quotes.

For large printers, the sales team is responsible for monitoring quotes in the funnel and managing timely calls and follow-up.

For smaller printers, this function may be handled using a selection process in which the smaller quotes and deals are followed up with a weekly e-blast leveraging variable data to ask about the quote or a mini-call campaign requesting a status. This can be launched each Monday morning for all quotes that are between 14 and 21 days since submitting. Larger deals are handled with white glove follow-up.

Consider setting up a report to view on a weekly basis that includes the # of quotes and dollar value in the pipeline along with projected close dates. Think of an Excel sheet with columns such as customer, contact name, project name, dollar value, description, quote date, sales rep, projected close date, status, last communication date.

A few processes to consider for an effective quote follow-up include:

1) Having a useful open-quote report to help drive the follow-up process.

2) Mapping out the follow-up process to ensure no quote falls through the cracks.

3) Decide the timeline when an open quote should be followed up on if not customer driven.

4) Decide how technology can help the sales team with the follow-up process.

5) Implement CRM or sales management software to help sales people keep deals visible for efficient follow-up.

6) Track your win/loss ratio and look at the reasons for wins/losses. Refine the process.

Many of the estimating and production software vendors have a function to generate an open quotes report. At a minimum having these estimates available for the sales team will help more deals fall through the bottom of the funnel as wins.