The process of creating offers is an integral part of acquiring clients in many industries, especially in the B2B sector. Read our article and learn how to speed up the sales process and respond to more inquiries at the same time, thanks to the automation of the creation of trade offers.
The main difference between the quotation process and the execution of the order is the fact that no one will pay our company for the time and effort spent on preparing an offer. For this reason, the trend towards minimizing time and resource expenditures in sales processes is increasing. However, it is necessary to be careful - too cursory approach to the development of the offer may result in its mismatch with the real needs of the client and thus a loss in the bidding process.
Even more serious consequences can arise if we win an order on the basis of an incomplete analysis – then, already in the process of execution, it may turn out that the predicted costs differ significantly from the actual ones. As a result, the project may end at a loss for us.
An additional challenge in the bidding process is when the offer department (or customer service — depending on the organizational structure of the company) receives a large number of requests for quotation and is not able to respond to all of them quickly enough. Then a dilemma arises: should we scale the team and thus increase its effectiveness or select queries, focusing only on those that seem most valuable to us. However, it should be borne in mind that limiting the number of prepared proposals directly affects the reduction of the chances of finalizing the sale. For example, if out of 20 inquiries we prepare only 10 offers manually, and the efficiency of our process is 10%, then we will implement only one project. If, on the other hand, we answered all 20 queries, statistically we could count on twice the number of wins.
According to the LeanData report, the time we respond to customer inquiries is a key factor influencing their purchasing decisions:
78% of customers buy from the company that answers their inquiry first. Source: LeanData
The problems described above are faced by more than one company that offers complex products or services. These types of offers require the involvement of people with expert knowledge in the field.
Can we then somehow improve this process in order to process the received set of customer data in real time, introduce automatic generation of our sales proposals, improve the quality of service, relieve the burden on our sales department or eliminate repetitive activities known from the daily work of a salesperson?
Automation is the solution to these challenges and will allow us not only to reduce the costs of acquiring a customer by saving the time of our sales department, but above all it will take care to increase the efficiency and probability of closing a sale by providing more sales opportunities.
We often hear from our customers:
“Maybe in other companies, the automation of the creation of contracts and offers increases efficiency and saves time and money, but with us the management of this process is specific enough that it cannot be optimized...”
Can such a statement be true?
To answer this question, let's first consider how we could generalize each process of creating contracts and offers. According to us, it could look like this:
Of course, the automation of each of the previously described steps is implemented in different ways, since we always take into account the specifications of a particular company. Sometimes automation can proceed quickly and efficiently, other times it is not so simple and obvious, but when implementing automation, we must bear in mind that:
With this in mind, we will try to present some examples addressing the automation of the bidding processes of each of the above stages, to show you that bid management can start with small steps and gradually develop them.
We will also try to present it with examples from different industries so as to show how the same phase of the offer automation process can be realized in different ways. Of course, in a short blog article, we are not able to present all possible ways to automate sales. Therefore, it may turn out that to help your business, the examples described will not be enough. However, we want to present it so that they show you the opportunities and benefits for companies that modern BPA technology (Business Process Automation) offers us.
Reasons for this type of contact:
Solution:
To address the first problem, consider integrating your website with a chatbot and/or voicebot. Both one and the other artificial intelligence (AI) mechanism can be learned with information about your products/services no worse than an experienced technical adviser and provide comprehensive information to your customers. In addition, in a situation where the bot does not know the answer to the question asked, it can redirect the conversation to the final technical advisor. After that, your team has the opportunity to supplement the knowledge of the bot in such a way that the next time you do not have to contact an advisor. Thanks to this, the consulting department works not hard, but wisely, and the client always receives up-to-date and specific information.
The second problem may be more difficult to solve, but automation capabilities can also help us with it. At the moment when a client wants to use a free consultation and expects to talk to a human and not a bot, and we offer services/products expensive enough that we care about the relationship with customers, we may want to put a human in front of the phone and not a machine. However, for our consultant, such a task can be quite troublesome – while conducting a conversation with a client, he must simultaneously take notes, and then each time add the client's data to the CRM system and send a summary of the meeting. In addition, in the era of remote work and high mobility, our consultant does not have to be in front of the computer at all, and the conversation with the client can be switched, for example, to his mobile number. By integrating the relevant AI tools into the automation, we can analyze the record of our consultant's conversation with the client, automatically create summaries of communication with the client and extract from them the relevant information required at the further stage of the preparation of the offer. Such data can be automatically entered into the CRM system and used to prepare an automatic summary of the conversation, which our advisor can send to the client with one click, regardless of whether he is using a phone or a computer.
Reasons for this type of contact:
Solution:
As with a telephone contact, the first reason can be addressed using a chatbot or voicebot. However, if you offer products, a better solution may be to introduce a product selection assistant or – especially for products with a significant visual aspect (e.g. in the automotive, furniture or interior design industries) – a product configurator with the option of 3D visualization. Both the selection assistant and the configurator are customer onboarding automation that guides the customer, very often replacing complex product functions with simple options (e.g. whether the product is for a single-family house or for a multi-family house). In addition, they offer a wide scope for potential up-sells (e.g. wooden doors instead of MDF) and cross-sells, additional sales of complementary products (e.g. additional overlays for door hinges).
In the second case, very often our bidding department has to analyze the documentation provided by the client in order to extract from it the key information for the preparation of the offer. In this case, we can again use artificial intelligence and automation platforms to analyze the documentation provided by the customer. Moreover, the analysis does not have to be limited only to text documents (Word, PDF), it can also be subject to more complex information such as images/photos, projects (CAD, BIM files) or even video files. The information extracted in this way can significantly speed up the pace of work and be used in the further stages of the sales process.
See how to improve other processes in the B2B sector — sales and marketing automation
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At this stage, we know more or less what our client's needs are. We collected them by chatbot, telephone conversation or automatic extraction of information provided by the client, e.g. from a sent email. At this point, we need to assess whether we have the full set of data needed to prepare our offer. If this is not the case, it is probably necessary to clarify with the client certain aspects of the query. How can we improve this phase with sales automation?
If we know what information we need to prepare an offer, our automation can be prepared in such a way that in the absence of the required data, it will automatically inform the customer about the correction of inaccuracies. This can be prepared in the form of an email sent to the client, which will contain a set of questions or a link to complete the form. Moreover, if the customer does not provide feedback within a certain period of time, for example 2-3 days, automation can send him a reminder in the form of an e-mail or even an SMS message. This frees our sale/customer service department from having to perform a “customer reminder” function, which can be a significant relief for our employees.
At the moment when we know what the customer's needs are and we have collected all the information required to prepare the offer, it may turn out that the preparation of the conceptual phase is needed. This is an optional element of the bidding process, which is implemented only where the offer is not a so-called stamp offer and very often requires the analysis of 2D/3D documentation (CAD/BIM) from the client and/or requires technical knowledge and design work, for example:
In the concept/design phase, automation makes it possible to easily create variant offers adapted to, for example, the optimization of labor costs, material costs or maximization of ROI/ROE. Such a generator of commercial offers for products and services gives the customer a choice and our sales department the opportunity to up-sell/down-sell or cross-sell. Presenting a wider offer means that the client has to think not only about our proposal, but also about what our competitors actually offer in their portfolio.
In addition, the automation of the process of creating quotes allows you to optimize production costs. With a properly designed algorithm, we gain an additional buffer that we can use to increase the margin or lower the price for the client, thus offering a more competitive solution. By also automating the conceptual (design) phase, the knowledge of our company, which very often “sits” only in the head of our experts, is recorded in the form of a digital program for creating offers. Thanks to this, automation is a safe place to store the know-how of our company, which, as a result, affects the following benefits:
Having already a set of required data and optionally a concept, if the specification of the order requires it, we can prepare a quote. Very often, the quotation calculator is reduced either to the preparation of a statement of materials required for the execution of the order (the so-called BOM - Bill of Materials), the valuation of working hours or both in the case of design and product orders.
Having already prepared the conceptual phase or documentation received from the client in the form of CAD or BIM files, we are able to automatically generate a bill of materials (e.g. in solutions such as Revit or https://hypar.io). On its basis, you can already generate an offer by combining BOM with product price lists, which can have dynamic margins imposed according to the accepted rules of our pricing policies
In the case of service pricing, we can also feel the benefits of automation. First of all, using AI, we can feed our model with information about previous implementations and, based on this data, suggest how much time and what competencies we need to realize a given project. Of course, these types of quotes can then be verified by your technical experts so that they can adjust the quotes provided by the AI if necessary.
It is also necessary to take into account the fact that in this type of valuation, the competence of many people may be required (e.g. technical experts, industry professionals, traders, external subcontractors). Also in this case, automation can increase work efficiency and, moreover, convey only limited information to specific people, which facilitates analysis and reduces unnecessary information noise. As in the case of negotiating requirements with the client, here too the mechanism of reminders and reminders (email, sms) can be adapted in such a way that the person responsible for preparing the final offer does not have to “chase” each employee separately.
We are practically at the end of the preparation of the offer, we have collected information, optionally prepared concepts with different variants, quotes of materials and/or working hours. All that remains for us is to put the information in the appropriate offer format, in such a way that the quotation looks professional.
Document generation is one of the simplest stages of bidding automation and, as a rule, comes down to a one-time preparation of an offer template, which is later used each time in the generation of professional documents. Moreover, such a generated offer can be in the form of an editable document (Word, Google Docs), so that our merchant can always modify the content before it is finally sent to the client.
The moment we have the offer document generated and accepted by our merchant, we have no choice but to send it to the client. We can also automate this process. Thanks to this, in addition to the shipment itself, we can also track the behavior of the customer (e.g. whether he has read the offer), as well as send him automatic reminders (so-called “check”). Followup) so that our trader does not have to remember this.
After accepting the offer, all that remains is to prepare the contract and collect signatures. The area of contract generation and document circulation automates very well, but we will tell about this in detail in a separate article.
CRM is now an indispensable standard of modern sales, especially in B2B. It provides many functionalities such as sales funnels, dashboards and automations. So what is automation in the context of managing relationships with our clients?
If you use Pipedrive, Hubspot, Livespace or any other CRM system that provides an API. Application Programming Interface), and currently practically every CRM has such, we are able to combine the above described stages of the bidding process with your CRM system. This will allow the management to use the full potential of automation in your company, especially in the area of monitoring processes and the stage at which offer is located, and on this basis to adequately forecast future revenues, possible investments or optimization of sales activities.
The bidding process, although it looks a little different in each company, is essentially based on very similar stages. Although the details of preparing quotes vary from organization to organization, many of the general steps remain common and are highly amenable to automation.
After reading the article, you may be overwhelmed by the sheer amount of challenges associated with fully automating the bidding process, but don't worry — you don't have to do everything in one go. If you want to use the automation of this area of your activities start step by step. Introduce automation of one stage first, then evaluate the benefits of it, and only then make a decision on the possible automation of the next phase.
This approach will allow you, first of all, not to bend under the burden of the task as a whole, to motivate yourself with smaller successes on the way to the main goal and, above all, to verify in small steps whether the introduced changes actually work and improve the efficiency of your enterprise.
In addition, from the profit generated on the automation of individual stages, you will be able to finance the automations of further phases, so it will not be a major financial burden for you. With this approach, your company will start working smart instead of working hard, and that's what implementing improvements is all about
As Sagiton Automation, we are engaged in the comprehensive implementation of business process automation. We carry out automation projects for various business sectors, including finance, e-commerce, HR, marketing or customer service. Write to us and find out how we can help you automate your processes!
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