Sales Quote Software for Every eCommerce Business Model

Clarity's eCommerce framework provides extensive customizability within its core, a key function that makes it so extremely powerful. One of the most customizable workflows for ordering items is the sales quotes features, allowing your customers to get a quote on an item as opposed to having to purchase right away. This often occurs when there's a complex item that may require detailed interaction with the sales/fulfillment team. These can include going over detailed engineering specs, having a discussion about selection criteria that may be nonstandard, or any other process where the customer needs a sales quote that will differ from all others. 

This whole process of semi-automating automating eCommerce quotes and the workflow surrounding them is extremely valuable. Even though sales quotes require human interaction on both ends — the buyer who's requesting a sales quote and the seller who's providing the sales quote — this whole process can take mere minutes if it's done with an enterprise eCommerce platform with robust notifications and automation. 

Automate When Possible

Even though sales quotes require considerable human interaction, it's very important to keep in mind that they don't have to be time-consuming for buyers and sellers. They also don't have to be “timeline” consuming for buyers and sellers, because they can avoid bottlenecks on both ends of the sales transaction.  

Quotes often occur for parts or products that are very specific or customized from a base product. For example, a seller might offer a custom-built vehicle that offers an elongated chassis or has custom parts on it. During the purchasing process, it will quickly become evident that the seller will need to get an eCommerce sales quote for specific buildouts. That quote is most often for the price, but the timeline for delivery must also be part of the equation. At this point, your salesperson would need to contact the manufacturing team to confirm when they can complete the item and fulfill the order. 

Keep Everyone Informed

The automated sales quote software can allow the buyer to provide information that's part of your manufacturing team or the fulfillment team that they might need. Keeping your internal team in the loop is vital, either via emails, text messages, mobile app, or on the eCommerce platform itself. Maybe the fulfillment team needs to verify that it will be possible to complete this order, or that it's within the bounds of the manufacturing process. 

This broad range of communication options can apply to the sales team as well. A sales member can fulfill the quote by answering a few questions in the mobile app (or in the responsive desktop application on their phone), and they can go ahead and complete the quote from anywhere with an internet connection. No matter if the order is for sales or manufacturing, steps can be put in place to make sure there are no bottlenecks. If someone doesn’t answer within a certain amount of time — they might be out sick or on vacation — the request for information can be moved to someone who has the authority to make decisions. 

Sales quotes tend to be a stale process for many companies, and making it more seamless and rapid can have a dramatic impact on the percentage of the sales quotes that turn into orders. An enterprise eCommerce platform that's catered to your sales quote process can give your team an edge over your competitors. 

Clarity sales quote software can also improve the workflow of projects that have very complex aspects. Some sales quotes might include an engineering drawing or some other complex file that needs to be uploaded and analyzed. This will often need to be analyzed by a person, but there may be aspects of this that can be previewed with software before it goes to the internal fulfillment team or engineering team to review. 

The top B2B eCommerce platforms and quote software can also help streamline this process of completing a sales quote. Let's say that a manufacturer is ordering a specialty part and their engineering team has provided detailed CAD or SolidWorks files. This order will have specs and tolerances that are very specific, and in traditional sales quotes, someone has to pull those specs out in those tolerances. But as it turns out, those files have a manifest or a schema that specifies how the contents are stored, and it is possible to parse the contents of those files in preparation for a human reviewer. 

This shows just how possible it is to do many things with content that would otherwise have to be manually entered, especially if there's some form of standardization. It can be helpful to provide default files or templates for some of these custom designs and drawings, or other forms of custom data that we need to receive that the customer is going to fill in. It can be very helpful to provide them with a template or standard so that they can complete the process in a way that makes the quote process easier for everyone involved. 

Regardless of the approach to obtaining the data during the sales quote process, the eCommerce platform software will typically move the quote into a quote cart. The user can then see items that are a quote versus a typical item that's in their traditional cart. They'll be able to go ahead and process a checkout with just the traditional items while waiting on sales quotes. Depending on the particular eCommerce business model, clients can also check out certain aspects of the quote. For example, the seller might charge for shipping upfront, or they might charge for a processing fee, saving the final charge until the quote is finished.  

In most cases, though, the quote requires no money to exchange hands; it’s just a quote request that goes into this quote cart. A small amount of information is usually gathered, typically so that the seller can provide shipping information so that the quote can include a freight and shipping estimate. If there is any complexity with intermodal, LTL shipments, palletizing, or containerizing, Clarity’s sales quote software can deal with that up front during a quote checkout. 

Keep Buyers Informed

Once the quote is actually in process, it’s very important to notify the buyer that the seller has received the quote, then provide a reasonable expectation for a timeline on when the seller is going to respond. This expectation can be multi-phase, such as, “You can expect the cost estimate within one day, and then a quote about fulfilment time in two days.” This information can be automated so that your sales and fulfillment teams can spend their time getting the quote itself ready. 

eCommerce quote software also needs to be able to help the seller’s workflow to make sure that the quote turnaround time is adhered to — or even better, done faster than the customer expects. This can help set a good positive tone for the relationship. In order to do that, it can help to have an internal dashboard and notifications center warning when a deadline for quote requests gets close. Clarity recommends having an internal team that's looking at a report or a dashboard within your enterprise eCommerce system that basically gives them a burndown or a set of quote request, when they're due by, and assigning these quote requests to internal team members. 

Many of Clarity’s clients have this infrastructure within an ERP or CRM system, so we will typically integrate the quote request directly into that system. Whenever the quote request reaches a certain status and is converted to a sales order, we can take that data either from the status change and bring it back into the eCommerce system. The customer can elect to purchase at that point. This is where the rubber meets the road to allow the internal team to optimize and ensure that they are turning things around quickly without having to add extra steps to their internal workflow. 

Many companies currently don't very have an automated process or robust internal workflow. In that case, we recommend using the eCommerce reporting and dashboard tools to see and receive notifications whenever a quote request comes through, and then similarly to be able to manage notifications for workflow timelines.  

In many cases the make-or-break for a quote turning into an actual order is based on the timeline. It's not necessarily based on being the best offering in the market; it’s often just based on turning things around quickly. Being able to do this can be a significant factor in whether or not the business hits its revenue objectives or, more importantly, making sure that the customers are happy and repeat orders and keep coming back over and over. 

Once a seller receives a quote request, we offer a robust interface to be able to interact with the order  to modify the line items, add additional line items, add custom line items with descriptions and specific pricing, and upload files.

Live Chat Website Integration 

We also offer an internal chat so there can be immediate interaction with the customer, even contacting them before they have left the site after hitting the “Submit Quote” button. This is a fast and simple way to offer top-tier service and let them know immediately that their quote has been received and is being handled quickly. If the customer responds to the chat, the salesperson can also verify the points of the quote and start personalized customer service that much sooner. (If your eCommerce business already has a preferred chat you currently use, we can incorporate that into your eCommerce framework.) 

In the end, automating the sales quote process can be an excellent time-saver when you incorporate it into an enterprise eCommerce platform in order to make self-service as easy as possible. The sales quote workflow is able to provide notification updates, facilitate the quote process, and help both the customer and your internal team members through the entire process. 

Having a highly customizable enterprise eCommerce platform that can handle complex sales and custom sales quotes is a key aspect for many businesses to be able to convert a significant percentage of the quote request into actual orders. Clarity can help make that happen, so contact us and let us know exactly what you need.