Make explode the quotes request is a preliminary sign to increased orders and made the growth of revenues. If this is not an end in itself (they must be signed), it remains an excellent commercial indicator that will allow you to then measure the real commitment to purchase orders and therefore the rate of transformation of hot prospects into customers. In this articles, we reveal our top 5 secrets to generating quote requests.
The development of your business depends on its growth and therefore on the increase in
turnover (find out how here ).
Turnover can increase in value and / or volume:
• Value : by increasing unit prices (at constant
volume)
• Volume :
by increasing the volume of quantities sold due to cross-selling, up-selling or
promotions.
Among the volume, you must also take into account the
request for quotation. It is essential in your sales funnel, the famous
commercial "pipe" where your business opportunities are classified .
Example :
You know every 4 quotes you make a sale. Your quote-to-customer
conversion rate is 1 to 4, or 25%.
Let us admit that:
• your
average estimate is € 10,000
• your
monthly turnover target is € 150,000, or 15 signed on average.
You would therefore need to generate 60 quotes per month to
achieve your goals . You can then align these estimate objectives with your
salespeople, by sector, by product or by such segment.
So, once the objectives are set, how do you explode the
request for quotes and turn them into purchase orders?
The recommendations
In the age of the internet and word of mouth 2.0, getting
recommended remains the best way to make yourself known and to make proposals.
There is nothing better than a prospect who calls you and asks you to “cost” a
particular job, purely on the basis of a referral from a client .
“I am calling on behalf of Mme Payet, where you have just
finished cooking. It is top notch and we would like to have a similar product ”
You can also be recommended on the basis of your reputation
or notoriety (find out here how to
improve it), on your ability to influence or because you are recognized as the
expert, even the benchmark in your sector of activity.
Recommendations are also the ratings given to you by
prospects and customers on the web : your Facebook page, your comments on
Linkedin and Google My Business. In tourism, it is also Booking or even
TripAdvisor.
One of the main drivers of growth champions is “customers
who sell to customers” .
CRM, a confidential tool for detecting business opportunities
It is essential to take care of the customer relationship . To do this, an Excel
table is good, but a customer file saved in a CRM tool (Customer relationship management or customer
relationship tool in French), which you request when you want, is better. The
CRM is also a way to generate new quotes . How? 'Or' What ?
After all, just because you've sold to a customer after the
relationship ends, doesn't mean. In fact, it has barely started because:
• you will
be able to sell additional services or products (small appliances for example
if you are a kitchen designer)
• you will
be able to "play" on the "RFM", namely the Recency,
Frequency and Amount of its purchases
• your
client plans to redo his bathroom in 6 months or fit out his cupboards, other
activities offered by your company. He gave it to you and you wisely recorded
it in the CRM with an alert that will automatically notify you in 5 months to
call him back. At the same time, you can nurture the relationship by offering
personalized content on bathrooms, types of layout, expected costs, etc.,
thanks to a marketing automation tool .
If you want to knows
more about this essential tool, we recommend reading these 2 articles:
• What is a
CRM used for?
• A CRM at
the service of business strategy
Your website is a (formidable) ignored business tool
In certain sectors (financing, credit, real estate, tourism
and travel, insurance, advice, etc.), most of the incoming requests are already
generated by the company's website or by their global digital presence . What
could be more normal at a time when 60% of purchases are made online (Hubspot)
and 80 to 93% of consumers (IFOP) look for information on the web before making
the purchase. In industry , 80% of the
buying journey is carried out online , even before the first contact with a
sales representative (Forrester Research).
In fact, if the consumer is now digital, so should your
salespeople!
And first and foremost your “prospecting” salesperson,
namely the website . It should be designed to be your best business finder ,
the salesperson who generates leads 24/7, including during the holidays .
An effective website is a tool tailored to generate
industrial and predictive requests for quotes.
How? 'Or' What ?
• By
attracting and building a qualified audience (your personas, typical customers)
• By
collecting information (read here Internet users or visitors to identified
prospects) so as to fuel the relationship. Coupled with solid marketing tools ,
it will allow you to mature these prospects into hot prospects , such as for
the “kitchen” customer who plans to redo his bathroom.
• By
advancing them in their purchasing cycle until they request a quote.
Example of a conversion tunnel for a site:
• Attract
10,000 visits from the desired audience
• Generate
150 new prospects per month (marketing leads)
• 40 are
qualified hot and interesting prospects by the sales department (qualified
leads by salespeople)
• 20 become
a business opportunity (the quote is established)
• 5 become
customers (keeping the ratio 1 signed for 4 proposed)
Social networks and social selling:
It's a fact. The social networks (computer graphics of the
key figures here ) took a prominent place in our lives and in our choices of
consumers.
They are a necessary lever (but not the only one) to
generate prospects and therefore requests for quotes, on condition of having a
complete strategy for capturing these fans in order to transform them .
When it come to social
selling in general, if you develop a
qualified network and if you share information that helps your prospects with a
disinterested approach, you should easily generate appointments then blacken
your quotes and then your order forms (discover some tips here to find
customers through social selling on Linkedin ).
If this new way of prospecting interests you, I share in
this article my good habits and good practices in this area.
This is the method that I use in addition to our inbound
Marketing & Sales strategy for the
growth of our agency . Tested, measured and approved.
Online / offline conferences
Inviting your prospects who become more adept at buying at
the right time is also a lever for generating quotes.
There are several types of conferences:
• those to
make discover, of presentation (broad subjects with large volume of
participants)
• those of
deepening or evaluation
• decisions
that can speed up the sales cycle
To find the ideal moment in the decision phase, while
offering for example a customer case study , a demonstration of your solution,
a free trial period or a consultation, you can use the lead scoring function of
your CRM.
Lead scoring consists of calculating and assigning a score
or a note to each of your prospects.
Giving a score, based on defined criteria, helps identify
the prospect's propensity to be quickly transformed into an opportunity and
therefore into a quote.
So certainly in our case, the volume generated by a
conference in this phase is less than a recommendation or the volume of
prospects coming from our website, but this remains a very qualitative lever.
The conversion rates are also better which makes him more likely to become a
customer.