By Troy Harrison – Sales Navigator
A while back, I was doing some initial consultations with a client that does custom machined parts for industry. The salesperson is the outside relationship manager, and they have an internal sales team that handles the order process. When I was doing my discovery, I found that they were having huge problems getting orders and quotes through the system, and that it was taking up an inordinate amount of time. The reason was that they weren’t good at getting the information needed to process quotes and orders.
I checked, and they had a quote form that had spots for all critical quoting information, and a supplementary form that included other needed data to actually make the parts. The problem was that they were struggling to get accurate quote information (things like material, dimensions, tolerances, etc.), and that was flowing through to order fulfillment. Meanwhile, sales was screaming at the inside salespeople to get them their quotes FAST – but the inside sales was screaming back that they didn’t have all the information needed. What a mess! But the problem was cleared up when I talked to a senior salesperson. He told me something that left bruises from my jaw hitting the table.
“Well,” he said, “once we get the request for the quote, we don’t ask any more questions. We’re trained not to. We get out of there before the customer can change his mind.”
By my stunned, open-mouthed silence, he surmised that I was shocked by this.
“So, explain to me,” I said, “You leave with a request for a quote, but not knowing what it is that you’re quoting?