The 7 Fatal Mistakes of Quoting – #4: Failing to Reference Past Quotes

When it comes to quoting, redundancy is the root of all evil and not looking at past quotes can be a fatal mistake. Getting a quote out as quickly as possible is critical to winning the job, so as an estimator, time is simply not something you can afford to waste; in fact, in a recent part buyer survey report, only 6% of respondents said they were willing to wait longer than 3 days for a quote. Our first 3 posts in this series provide even more reason to prioritize efficiency (start back at fatal mistake #1 here).

But without the right systems in place, building a quote can quickly become a lengthy and arduous task. Using a combination of pen and paper, Excel, and an ERP system leaves information scattered and makes you likely to miss important contextual information when creating a quote. This also makes it difficult to search for part information or understand when you are quoting a repeat part vs. a new one.

Without this information clear, it’s inevitable that you’ll waste time completing all of the analysis and due diligence needed for a never-before-seen request – when in actuality, many quote requests are for parts that are similar, if not identical, to ones that have been quoted in the past. This is why it’s important to reference past quotes.

It’s time to catch up to the shift in buyer demand that we’ve discussed throughout this blog series and work smarter, not harder.

Here’s how to get up to speed:

Archive past quotes.

Keep track of the quotes you build and send. Even the ones that you don’t send. That way, you have a track record of all of the decisions you’ve made in the past that can be referenced for building future quotes.

Standardize your quoting method.

If there is more than one person helping to build quotes at your business, are all parties using the same methodology? When you standardize your quoting process and track data using standardized processes, you can reference this data to help with quoting repeat or similar parts so you are not reinventing the wheel each time and to understand why decisions were made during past quotes.

Centralize your processes.

Your shop generates terabytes of data each year. Within this data is invaluable tribal knowledge that when made accessible to others at your organization can make the order to cash process much more efficient. Make an effort to break down silos of information by hosting all quoting data in a secure and easily searchable platform.

Start Building Up Your Defense Today

At Paperless Parts, we empower job shops by automating their quoting process through modern technology. Our geometry-driven quoting, secure file-viewing and sharing capabilities, online collaboration and CRM tools, interactive digital quotes generator, and so much more, are helping manufacturers across the U.S. quote faster, win more work, and grow their business.

Check out the next post in our series on fatal mistakes of quoting #5 here.