Verbal or written quotes - what's best for your business?
Business Coaching Quotes
from local business coaches
There are several things that you should bear in mind when you’re doing a quote for your client. The quote is going to be the basis of your relationship with them, and it’s important that you get it off on the right foot!
So there are two ways to quote. Verbally (usually over the phone) or in writing.
Quoting over the phone
Usually suitable to jobs where there is a call out charge and hourly rate, or where a job is standard and no onsite visit is required. Businesses who deal with a lot of emergency work or jobs with a very short lead time (from query to getting the job done eg drain unblocking companies) will also find that written quotes are unnecessary in their operational processes.
Dangers of quoting over the phone are rife - misunderstandings and 'but you said this was included' happens many times, and you risk closing less jobs because you don't build a complete picture of your business's qualities in a 3 minute phone conversation - you'd be lucky if they remember your name! But, phone quoting is also a practical necessity in some businesses and so if you have to do them, check out our ideas on how to improve your win:loss ratio by following up after telephone quotes.
Written quotes
Giving written quotes is appropriate for bigger, more complex jobs and those with a higher value - especially when you're quoting up front for the full job.
There are also dangers involved in written quotes - the detail (especially jargon related to products) can be confusing for customers and they could have lots of questions about the quote (or worse yet, not understand it and simply ignore it). Writing a quote down is also a risk because you've committed to providing a service for a specific amount of money, and occasionally things will change and affect that. Read all about our advice for written quotes, including a few examples of some excellent quotes.
Whichever way your business quotes, quoting and how professionally your quote is done is one of the 3 key influencing factors of the customer's buying decision, so make it count.
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Loads of times we call to follow up and people don't know where we're calling from. Definitely going to try this email quote follow up thing, although my office ladies will hate me...
over a year ago by Jimmy F
Business Coaching Quotes
from local business coaches
