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Last month we talked about the infamous sales Sharks and how these types of sellers use tricks to deceive us as "customers", we being the victims..
This time I will talk about a secret that isn’t expressed, nor is it talked about and in many cases probably isn’t even identified but it’s very real. We sellers HATE making quotes. There’s no open talk about this dislike, but if you’re observant, as a client you can read between the lines and know if you’re a victim or rather the cause of this hate. That's right, I said the client is the cause, keep reading and you'll see why.
These are some examples that demonstrate the dislike of producing quotes:
The time it takes to receive a quote
The exchange of emails and calls before receiving the quote
Giving rates (not quotes) by text message, phone or through email
Never receiving the quote
This behavior and dislike is not just the seller's fault, we as customers feed this hate and are responsible for it. Why? When we contact a business to get a quote, basically the only thing we say is "Send me a quote for this; it’s URGENT; this is my e-mail address". So, without further information, the client requests a quote and waits for the seller to take it seriously and provide a quote as if by magic.
If we as customers do NOT show interest, do NOT provide detailed information and do NOT explain our needs; it’s impossible to hope for the seller to take us seriously and “sense” the sale.
— Rodrigo De Saro
Based on this, sellers who have been working in the same business for a long time develop this sixth sense, which helps them distinguish and identify potential sales by simply talking on the phone. This technique isn’t foolproof, but it’s a very practical natural filter that sellers acquire over time and through experience; this is something that cannot be taught but rather is acquired. What’s interesting but also risky about this is that the seller doesn’t know that he has developed this sixth sense. This natural filter becomes something mechanical and therefore they cannot identify the true cause “the client”. In a seller's mind there is only one objective, to make the sale. If our sixth sense tells us that the chances of making a sale are low and we have a high demand for quotations (we don’t have time), then the filter will show us what clients are worth us investing our time with (send the quote). Why does the seller apply his sixth sense and filter? Here I share some of the main reasons why sellers apply their filters and decide what quotes they should send out:
Quotes are tedious: If there is something we as human beings hate more than anything it’s a routine with boring and repetitive tasks. Imagine investing more than 50% of your time transcribing customers’ information, products or services to be quoted, prices, descriptions, clauses, payment terms, etc...Repeat this 10, 15, 20 or more times per day.
Quotes are unproductive: If we take into account that the average time to produce, save and send a quote is approx. 15 minutes and we send 10 a day, this means that, without distractions or pauses, it will take 150 minutes (2 and a half hours) to create 10 quotes. Now, if you are paid by commission this isn’t good as it means that you only have 3 and a half days to be selling (150 minutes x 5 days = 12 and a half hours per week lost) since the rest of your time will be spent creating quotes.
Quotes are a waste of time: As a seller you know that only about 20% of the quotes that you create and send (more or less) become a sale. If we know that making a quote is unproductive, tedious and also only a small percentage translates into sales, why do we need to make all this effort and create the document "the quote" when we can give our rates by phone, send them by mail or by text message?
I see a problem for business, because when a seller applies his sixth sense, it means that he isn’t sending quotes to the other clients that were filtered, resulting in loss of business opportunities.
The next time you as a client request a quote and are interested in the products or services of a business; make sure you don’t fall into the seller's filter and show interest and time when requesting your quote.
Full Disclosure
When I write articles, I write what I feel like writing at that time and it has to do with sales, marketing, SMEs and business. This time, and on this topic, I feel like Osmos Cloud deserves advertising as it fits like a glove.
If quoting is what's draining your sales team, fix that first
That sixth sense — the instinct to filter out the "bad" quotes — only exists because quoting is slow and painful. Remove the pain and the filter disappears. That's the idea behind Ignite's Lead Machine: automate the grunt work around every opportunity so your team can respond to 100% of requests, follow up in one click, and spend their judgment on the customer instead of on whether a quote is "worth it." When responding is effortless, every lead gets a fair shot — and your close rate stops leaking out the back.