As an inside sales representative, working in a B2B industry, it’s your responsibility to calculate sales prices to make sales quotes. You find the right balance between profits for your company and low costs for your customer, which can be challenging at times. When a customer buys the same article frequently, they have expectations about the price, which can lead to a price negotiation.
Luckily, you have been at the company for quite some time and know exactly what the customer expects & what the minimum margin on a product should be. Not like your colleague Marc, who has only been at the company for half a year. One morning, the customer calls and asks for a quote for the article. You negotiate a price and he agrees. In the afternoon, you have a doctor’s appointment and are not there when the customer calls again to get another quote for the same article. Now, he speaks to Marc. They have a short discussion and your customer is able to negotiate a price discount of 5%.
You return to work the next day and when your customer calls you to accept the quote your colleague created, you notice that the price is different than the one you agreed on and, even worse, the margin is too low. However, it’s too late to change the price now, so there is nothing to be done.
Let’s see how any colleague can have all necessary information available to prevent this!
As usual, you start by creating a Sales Quote for the customer who places an enquiry and enter the needed item on the Lines FastTab.
As soon as you have done this, the Last Invoice / Last Quote links appear. Here you can see the last price and amount of this specific item on the last invoice and the last quote, which is crucial information for the price negotiation. Here you notice if the price has changed and whether a colleague recently made a quote for this customer. When clicking on either of the links the corresponding invoice/quote will open.
However, now your customer mentions that he wants to buy a full pack this time, not only one piece, and last time he bought that, he was able to get a special price. This is where the Last Price functionality comes in handy. You can easily access it by typing Ctrl+L or by choosing Quote and Last Price in the Lines FastTab menu.
In the Last Price/Sale window that opens, you find all the latest prices with the corresponding quantities which can offer you guidance in the price negotiation.
While seeing the last prices of this customer can already be enough in negotiations, we have recently added the possibility to show the last prices for an item of all customers. Open this window by clicking Ctrl+Shift+L or by choosing Quote and Last Price all Customers in the Lines FastTab menu.
Now, whenever a customer places an enquiry, anyone who creates the Sales Quote has all the information available to determine the best possible sales price. Keeping your margins high and your customers satisfied.
