
In college, for those in the School of Business and Management, there were lots of presentations to give that required us to have documents from just about every program in the entire Microsoft Office Suite. These presentations weren’t all that bad considering that my friends in the History and Psychology departments were inundated with research papers. The Power Point and Excel portions of these presentations weren’t so bad, and especially if you had a month to complete the assignment.
Can you imagine a month to complete a proposal now? Better yet, how many of us really have the luxury of a syllabus that provides a calendar of assignments and due dates? Those days are gone, and often times, distributing multiple proposals a day is required to meet demand.
When you were creating these presentations for school, there was also class practice and instructional sessions before you were required to turn something in for a grade. So you had plenty of opportunity to practice honing your Microsoft Office skills before you had to turn any work in for a grade.
Now, you have one opportunity to present an accurate, timely, and well organized proposal. It’s the difference between making a positive first impression and making the sale.
Consider Infor’s Product Configuration Management software. PCM can take the task of creating customer proposals and turn it into a highly visual and easy to read format. PCM can be utilized by inside and outside sales, as well as manufacturer’s reps. It has the ability to configure and quote products while reducing errors and adding the ability to effectively cross-sell and up-sell.
Infor PCM can be accessed from your desktop or even at the customer’s location via mobile. The proposal can be personalized and allows the customer to have access to self service quoting and ordering.
PCM is also very visual. It produces rendered images, 2D images, or assembled 3D CAD images. These images will verify and confirm the customer’s expectations and needs.
Incorporating all of these features into the sales process will not only increase response time and overall customer satisfaction, but will also increase overall profitability.