|
Calculating the ratio of estimates that
turn into live orders is frequently used by printers to measure
their competitiveness. But it’s even more important to track WHY you
win or lose jobs. Doing this will identify the performance of your
salespeople, pricing strategies, competitive position, and the cost
effectiveness of your organization.
How can you track the success of your
quotes? Start by creating a list of reasons why your organization
wins or looses quotes. It is not necessary to start out with a
complete list. More reasons can be added later as needed. Example
win and loss reasons may include:
§ Unable to meet the
customer’s schedule
§ Our equipment
configuration is not suitable for the job
§ Project canceled by
customer
§ Price to high by 1-10%
§ Price to high by 10-20%
§ Price to high by 20-30%
§ Price to high by > 30%
§ Best price by < 10%
§ Great quality
§ Great service
§ Liked our Christmas
Party
You can also incorporate your
competitor’s name in the reason codes so you can track who you are
loosing work to or beating out so you can make pricing adjustments
when competing against these other companies:
§ Loss to Ace Printing
§ Loss to Ace Printing by
<10%
§ Loss to Ace Printing by
>=10%
§ Loss to El Cheapo
Graphics
§ Loss to El Cheapo
Graphics by <10%
§ Loss to El Cheapo
Graphics by >=10%
§ Beat El Cheapo Graphics
by <10%
§ Beat El Cheapo Graphics
by >=10%
Next, produce weekly reports listing
your live estimates or quotes sorted by salesperson and customer.
Ask each salesperson to write on the report the status of their
estimates using the win and loss reasons then record then track it
in a form, spreadsheet, or in you management software. The list of
live quotes also makes an excellent customer call-back list for your
salespersons.
Tracking winning and loosing sales
opportunities will help identify the products or market segments you
should be promoting or eliminating, and where you need to make
adjustments to be more competitive.
Customer Service Representatives spend
much of their time tracking the status of orders, often triggered by
a telephone inquiry from the customer during business hours. The CSR
traditionally obtains the status information: (1) from the morning
production meeting, (2) by phoning the scheduler or someone in the
plant, (3) by referencing untimely job status printouts, or (4) from
computerized shop-floor data-collection information.
In many cases, the CSR must go on a “fact-finding mission” for the
answer and then call the customer back. Using this conventional
process, a customer may sometimes wait hours before receiving an
answer.
By integrating your management system, order entry application,
shop-floor data collection application, and shipping system with the
e-business system, a customer can view his order status right over
the Web-24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. With
integrated shipping software such as UPS WorldShip or FedEx,
customers can track their shipments by clicking on the package
tracking number which is hyperlinked to the carrier's web site.
These features totally takes the CSR out of the status inquiry
function, until the customer has a problem with the results!
There have been many debates regarding permitting customers to view
production status information. The companies who are consistent at
on time deliveries do not mind allowing their customers to see when
the job came off press or when it shipped. Other companies strictly
do not want customers to see any status information. Regardless,
many e-business systems enable the printer to control the level of
job status detail a customer can actually view on the web.
By Craig L.
Press
President, Profectus, Inc. |
