First Look Friday: Quotient 'for Customer Choice'

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Who doesn’t like choice? We all make choices every day in our lives, and for many of us the ability to make choices in our buying decisions makes the very decision we buy. 

I will give you an example from my own experience lately. I needed a new ‘Lawn and Garden Tractor’ to mow my acreage, so I began looking at the two ‘Big Box’ stores. Now they pretty well carry the same brands, the ‘Green’ ones, and ‘the Yellow’ ones, and the ‘Orange’ ones, and the ‘Red’ ones, but they all tend to be the bottom of the run models. Furthermore, from one box to another, the models are skipped so that one store has a 100 and the 110 and the 130 while the other has the 105 and the 115 and the 140. You may think you are getting choice, but what you are really getting is a combination of a manufacturer’s marketing guy and the box stores’ marketing guys getting together to decide what they are going to offer you in the way of selection, not choice.

Now if you go down to the actual ‘Green’ store or ‘Yellow’ store dealers, you may pay a slightly higher price, but guess what, if you want a larger horsepower unit with a smaller mower deck, you can get one because you have a lot more ‘choice’ at the dealer. Furthermore, you have built a relationship with the dealership who is going to end up servicing your tractor anyway because those box stores ‘don’t do that.’ And no, I’m not going to tell you which tractor I ended up buying because this article isn’t about tractors at all, it’s about ‘CHOICE’ and that’s why we are 'first looking' today at Quotient.

Quotient is online quoting that enables your customer to pick-and-choose options, ask questions, and ultimately accept your offer online. Their quoting options are almost like me going to the Lawn-tractor dealership and picking out the exact thing I needed with all the options and goodies I wanted, except that with Quotient your customers can do it online from anywhere.  Quotient makes ‘CHOICE’ available, and you can’t do that with QuickBooks, but you can if you are using Quotient.

Quotient is super-intuitive online quoting and proposal software that lets you create, send and manage your quotes. And while it is smart and technosavvy, it's also sleek and sophisticated, so your quotes turn out looking spectacular. 

You can either start a new quote ‘from scratch’ or use a template, Quotient templates make it quick to start quotes from existing quote designs and help you maintain consistency allowing you to include every detail in every quote every time. Plus, it’s easy to create templates for as many different types of quotes as you need for your business.

Your customer receives an email containing a personalized link to view their quote. Your quote will open and look fantastic on any device, there’s nothing to download or install.

This is where the CHOICE begins, because you can include optional and multiple-choice items in your quotes to give your customers the ability to pick and chose while they are accepting your quote. On your end of things creating the quote it looks something like the example shown below.

But, from the customer's view point, they will see their choices as they select them (like in the example shown at the top of the next page), and they will also see the total price recalculate right in front of their eyes so that they can 'accept' your quote with confidence knowing exactly what they have chosen and what it will cost them.  In other words, "they got to pick and choose exactly what they wanted the same way I did with my tractor... don't you just love the option of having CHOICE?"

But the quoting is not all there is to Quotient because, when you connect Quotient to QuickBooks and enable both ‘lookups and invoices’, you can lookup QuickBooks Customers and Products/Services from within Quotient when creating new quotes. You can also create QuickBooks invoices from your Quotient Quotes based upon one of three setting preferences you get to choose (again it’s your CHOICE):

  • automatically when the Quote is accepted; or
  • automatically when the Quote is archived (this is the default); or
  • manually using the 'Create Invoice' button.

There is even a handy reference posted in the invoice memo with the URL link back to the Quotient Quote (as shown in the red box in the example below).

So, Quotient gives you and your customers CHOICE, and isn’t that what we are all looking for these days when it comes to our purchasing decisions. If Quotient looks like the quoting solution you have been needing to integrate with QuickBooks Online then check them out at the Quotient website, or from their Intuit QuickBooks App Center landing page. You can also sign-up for a free 30-day trial.  Give it a try, the CHOICE is YOURS to make!