The journey from quote to cash can be plagued by regulatory penalties, missed deadlines, lost sales, maverick pricing, and transactional errors. These costly issues mean missed or lost revenue for companies to the tune of 9%. Want to make sure you always get to cash and keep customers happy? This presentation will point out ways to streamline and improve the quote-to-cash process. http://bit.ly/SYByxW

1. LEARN THE STEPS IN THE
QUOTE-TO-CASH
PROCESS FLOW
Climb to the top of the deal
“mountain” and collect the cash.

2. Too often, businesses get stalled on their climb to the
top of the deal mountain. Knowing how to navigate the
critical steps between quote generation and revenue
collection can be what gets them over the hurdle.
Now, let’s take a closer look.

3. Pricing
Pricing requires either manual or automated systems to
determine what products should be offered at what
prices, and what promotional or discounting rules can be
applied.
So what? Invest in a system that puts guardrails in
place to ensure your sales team is quoting products at
the right price, and offering only approved discounts.

4. Quote creation
To create an accurate quote, your sales team needs
real-time access to available products, accurate
business rules, and approved discounts.
So what? When managed manually, quoting can
take a lot of time, and be fairly error-prone. An
automated system for sales configuration makes
faster, 100% accurate quotes easy.

5. Negotiation and approvals
This can be one of the hardest steps to streamline,
and is a main culprit for deal deceleration. Even after
you’ve managed to complete negotiations, approvals
present yet another opportunity for bottlenecks.
So what? A system that streamlines approvals keeps
business moving quickly and cash coming in sooner.

6. Contract and order management
This critical phase includes contract creation and
execution, and deliverable management, including
keeping track of customer orders, packaging, stock
level maintenance, and shipping.
So what? If information in any of your systems is
captured incorrectly, a customer is ultimately going
to be shipped the wrong order.

7. Invoicing
Invoicing can be initiated based on either the sales
order or the shipment of product, and is typically
maintained in either an ERP system or through a
manual processes.
So what? Capturing accurate pricing, deals, and
discounts in your invoices means happier customers
and repeat business.

8. Systems—whether automated or manual—must be
in place to handle the inflow and capture of
payment from customers, as well as distribution of
customer receipts if necessary.
So what? Avoid leaving cash on the table by
implementing a system that tracks deal progression
to the very end.
Payment receipt

9. Now, you’ve made it through
the quote-to-cash process.
So what?

10. Deals don’t end with getting to cash in the
quote-to-cash process. A contract must then be
created and managed to extend the life of the
deal and give your team opportunities to
renew or grow the account.

11. Quote-to-contract
Where guided selling ends, contract management begins.
Connecting guided selling to contract management takes
you beyond quote-to-cash, and ultimately extends the
value of your deals for maximum revenue.
So what? Really? You don’t want more money?!

12. Consider this scenario from Aberdeen research:
“In any enterprise the reduction of sales cycles is critical and through our
research we have found that, on average, 18% of an enterprise’s sales
cycle is attributed to contract creation, negotiation and approval,
which if reduced can have a significant impact. Exploring this further, we
concluded that on average a one day reduction in the sales cycle is
worth approximately $80,000. For the larger enterprises this is worth
over $215,000; in several cases, this number was much larger and the fact
is that best-in-class companies have cycle times that are 10 to 15 days
shorter than other companies.”
So what? Contract management reduces time spent
managing contracts, shortening the sales cycle and
increasing revenue.

13. The quote-to-cash cycle is anything but simple. For
companies with complex product and service offerings,
each of the steps in the quote-to-cash cycle requires a
system—whether manual or automated—to keep the
process flowing. It begins with guided selling.

14. Thank you
Visit our site today to read
our quote-to-cash guide in full.