LEARN THE STEPS IN THE

QUOTE-TO-CASH PROCESS FLOW

Climb to the top of the deal “mountain” and collect the cash.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Now, you’ve made it through the quote-to-cash process.

So what?

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.

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?!

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.

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.

Thank you

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