Sometimes it's just wiser to walk away from a quote
In my meeting this afternoon with my client, we got into a discussion about experiences we’ve had with small business owners who waste time on quotes they won’t win. To most salespeople, any live request for a quote is exciting. Eventually, experience teaches us to pass on doing some.
Here are seven situations where smart salespeople, whether soft sell salespeople or hard sell, win by walking away.
• When you don’t have the ability to do something required in the specifications for the quote
o If you are truly a soft sell salesperson, you would never quote this because you know you aren’t able to help that customer.
• When the request for quote is not specific enough or is missing parts
o This may mean someone is just beginning to research the market and so wants you to do the work for him. Some customers aren’t looking for a relationship. They’re only about the money and being lazy.
o It may also mean she intends to buy the lowest price from someone who has no expertise and doesn’t recognize what is missing.
- This could be an opportunity to offer your consulting services. Be sure to charge for your time.
• When the time frame is unrealistic.
o This means you’ll either have to pay overtime, which you can’t bill for because you didn’t include overtime in your competitive quote.
o Alternatively, you’ll miss your required delivery thereby either paying a penalty and/or losing any future jobs for not meeting your commitment.
• When your prospect’s company hasn’t allocated funds for this project yet
• When you competitor’s is already in the account and her product matches the specifications while yours doesn’t
o I recently read a story Charles Green told in Trust-Based Selling about an experienced salesman who explained to his manager that he was not going to waste time on this request for bid because his competitor’s product fit, theirs didn’t, and the competitor was already selling to them. The president of the company requesting the bid got furious that this rep wouldn’t submit a bid so he want to the vendor company’s vice president of sales and marketing to complain. The VP assigned another rep to the bid. After that junior salesperson invested hours and hours, the competitor won the bid as the first rep foretold.
• When you’ve repeatedly submitted quotes without ever winning one
o It’s time to either cut your loses or
o Call the buyer to find out why you are not winning.
• When you get a request from a company you’ve never spoken with, which does not match your ideal customer profile — and the quote will take hours to do.
o This is where having a checklist to help evaluate an RFP’s potential can help you “thin slice,” a skill Malcolm Gladwell described in Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking.
Because I’m dedicated to soft sell sales and marketing, I believe in developing relationships. Still, in business-to-business sales, you may find yourself with a request for quote you didn’t expect. Before investing a lot of effort in responding to one of these, I would attempt to make contact and learn about my prospect. I don’t think we can do our best work for the customer without understanding his situation.
Nevertheless, there will be times when that is not an option. So how do we make a good decision to quote or not to quote? I suggest comparing it to the seven scenarios above. With training, thought, and practice, you will improve your ability to quickly evaluate if this is a time when you win by walking away from a quote — or if you can actually open a relationship by doing it.
Please comment If you have an example of a time you wish you’d walked away from doing a quote.
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