Automated RFQ
Automated RFQ
Automated RFQ
An automated request for quote feature to easily capture and process quote requests within minutes, drastically reducing lead time.
An automated request for quote feature to easily capture and process quote requests within minutes, drastically reducing lead time.
An automated request for quote feature to easily capture and process quote requests within minutes, drastically reducing lead time.
Project Type
tooling • development • sales ops
Tags
scalability • efficiency • customer experience
Roles
Solo designer/dev
Association
Co-founder
PocketMaps
in
2015
RFQ?
An RFQ is a request for quote, similar to an RFP, which is a request for proposal. When a prospective client wants to get an idea of how much a custom product or service would cost, they usually have to fill out some sort of form or describe their project’s needs over the phone.
RFQ?
An RFQ is a request for quote, similar to an RFP, which is a request for proposal. When a prospective client wants to get an idea of how much a custom product or service would cost, they usually have to fill out some sort of form or describe their project’s needs over the phone.
RFQ?
An RFQ is a request for quote, similar to an RFP, which is a request for proposal. When a prospective client wants to get an idea of how much a custom product or service would cost, they usually have to fill out some sort of form or describe their project’s needs over the phone.
The problem
Often, quoting is a manual process, especially if you have a complicated pricing structure. And it can be extremely time-consuming, not only manually calculating quotes but the entire follow-up process of creating a branded document to email or even just writing it up directly in the email itself. The entire experience of manual quoting is poor for everyone involved in addition to being costly for the business.
Showing your pricing doesn’t necessarily help, either, if customers have to do the math themselves. If it’s too difficult to time-consuming to get pricing, customers are often quick to bounce and find another vendor that’s easier to work with.
The problem
Often, quoting is a manual process, especially if you have a complicated pricing structure. And it can be extremely time-consuming, not only manually calculating quotes but the entire follow-up process of creating a branded document to email or even just writing it up directly in the email itself. The entire experience of manual quoting is poor for everyone involved in addition to being costly for the business.
Showing your pricing doesn’t necessarily help, either, if customers have to do the math themselves. If it’s too difficult to time-consuming to get pricing, customers are often quick to bounce and find another vendor that’s easier to work with.
The problem
Often, quoting is a manual process, especially if you have a complicated pricing structure. And it can be extremely time-consuming, not only manually calculating quotes but the entire follow-up process of creating a branded document to email or even just writing it up directly in the email itself. The entire experience of manual quoting is poor for everyone involved in addition to being costly for the business.
Showing your pricing doesn’t necessarily help, either, if customers have to do the math themselves. If it’s too difficult to time-consuming to get pricing, customers are often quick to bounce and find another vendor that’s easier to work with.
My solution
Automate both our pricing and follow-up communication.
At my first startup, I had a similar problem. We had more RFQs coming in than our tiny team could handle quickly and consistently enough to keep people interested. On top of that, I wanted a way to easily keep them in the loop on their project asynchronously to lighten my follow-up workload and reduce unnecessary email checkins from clients. So I created a tool built into our website to automate as much as possible while impressing our clients with some fancy tricks on top of clear and simple communication.
So when I had basically the same problem for PocketMaps, I decided to build essentially the same solution, but with a few changes.
Here’s how it works
Tools: a CMS, HTML, CSS, and basic JS.
The CMS I used is Craft CMS, which I find to be relatively friendly to web designers with less development experience because you don’t have to do any real programming. You can get buy with relatively entry-level web development skills and still accomplish something pretty useful. It just requires some imagination and a lot of tinkering.
When a prospective client visits the website and lands on the page where they can request a quote, they’re presented with a UI that is essentially a highly-customized web form. It asks questions about their project to help us understand the size, quantity, medium, and any other details that would impact the quoted prices. We also allow them to request up to 3 quantities so they can compare pricing if they’re considering ordering more to get a better deal.
Once the form is submitted, they receive a thank you message letting them know their request was received and assure them that we’ll be following up quickly. Meanwhile, in the background, the magic starts.
Their form submission has become a content entry into our CMS’s database. And like any other CMS entry, it can be displayed as a webpage. So as soon as their request is submitted, it’s technically available to be viewed via a specific URL. They just haven’t been sent it yet. More on that webpage in a bit.
The next automated step in the process is the form entry data being sent over to Zapier to be processed. This is where the customer communication comes into play, as well as connectivity with other tools for certain instances. The data gets filtered and formatted into an email, when then gets sent out directly to the prospective client. With a 15min delay, the email delivery feels timed as though we immediately received their request and quickly prioritized a follow-up. Considering that a speedy follow-up by a real person is often valued over bots or annoying no-reply email addresses, this gives us an advantage over our competition.
When the recipient opens our personalized email and finds a link to their quote, they’re able to immediately view it online, styled to perfectly match our brand and fit right into the experience they just has on our site when submitting the request. It feels cohesive, custom, and clear.
When the quote loads, it pulls all the same details they submitted in their form but runs calculations against our pricing table, privately tucked away inside our database. They can then easily see the cost for each set of options and quantities they asked for. Additionally, other relevant details on preparing their project, timelines, etc. are available as additional notes below the quote. Anticipating additional questions they may have helps move them closer to making a decision as soon as possible.
Going further
Going beyond the quoting process, I added more steps to assist the client into the ordering process. Using a tabbed navigation that conditionally checks the status of their project, the client can view additional pages connected to their quote as they become relevant.
Initially, the customer is able to select an option within the quote that they’d like to become their order. Essentially just another form submission, this tells the CMS entry to update the related fields, which in turn allows the view on the frontend (their quote page) to navigate to a new tab where they can see their order status and complete new details like shipping and billing information.
Other tabs include downloading templates to prepare their project and uploading their files once they’re ready. The file templates tab knows which product size they ordered and automatically selects the appropriate template files to be downloaded. But the client can choose additional templates as desired.
The file uploads page also pulls from their CMS entry and file uploads to preview their file to check alignment against the associated file template. This helps the client understand whether they’ve prepared their files correctly. The file uploads feature does use a custom plugin that we paid an experienced web developer to create. At the time, I had not created any plugins. And plugins require a deeper understanding of the CMS and writing PHP, which wasn’t required for any other part of the project.
All-in-all, what we ended up with is nearly and end-to-end quoting and ordering experience all built on top of a CMS with only 1 plugin required and 1 outside service (Zapier).
Special admin features
Later on, I added additional features that we could benefit as admin users, along with a few people we later contracted for sales support.
Live calculator
Many customers still prefer to call and speak directly to a person to discuss their project and get quoted over the phone. And that means the agent handling the sales call still needs to be on the ball with numbers. So to help them quickly build quotes live over the phone, I added a live calculator in an admin-only view to allow sales agents to quickly run the numbers. Additionally, the calculator breaks down the math for the admin to provide transparency and make it easier to spot bugs when they occur. And when pricing bugs do happen, the agent can quickly spot them and avoid miss-quoting a client. Because let’s face it. Bugs happen. But if I can minimize resulting quality issues, then that’s worth a little extra work.
Live quote changes
In addition to having the website do the math for quoting, live, admins can also save those options to an existing quote by editing the quote live. They can also change other details such as adding or removing product options or adjusting quantity. All changes immediately show update pricing.
All quotes view + search
Because this was all built on a CMS, it was easy to add a list page showing all quotes sorted with the latest first, complete with pagination and search functionality to look up specific quotes, older quotes, and easily find all quotes from the same client.
Status
During a period where we were trying to include task management features into this whole process as well, I built in a status dropdown to denote the stage or status the project was in to help my business partner track which projects needed attention and when. Ultimately, this feature was dropped in favor of using dedicated CRM tools, which more easily added due to Zapier already being plugged into this workflow.
My solution
Automate both our pricing and follow-up communication.
At my first startup, I had a similar problem. We had more RFQs coming in than our tiny team could handle quickly and consistently enough to keep people interested. On top of that, I wanted a way to easily keep them in the loop on their project asynchronously to lighten my follow-up workload and reduce unnecessary email checkins from clients. So I created a tool built into our website to automate as much as possible while impressing our clients with some fancy tricks on top of clear and simple communication.
So when I had basically the same problem for PocketMaps, I decided to build essentially the same solution, but with a few changes.
Here’s how it works
Tools: a CMS, HTML, CSS, and basic JS.
The CMS I used is Craft CMS, which I find to be relatively friendly to web designers with less development experience because you don’t have to do any real programming. You can get buy with relatively entry-level web development skills and still accomplish something pretty useful. It just requires some imagination and a lot of tinkering.
When a prospective client visits the website and lands on the page where they can request a quote, they’re presented with a UI that is essentially a highly-customized web form. It asks questions about their project to help us understand the size, quantity, medium, and any other details that would impact the quoted prices. We also allow them to request up to 3 quantities so they can compare pricing if they’re considering ordering more to get a better deal.
Once the form is submitted, they receive a thank you message letting them know their request was received and assure them that we’ll be following up quickly. Meanwhile, in the background, the magic starts.
Their form submission has become a content entry into our CMS’s database. And like any other CMS entry, it can be displayed as a webpage. So as soon as their request is submitted, it’s technically available to be viewed via a specific URL. They just haven’t been sent it yet. More on that webpage in a bit.
The next automated step in the process is the form entry data being sent over to Zapier to be processed. This is where the customer communication comes into play, as well as connectivity with other tools for certain instances. The data gets filtered and formatted into an email, when then gets sent out directly to the prospective client. With a 15min delay, the email delivery feels timed as though we immediately received their request and quickly prioritized a follow-up. Considering that a speedy follow-up by a real person is often valued over bots or annoying no-reply email addresses, this gives us an advantage over our competition.
When the recipient opens our personalized email and finds a link to their quote, they’re able to immediately view it online, styled to perfectly match our brand and fit right into the experience they just has on our site when submitting the request. It feels cohesive, custom, and clear.
When the quote loads, it pulls all the same details they submitted in their form but runs calculations against our pricing table, privately tucked away inside our database. They can then easily see the cost for each set of options and quantities they asked for. Additionally, other relevant details on preparing their project, timelines, etc. are available as additional notes below the quote. Anticipating additional questions they may have helps move them closer to making a decision as soon as possible.
Going further
Going beyond the quoting process, I added more steps to assist the client into the ordering process. Using a tabbed navigation that conditionally checks the status of their project, the client can view additional pages connected to their quote as they become relevant.
Initially, the customer is able to select an option within the quote that they’d like to become their order. Essentially just another form submission, this tells the CMS entry to update the related fields, which in turn allows the view on the frontend (their quote page) to navigate to a new tab where they can see their order status and complete new details like shipping and billing information.
Other tabs include downloading templates to prepare their project and uploading their files once they’re ready. The file templates tab knows which product size they ordered and automatically selects the appropriate template files to be downloaded. But the client can choose additional templates as desired.
The file uploads page also pulls from their CMS entry and file uploads to preview their file to check alignment against the associated file template. This helps the client understand whether they’ve prepared their files correctly. The file uploads feature does use a custom plugin that we paid an experienced web developer to create. At the time, I had not created any plugins. And plugins require a deeper understanding of the CMS and writing PHP, which wasn’t required for any other part of the project.
All-in-all, what we ended up with is nearly and end-to-end quoting and ordering experience all built on top of a CMS with only 1 plugin required and 1 outside service (Zapier).
Special admin features
Later on, I added additional features that we could benefit as admin users, along with a few people we later contracted for sales support.
Live calculator
Many customers still prefer to call and speak directly to a person to discuss their project and get quoted over the phone. And that means the agent handling the sales call still needs to be on the ball with numbers. So to help them quickly build quotes live over the phone, I added a live calculator in an admin-only view to allow sales agents to quickly run the numbers. Additionally, the calculator breaks down the math for the admin to provide transparency and make it easier to spot bugs when they occur. And when pricing bugs do happen, the agent can quickly spot them and avoid miss-quoting a client. Because let’s face it. Bugs happen. But if I can minimize resulting quality issues, then that’s worth a little extra work.
Live quote changes
In addition to having the website do the math for quoting, live, admins can also save those options to an existing quote by editing the quote live. They can also change other details such as adding or removing product options or adjusting quantity. All changes immediately show update pricing.
All quotes view + search
Because this was all built on a CMS, it was easy to add a list page showing all quotes sorted with the latest first, complete with pagination and search functionality to look up specific quotes, older quotes, and easily find all quotes from the same client.
Status
During a period where we were trying to include task management features into this whole process as well, I built in a status dropdown to denote the stage or status the project was in to help my business partner track which projects needed attention and when. Ultimately, this feature was dropped in favor of using dedicated CRM tools, which more easily added due to Zapier already being plugged into this workflow.
My solution
Automate both our pricing and follow-up communication.
At my first startup, I had a similar problem. We had more RFQs coming in than our tiny team could handle quickly and consistently enough to keep people interested. On top of that, I wanted a way to easily keep them in the loop on their project asynchronously to lighten my follow-up workload and reduce unnecessary email checkins from clients. So I created a tool built into our website to automate as much as possible while impressing our clients with some fancy tricks on top of clear and simple communication.
So when I had basically the same problem for PocketMaps, I decided to build essentially the same solution, but with a few changes.
Here’s how it works
Tools: a CMS, HTML, CSS, and basic JS.
The CMS I used is Craft CMS, which I find to be relatively friendly to web designers with less development experience because you don’t have to do any real programming. You can get buy with relatively entry-level web development skills and still accomplish something pretty useful. It just requires some imagination and a lot of tinkering.
When a prospective client visits the website and lands on the page where they can request a quote, they’re presented with a UI that is essentially a highly-customized web form. It asks questions about their project to help us understand the size, quantity, medium, and any other details that would impact the quoted prices. We also allow them to request up to 3 quantities so they can compare pricing if they’re considering ordering more to get a better deal.
Once the form is submitted, they receive a thank you message letting them know their request was received and assure them that we’ll be following up quickly. Meanwhile, in the background, the magic starts.
Their form submission has become a content entry into our CMS’s database. And like any other CMS entry, it can be displayed as a webpage. So as soon as their request is submitted, it’s technically available to be viewed via a specific URL. They just haven’t been sent it yet. More on that webpage in a bit.
The next automated step in the process is the form entry data being sent over to Zapier to be processed. This is where the customer communication comes into play, as well as connectivity with other tools for certain instances. The data gets filtered and formatted into an email, when then gets sent out directly to the prospective client. With a 15min delay, the email delivery feels timed as though we immediately received their request and quickly prioritized a follow-up. Considering that a speedy follow-up by a real person is often valued over bots or annoying no-reply email addresses, this gives us an advantage over our competition.
When the recipient opens our personalized email and finds a link to their quote, they’re able to immediately view it online, styled to perfectly match our brand and fit right into the experience they just has on our site when submitting the request. It feels cohesive, custom, and clear.
When the quote loads, it pulls all the same details they submitted in their form but runs calculations against our pricing table, privately tucked away inside our database. They can then easily see the cost for each set of options and quantities they asked for. Additionally, other relevant details on preparing their project, timelines, etc. are available as additional notes below the quote. Anticipating additional questions they may have helps move them closer to making a decision as soon as possible.
Going further
Going beyond the quoting process, I added more steps to assist the client into the ordering process. Using a tabbed navigation that conditionally checks the status of their project, the client can view additional pages connected to their quote as they become relevant.
Initially, the customer is able to select an option within the quote that they’d like to become their order. Essentially just another form submission, this tells the CMS entry to update the related fields, which in turn allows the view on the frontend (their quote page) to navigate to a new tab where they can see their order status and complete new details like shipping and billing information.
Other tabs include downloading templates to prepare their project and uploading their files once they’re ready. The file templates tab knows which product size they ordered and automatically selects the appropriate template files to be downloaded. But the client can choose additional templates as desired.
The file uploads page also pulls from their CMS entry and file uploads to preview their file to check alignment against the associated file template. This helps the client understand whether they’ve prepared their files correctly. The file uploads feature does use a custom plugin that we paid an experienced web developer to create. At the time, I had not created any plugins. And plugins require a deeper understanding of the CMS and writing PHP, which wasn’t required for any other part of the project.
All-in-all, what we ended up with is nearly and end-to-end quoting and ordering experience all built on top of a CMS with only 1 plugin required and 1 outside service (Zapier).
Special admin features
Later on, I added additional features that we could benefit as admin users, along with a few people we later contracted for sales support.
Live calculator
Many customers still prefer to call and speak directly to a person to discuss their project and get quoted over the phone. And that means the agent handling the sales call still needs to be on the ball with numbers. So to help them quickly build quotes live over the phone, I added a live calculator in an admin-only view to allow sales agents to quickly run the numbers. Additionally, the calculator breaks down the math for the admin to provide transparency and make it easier to spot bugs when they occur. And when pricing bugs do happen, the agent can quickly spot them and avoid miss-quoting a client. Because let’s face it. Bugs happen. But if I can minimize resulting quality issues, then that’s worth a little extra work.
Live quote changes
In addition to having the website do the math for quoting, live, admins can also save those options to an existing quote by editing the quote live. They can also change other details such as adding or removing product options or adjusting quantity. All changes immediately show update pricing.
All quotes view + search
Because this was all built on a CMS, it was easy to add a list page showing all quotes sorted with the latest first, complete with pagination and search functionality to look up specific quotes, older quotes, and easily find all quotes from the same client.
Status
During a period where we were trying to include task management features into this whole process as well, I built in a status dropdown to denote the stage or status the project was in to help my business partner track which projects needed attention and when. Ultimately, this feature was dropped in favor of using dedicated CRM tools, which more easily added due to Zapier already being plugged into this workflow.
Results
Even after the initial release of my first pass at the quoting automation steps, the automations in this workflow had huge benefits to both prospective clients as well as my business partner. Prior to this process, he was averaging 4hrs+ a day responding to quote requests. After…only minutes. Clients went from waiting hours or often days for quotes, to consistently receiving them within minutes. And where previously, some requests would fall through the cracks and be forgotten, that was nearly impossible with these tools in place.
This project started in 2015 when the bulk of the work was done. Fast forward to 2023, we’re still using the same tools. And overall, there’s only been lite maintenance work here and there. The longevity and recurring benefits this project has brought us has been invaluable for our business, including allowing my business partner to often one of only a few, if not the only, sales agent. And I’ve been able to put pretty much all of time time towards other project or hold an entirely separate job because this process pretty much runs itself. Well worth the effort.
Results
Even after the initial release of my first pass at the quoting automation steps, the automations in this workflow had huge benefits to both prospective clients as well as my business partner. Prior to this process, he was averaging 4hrs+ a day responding to quote requests. After…only minutes. Clients went from waiting hours or often days for quotes, to consistently receiving them within minutes. And where previously, some requests would fall through the cracks and be forgotten, that was nearly impossible with these tools in place.
This project started in 2015 when the bulk of the work was done. Fast forward to 2023, we’re still using the same tools. And overall, there’s only been lite maintenance work here and there. The longevity and recurring benefits this project has brought us has been invaluable for our business, including allowing my business partner to often one of only a few, if not the only, sales agent. And I’ve been able to put pretty much all of time time towards other project or hold an entirely separate job because this process pretty much runs itself. Well worth the effort.
Results
Even after the initial release of my first pass at the quoting automation steps, the automations in this workflow had huge benefits to both prospective clients as well as my business partner. Prior to this process, he was averaging 4hrs+ a day responding to quote requests. After…only minutes. Clients went from waiting hours or often days for quotes, to consistently receiving them within minutes. And where previously, some requests would fall through the cracks and be forgotten, that was nearly impossible with these tools in place.
This project started in 2015 when the bulk of the work was done. Fast forward to 2023, we’re still using the same tools. And overall, there’s only been lite maintenance work here and there. The longevity and recurring benefits this project has brought us has been invaluable for our business, including allowing my business partner to often one of only a few, if not the only, sales agent. And I’ve been able to put pretty much all of time time towards other project or hold an entirely separate job because this process pretty much runs itself. Well worth the effort.
Try it out
If you want to try the quoting tool yourself, you’re welcome to give it a go. Just head on over to https://pocketmaps.com/get-a-quote. Please just be sure to specify in the notes on the final before submitting that it’s just a demo quote after reading about it here.
Try it out
If you want to try the quoting tool yourself, you’re welcome to give it a go. Just head on over to https://pocketmaps.com/get-a-quote. Please just be sure to specify in the notes on the final before submitting that it’s just a demo quote after reading about it here.
Try it out
If you want to try the quoting tool yourself, you’re welcome to give it a go. Just head on over to https://pocketmaps.com/get-a-quote. Please just be sure to specify in the notes on the final before submitting that it’s just a demo quote after reading about it here.