One of the major problems faced by every online e-commerce store, is employing a good proposal and sales management system.
Your store is sleek, your service excellent; but when it comes to building that rapport with your client, online businesses fall somewhat short.
Fixed price stores suffer less here, since they offer little or no room for negotiations, or tweaking products as per requirements anyways.
However, when it comes to selling custom-made products, taking customer opinion into account is inescapable.
What is a Proposal and Sales Management System
A proposal and sales management system lets you draft customized proposals for your clientele, with variable prices considering the design, manufacturing and shipping costs. It helps you negotiate swiftly and smoothly with the client so that deals can be closed satisfactorily.
To see what constitutes a good proposal management system, let us see how it works.
How Does a Proposal and Sales Management System Work?
Proposal management systems on WooCommerce let customers ask for sales quotations for the products they are interested in. They also provide a comprehensive record of all the proposal requests made and answered.
The entire process is pretty straightforward:
- A customer adds single or multiple products and sends a request for a sales proposal.
- The store owner draws up a proposal that satisfies the given requirements and sends it across.
- On receiving the proposal, the customer either approves or rejects it. If he approves, he is redirected to the checkout page for completing the purchase. If not, he can reject the proposal, with the reason why it was disapproved and request for another.
- This cycle continues till a mutually satisfactory agreement is reached.
This gives an idea of the kind of features a good proposal and sales management plugin for WooCommerce should have.
These include:
Enabling Multiproduct Enquiries
From the point of view of a customer, it is tedious to create a proposal request for every single product that he or she wants to buy. A good option would be to have multiproduct enquiries enabled so that there is one single proposal for all the required items.
Quick Proposal Generation
Drafting a new proposal every time is a waste of time and energy. Proposal systems generally have pre-defined templates that act as guideline for the draft design. Once ready, these can be sent as PDF files to the customer.
Easy Tracking
Keeping track of sales proposals can be difficult if they are synced only to your email accounts; one could easily be missed or overlooked, in the swarm. Proposal management becomes way easier if there is a centralized panel wherefrom the quotation requests can be tracked and managed.
Smooth Transaction
After having successfully quoted, negotiated and finalized the deal, dropping the ball at the last stage would be inexcusable. A good proposal management system provides smooth and easy transaction options so that the customer has a hassle-free experience.
This might seem like too much to ask for, but a good proposal and sales management plugin does this and more.
Here is a look at some of the best proposal management plugins for WooCommerce.
Proposal Management Plugins for WooCommerce
YITH WooCommerce Request a Quote Plugin
The YITH WooCommerce Request a Quote Plugin lets you selectively add the ‘Request a Quote’ functionality to your store so that customers can ask for an estimate for the products they are interested in.
Some of the other features include:
- Add to Quote button on the Product pages
- Text customization for the Add to Cart Button
- Create a Quote form to be displayed on the Shop page
- Customize the e-mail proposal and template to be sent to the customer
Winning Feature: Expiration dates for quotes
The YITH WooCommerce Request a Quote plugin is priced at $59 for a single site license, $99 for 6 sites and $149 for 30 sites.
QuoteUp WooCommerce Proposal Management System
QuoteUp facilitates straightforward negotiation between the buyer and the seller. This ensures that both get the right value for their money and sales can be concluded speedily.
Plugin Features include:
- Enabling multiproduct proposal requests
- Addition of the Quote Cart button can be on Shop, Categories and other archived pages too
- Converting your store into a Quote only store by making proposal requests mandatory is possible
- Automatic generation of a PDF when proposal is sent via email to the customer
- Provision of a quick-link for accepting/rejecting proposal in the mail
Winning Feature: Quote edit and resend option for comprehensive negotiation
The QuoteUp – Quotation Management and Sales plugin for WooCommerce costs $39 for 1 site, $59 for 2 sites and $117 for 5 sites.
A full-fledged proposal request plugin, WooCommerce Quotes and Orders has three different modes for three different functionalities, vi. Add to Cart mode, Add to Quote mode and Add to Order mode.
The plugin has several other features like:
- Supports the Quote Cart functionality
- Facilitates automatic account creation when a proposal is requested
- Is a Multilingual plugin and localization ready
- Integrated with WooCommerce MyAccount and compatible with WooCommerce Dynamic Pricing extension
Winning Feature: ‘Auto Quote’ operation mode, to send instant quotes
WooCommerce Quotes and Orders plugin costs $149 for a single site lifetime license.
Your Thoughts?
WooCommerce has over 1 million active working websites today for e-commerce and the number is only expected to go up. Hosting about 30% of the world’s businesses, WooCommerce is going strong and set to go stronger. E-commerce is the future and a good, nay great proposal management system, is a must for successfully boosting sales.
A complete, all-in-one solution for managing product proposals can let you focus on developing your website rather than getting tangled up in managing a multitude of various plugins for the proposal system.
Which proposal management plugin do you use? Let us know in the comments section below.
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