We all spend too much time just trying to exist, keeping our heads above water while spending much too little time on being the best company we can be. Outstanding is the key word here. Be the best you can be. While others are at the show, you can take a look at your business and figure out ways to make you the best that you can possibly be.

 

How can you make your company really stand out?

What you are trying to do is make working with your company a wonderful experience. It’s not enough that you just sell boards, you are selling the entire cachet. You want your new customer to feel welcomed, wanted, and appreciated. You want him/her to feel that he/she is really dealing with a quality company. A company where quality goes much further than the basic product.

 

Anyone can produce a quality printed circuit board, but not everyone can produce a quality experience.

 

All of us want to have a company that our customers talk about as a shining example of how companies should do business. We should always be looking for ways to shine, ways to make our customers so happy they are doing business with us that they want to brag about it.

 

Are you ready to shine?

 

Over the next seven days I will present seven ideas that will make your company positively shine!

 

The quote is your first product; make your quote look great! Make sure it is comprehensive and easy to understand. Make sure it is clear and make sure, and this is very important, that you quote exactly what your customer has asked for. It doesn’t matter what you like to do, it matters only what your customer wants you to do. So the first thing is to make sure you quote them exactly what they asked for. Then later, in the quote, you can offer suggestions for other ways they could be buying their products.

 

Make sure that the quote looks good, physically. So many of us are using the same software system to do our quoting that all of our quotes look the same. If you do not want your product to be viewed as a commodity then differentiate yourself in everything that you do. Look better than everyone else. Thus, make your quote a work of art. Consider your proposal not just a quote but a product that represents your company. The goal here is to have the person who receives the quoted delighted with it, so delighted with it, in fact, that he/she will show it around. Be creative, put in a word quote by a famous person. Make sure that your mission statement is in the quote. Make sure that there are offers for special upcoming deals. Be careful not to clutter the quotation, that’s why you want to make sure that the first part of the quotation highlights what the customer wants to see. After that you can add other information to make it outstanding.

 

A good quotation document should include:

This is your first opportunity to show your potential customers what you can do, do not pass it up!

 

Bonus tip: If this is a quote to a current customer, add some information about that customer. Something they will find useful, like a running total of the number of orders they have placed this year or the amount of dollars they have placed, something that connects you to them and shows them you value their business.