To list prices online or not?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Agent Smith

That wouldn't do it for me but I'm not everyone else. :wi

You don't think both large projects and small projects could be handled in a way that is appropriate for the size from the same website by directing projects to the appropriate sales page based on size?

Wow, I get to fall on my 20 years of purchasing management experience-again! I like this site!

In my experience:

If you have straight forward, off the shelf commodities (read tangible product), then yes, an auto quote system is helpful. Especially, if the buyer has been trained / familiar with it.

Otherwise, it simply takes too much time for a customer - a purchasing person or engineer - to sit down and key in all of their parameters. At least "all" that they think they need. Without a interaction (phone or face-to-face) you are not helping your customer define/determine/design what they need.

More on the "time" aspect: If the business is competitive, then what more can you offer? You can't keep reducing your margin, and cost cutting programs drain internal resources. Either way, you are trying to compete on price with these efforts, not service or quality. Service comes from, literally, doing the work for the customer. A busy purchasing/engineer will welcome somebody who will do a situational analysis for them, then offer alternative options (read quotes).

Quality comes in when the provided service (and I use service here and not product because that's what these folks posting here are discussing) performs AS EXPECTED. Filling out forms on a website will not help you determine the customer's EXPECTATIONS. Only talking to people will help you determine, then set THEIR expectations.

Remember, when all is said and done you want that customer to be satisfied, not mumbling something about "that bloody system..." Don't make it easier on yourself, make it easier for the customer. If you can solve their problem then you can command the price.

Quote:

Originally Posted by RainMaker

You don't think both large projects and small projects could be handled in a way that is appropriate for the size from the same website by directing projects to the appropriate sales page based on size?

I guess if all marketing projects, large or small, are nothing more than ordering off the menu then this will work just fine.

I have a sneaking suspicion that this is not the case however. :wi

Maybe I'm not picking up on the responses right, but I have a feeling that what we are trying to accomplish is being miss understood.

What we do:
EXP Creative is professional (read: formal education with experience in firms) graphic design and marketing firm that caters it services to suit start-up and small business needs. EXP Creative offers only custom solutions for its clients.

Goal of the automated quote:
To provide small business owners that do not want to submit a quote, wait for a response and try to be sold a service that is beyond their budget an idea of what our services cost. The pricing in our industry varies so greatly that I feel our potential clients are overwhelmed when they find out that prices in our industry can vary by 400%! Small business owners who are not internet savvy may not realize what their money is buying them. We are priced below market value - but slightly below (definately not 400%!). We knew we were going to have to be priced below market value to cater to our target audience. We are a professional company that provides professional, measurable results and we feel confident about every penny we ask for our services. Our clients appreciate services that actually produce results and makes money from the money they spend with us. There are too many "designers" out there that are hurting the credibility of the industry as a whole. I'm not saying that designers have to be formally taught and have firm experience to be classified as a designer, but they do have to have education or experience - one or the other. It is the people that buy the tools the designers/programmers use and think that they should automatically be a designer or programmer. We all know that is not the case.

I feel the automated quote will be successful reaching clients that would not have requested a quote and give us a chance to interact with them. I do see this quote system as value service for our clients because it allows them to get fairly firm numbers on their own time. They don't have to wait for my call. They don't have to wait for my email. They get it now, because they want it now.

Cons:
We can't quote every scenario.

Not everyone will use the self-serve quote.

When we provide an "approximate quote", even though we will inform the client that the quote may vary slightly after we find out more specifically what they want, they will always see the lower number.

We can't inform clients of what services their business really needs until they have completed the quote process.

Pros:
We can provide a quote for our most popular services by asking as few as about 35 questions (the client will not have to answer all - maybe about 12-14). We can accomplish this by only asking the questions that will affect the pricing of the project. This is not the time to find out what style the client has or what colors the client is fond of. We can ask this later.

Conversations will go smoother with potential clients after they have used the quote system because they are aware of the pricing and how it relates to them. They are not constantly waiting for the catch.

We can use mathematics to our benefit and calculate services a little higher on the automated quote to compensate for information that the client does not understand or needs to be advised on different services. Either way, the client will get the most accurate pricing from me after they have submitted the automated quote. If I provide a formal quote that is lower, I'm sure the clients will be okay with that.

No one in the industry, to my knowledge, has a detailed quote system to cater to the instant crowd. Either people have had to develop packages or simply state " request a quote ". We want to offer the request a quote feature still, but also offer the instant quote.

The quote system will primarily be used by our clients to get quotes for logo, website, business card, brochure and flyer design. Most of the small businesses we have worked with so far don't engage in full blown marketing campaigns, so we are not focusing on the marketing aspects too much in the quote system. Clients looking for a company to handle their marketing would probably want to speak with us in person anyway.

Thanks to everybody to has offered input thus far. I just wanted to give a little more information of our project so everybody understands that we are not trying to cater this automated quote to everybody. There will be custom fields and if data is input into those fields there will be a response such as: "The total estimated project quote for your website will be $XXXX.XX plus the custom features you defined as ________________________. To get a quote for the whole project [submit your quote] to an EXP Creative representative." {I haven't played around with the wording too much, that's just what came to my head. It should be something to that effect though}

Please excuse my typos it's early and sorry its so long.

EXP: Good luck with your project. After its on line I, for one, would like to hear back from you regarding its successes and challenges. That will give us all insight as to the current "state of mind" of the customer - perhaps its changing.

Wayne.

Ok guys (and gals), we have the online instant quote systm up and running. It has actually been up for about a week now, but we have been extremely busy with a new client.

Try our EXPress Quote! (You will have to enter your contact info to go through the process, so if you want to complete the form but not be contacted - leave the checkbox on at the bottom of page 2 unchecked (if you select web design you will have the option to add comments and you could say something like "sales practice test").

I look forward to your input. I know there is an issue in the "Consulting" section with the checkboxes not aligning properly on PC's, but we will be implementing a new design soon so that is not too much of a concern right now.

I sent my specific comments to you privately, but I still stand by my original comments on the viability of the concept.

If the "express quote request" is just to give a preliminary quote why is the contact information necessary?

That's a good question WobblyBox. From a business standpoint, the EXPress Quote has cost me a lot of money in development time and this is a service you will not find at any of my competitor's website. Most custom design firms only have a "Request a Quote....we'll get back to you within 24 hours" option.

To me, that wasn't good enough. For providing this instant gratification to my potential clients and helping them make a decision on their time - not mine - I do not feel I am asking for too much when I ask for their contact info. I will be changing up the form as it looks a little intimidating right now and I will also add the ability for the site to generate a nice PDF quote proposal that can be emailed as the last step of the quote request.

Marketing graphic design and web development services are expensive. Trying to buy into a Google Adwords campaign at $10 a click for top placement will run my marketing budget bone dry. The EXPress Quote offers a great service to our potential clients and also helps us provide better service through the contact information we are given. We are able to follow up via the telephone if the client chooses, via email or via snail mail if the potential visitor does not want to receive emails from us. We give our clients the option to not receive phone calls or emails from us, but the snail mail address is something we will use as people normally don't have a problem inputing their corpany's address (we are not targeting home-based start up businesses).

Did you go through the quote process? After you put in your contact info did you find the rest of the process easy?

I didn't go through the quote process "because" I had to enter my contact information. I don't think I'll be alone in that respect. The Internet is full of free information including prices from graphic design and marketing firms. If I don't find the information I'm looking for on your site, or don't enjoy the experience, I simply go back to Google and search again.

To list prices online or not?

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