To Quote or not

My procedure for submitting a Quotation to a potential Client

When a client contacts you and asks for a quotation, please do not simply email back with a price/rate. Firstly contact the client, find out the requirements, ask for details and get as much information as possible

Have a company schedule/procedure for answering clients who require quotes within your business plan. Have a form with questions that you will need to base your quote on. All you have to do with this form is fill it in whenever a client needs a quote. Keep this form on your computer/printed on your desk but have it ready for whenever a client calls or when a request comes in.

Always have a company quotation and attach this to an email, this is much more professional then just sending an email with a rate. Your quotation must have your contact details and include your terms and conditions and any information that you have agreed to do for the client. Submit your quote as a pdf attachment to an email, and refer the client to this in your email.

Remember the faster you send that quote in, the quicker you could be to getting the client to contact you further, and you can beat the competition. With quotations it’s all about beating your competition. Make sure your wording and spelling is right, make sure you are inviting the client to contact you further.

For a client looking for a virtual assistant or transcriptionist to partner with, they are usually not looking at price, they are looking at your skills and experience in the business. Sometimes when putting in a quote it can be months later when you hear from the client again, some clients take that little bit longer to decide if they really do need a virtual assistant or transcriptionist especially so when it’s for regular work. Often clients need to look at the budgets and see if they can afford to use a VA.

For once-off/adhoc jobs it’s often the case the client will take the cheapest or near to cheapest quote, that is the way the industry is at the moment. It is up to you to decide, is it worth quoting a low rate for the job – but, consider before you quote what is involved with that job, how long will it take and decide your quote on that. That is the best way to quote! Going in on a low rate sometimes you will find that once you get the job it’s not worth doing as it is costing you more to do it than what you are getting for it, there is no profits to be made with doing jobs that way.

Keep this in mind when you are quoting clients and always have a quotation plan ready for you need it.

This SAFREA report below is a great report to use for standardised rates, there is no standard rates within the Virtual Assistant industry, at the moment. Maybe using this report could help towards standardise rates in the future.

SAFREA Rates Report

 

 

 

 

 

#Quotation #Quotes #amftyping #virtualassistant #VA