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Help sales teams maintain profitability with the estimate and quote sales process area

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Applies to: Dynamics 365 Sales, Dynamics 365 Finance, Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management, Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection

This article describes the key steps and considerations for using Dynamics 365 to accurately estimate and quote sales. Effective quoting helps sales teams win more deals and maintain profitability.

Quoting is a pivotal process where a prospect shows interest and engagement. A timely, competitive quote enables sales teams to progress opportunities and turn them into revenue. Dynamics 365 provides end-to-end tools for efficient, data-driven quoting at scale.

Through integration with Dynamics 365 Sales, finance and operations apps provide real-time visibility into inventory availability, costs, and margins during quoting. This visibility empowers sales teams to confidently create profitable quotes.

Key stakeholders

The following key stakeholders are involved in estimating and quoting sales:

  • Sales reps: Create and manage quotes in Dynamics 365 Sales.
  • Sales managers: Oversee the overall quoting process and quote attainment.
  • Account managers: Work directly with customers and prospects on quote details.
  • Finance: Validate pricing and margins on quotes (connected to the upstream Record to Report process).
  • Operations: Fulfill quotes and validate inventory/costs (connected to the downstream Inventory to Deliver process).

Estimate and quote sales flow

The following diagram illustrates the key steps in the estimate and quote sales business process area.

Each solid gray rectangle on the diagram represents an end-to-end business process. The solid blue rectangle represents the business process area. The diagram shows the subprocesses for the business process area. The arrows on the diagram show the flow of the business process in an organization. If a subprocess can lead to more than one other subprocess, the parallel subprocesses are shown as branches.

Flow diagram for the estimate and quote sales business process area, which is explained in the paragraph after the image.

The following steps are illustrated in the business process flow diagram.

  1. Start

  2. Prospect to quote end-to-end process

  3. Estimate and quote sales business process area

    1. Create sales quotes

      Sales reps start the process by creating a sales quotation in Dynamics 365 Sales. This process involves the following key activities:

      • Adding products, services, and discounts.
      • Creating or selecting a price list.
      • Entering customer and payment details (integrated with the Service to Cash process).

    2. Manage sales quotes

      Sales reps and managers evaluate and revise quotes as needed. This process involves the following activities:

      • Closing quotes that are lost or canceled.
      • Creating sales orders from approved quotes (hands off to the Order to Cash process).
      • Revising quotes based on customer feedback.

  4. End

There is an upstream branch to create sales quotes from record revenue events. There is an upstream branch to manage sales quotes from retrieve pricing and availability and convert quote to order.

There are also downstream branches to create and manage sales, process inbound goods, and create work orders.

Benefits

Several benefits can be achieved by using Dynamics 365 to optimize the quoting process:

  • Increased deal sizes

    Through upselling and cross-selling additional products and services

  • Higher win rates

    By providing fast, competitive quotes that are tailored to prospects

  • Faster sales cycle

    By accelerating time-to-close through efficient quoting

  • Profitability

    Through real-time visibility into margins by quote and product line

Overall, streamlining the quoting process helps sales teams close more deals faster and maximize revenue.

Next steps

If you want to implement Dynamics 365 solutions to help with your estimate and quote sales business processes, you can use the following resources and steps to learn more.

  1. Define sales strategies

  2. Run marketing campaigns

  3. Identify and qualify leads

  4. Pursue opportunities

  5. Estimate and quote sales (the article that you're currently reading)

  6. Manage customer relationships

Contributors

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