Manual quoting works when you have a handful of enquiries a day and the same experienced person answers all of them. It breaks quietly as you grow — not in one dramatic failure but in a slow rise of missed messages, slow replies and margin mistakes. If several of these sound familiar, it is time to change the process.
1. Quotes take hours (or days) to go out
If a straightforward request sits in a queue because the person who knows the pricing is busy, customers will ask a competitor in parallel. Speed is often the deciding factor in B2B — the first credible quote frames the negotiation.
2. Enquiries live on personal phones
When each rep’s WhatsApp is their own pipeline, managers cannot see demand, cover holidays or keep the history when someone leaves. A shared inbox on your business number fixes this almost overnight.
3. The same item is typed again and again
Reps re-key product names from messages into a spreadsheet, then into your system, then into the quote. Every re-type is a chance to pick the wrong variant or quantity.
4. Discounts depend on who answers
Two customers ask for the same items and get different prices because different people quoted. Approval rules that route discounts and exceptions to the right person keep pricing consistent without slowing every quote down.
5. Nobody follows up on open quotes
A quote that is sent and forgotten is a lead that was paid for and wasted. If you cannot answer “which quotes from last week are still open?” in a few seconds, follow-up is not happening consistently.
6. Your best rep is the bottleneck
One person knows which customer gets which price and which part number really means what. That knowledge needs to live in the catalogue and pricing rules, not one person’s memory.
7. You can’t say how fast you respond
If you don’t measure time-to-quote, you can’t improve it. Start tracking it before you change anything else; it will show you where the time goes.
What to change first
- Move enquiries into one shared inbox (WhatsApp and email).
- Clean the product catalogue you quote from — names, units, variants.
- Write your pricing and approval rules down, then encode them.
- Automate drafting, keep people approving. See our RFQ automation guide.
LarkFlow handles these steps in one workspace — see how it works or start a free trial.