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How much revenue is your company losing due to slow, opaque and unattended bids? Every day of delay, every inaccuracy in a document, every offer lost in emails - these are real losses and wasted opportunities. In a world where customers expect immediate response and managers need clear reports and controls, the old methods - Word, Excel, manual templates - are no longer enough.
It's time for a change. The quoting module in HubSpot is a tool that allows you to create professional, clear and secure quotations in no time - no chaos, no risk, no unnecessary implementation and learning costs. See how easy it is to automate the process, increase the effectiveness of your sales team and give managers full control over every step of quoting.
Why is the traditional quoting process limiting your business?
Manual proposal creation - the trap of Word and Excel
Many business owners and sales managers are all too familiar with this scenario: offers created from scratch in Word or Excel, emailed to customers, with no central control or consistent reporting system. This way of working seems quick and intuitive, but in practice it generates a lot of problems. There is a lack of a place where one can easily check what is happening with a given offer, how many have been generated, which have been accepted and which need follow-up. Salespeople often have to manually report sent documents and their statuses, which takes time and leads to numerous mistakes and inaccuracies. The result? Offer management gets out of control, and the company's sales potential remains untapped.
Lack of control, data dispersion and risk of errors
When each offer is created differently and stored on employees' computers or in different folders, it's easy for chaos to ensue. It is difficult to determine which versions of documents are up-to-date and which have already been sent. Sometimes managers require the sales team to report manually in Excel, which only increases the risk of omitting important information or losing data. The lack of centralization of the quoting process prevents rapid response to customer needs, as well as the effective implementation of new employees, who have to learn local procedures on their own and search for quotation templates throughout the company.
ERP systems - why aren't they always the answer?
Advanced companies often try to solve the problem of quoting by implementing quoting modules in ERP systems. However, practice shows that creating and modifying bid templates in ERP is complicated, costly and time-consuming. In addition, allowing salespeople into ERP involves the risk of sharing sensitive data, such as margins or technological details, which the company does not want to disclose to a wide range of employees. What's more, the tools are unintuitive, and it can take weeks to implement a new team member to work with ERP. In practice, salespeople fall back into old habits, using Excel templates and spiraling into a vicious cycle of inefficiency.
HubSpot Quotes: How does a modern quote generation tool work?
Where to find the Quotes module and how to get started?
The Quotes module in HubSpot is designed to solve the problems that business owners, managers and sales teams face every day. Regardless of the version of the system, you will get access to quotations (quotes) in HubSpot settings - just go to the data management tab and find the "quotes" section. From there you can configure the basics, such as quote validity, acceptance requirements or payment integrations. Everything is at your fingertips and doesn't require IT support.
Working on templates - simplicity and flexibility
HubSpot offers three ready-made bid templates that you can use right away. Each of them can be previewed, quickly edited and customized to your needs. Need to add a comment to the offer, payment terms or your own logo? You can do all this without any programming knowledge. With the template editor, you can define what you want your offers to look like - from color scheme to fonts to product table layout.
Key elements of an offer: products, discounts, taxes, terms and conditions
When creating an offer, you can add products from both your own library and your integrated ERP system. Each product can be described, priced, and provided with a discount and VAT, allowing you to prepare a document in accordance with customer and legal requirements. You will attach to the offer not only a summary of net and gross values, but also detailed payment terms, delivery methods or additional comments, which can be inserted as ready-made text snippets.
Integrations with product library and ERP systems
One of the most important advantages of HubSpot Quotes is its full integration with product library and ERP systems. As a result, salespeople always have access to up-to-date product data, pricing, stock levels and individual payment terms for a given counterparty. Changes in the ERP system can be automatically synchronized with the CRM, eliminating the need for manual updates and reducing the risk of mistakes.
Step-by-step process of creating and sending an offer
The process of generating an offer in HubSpot is intuitive: you select the customer, fill in the products, personalize the details and with one click send the finished document to the customer - as a link or PDF attachment. What's more, you can track whether the offer has been opened, who displayed it and at what stage of the sales process it is. Each offer sent is linked to a specific sales opportunity and automatically reported in the CRM, making it easy to both manage your pipeline and analyze the effectiveness of your sales team.
Automation and security: Acceptances, workflow and approval processes
Bid approval control - how to reduce the risk of errors?
In many companies, key bid decisions require not only the agility of salespeople, but also an effective control system. HubSpot's Enterprise version gives you the ability to implement mandatory approval of bids before they are sent to the customer. Enabling the "require approval of every quote" function allows you to assign a specific person responsible for approval - for example, a sales director. This ensures that no quotation will go to a contractor without prior approval by an authorized manager. An additional advantage is blocking the ability to download or send a quote in PDF format before it has been approved, effectively eliminating situations in which a salesman could send an unapproved document.
Automatic workflow - Enterprise version in practice
HubSpot's quote module automatically generates workflows that handle the quote approval cycle. After a merchant prepares a quote, a "request approval" option appears instead of a "create" button. The designated acceptor receives a notification and can approve, reject or forward the quote for further changes. The entire process is transparent - the system shows what stage each offer is at, and statuses are updated in real time. In addition, the workflow can be easily customized to suit the company's individual needs, for example, so that the acceptance obligation applies only to offers above a certain value or depends on the department preparing the quote.
Personalize acceptance rules and limit authorizations
HubSpot allows you to create advanced rules for the quotation process, allowing you to implement customized approval conditions. You can set that bids above a specific amount must be accepted by a designated person, while others pass on automatically. It is also possible to specify which manager approves bids based on the type of deal or department. This is a great support for companies that want to have full control over document flow, reduce the risk of errors and standardize sales processes. In addition, you can limit the number of available offer templates for salespeople, which ensures consistency of communication with customers and eliminates discrepancies in offer presentation.
Personalization without a programmer: How do you build an offer template that works for your image?
Template editor - quick changes without coding
HubSpot gives you the ability to create a customized, branded quote template - and without a programmer. All you have to do is go to the quote settings, select the "templates" tab and click the "customize quote template" button. You can choose one of three ready-made templates, and then easily change colors, fonts, table layout or add your own logo. The editor is intuitive and allows you to hide or display selected sections - e.g. comment, signature, payment terms. This allows each offer to be not only legible, but also consistent with the company's visual identity.
Personalization tokens, snippets and dynamic fields
When working on a template, you can use so-called personalization tokens. They allow you to automatically retrieve data from the associated transaction - for example, the expiration date, payment method, due date or delivery code. Thanks to this, the merchant does not have to manually fill in this information - the system itself pulls it from the CRM or integrated ERP. This solution minimizes the risk of errors and speeds up the entire process. In addition, you can insert snippets - ready-made text fragments, such as terms of business or complaint terms - into the template. Once prepared, the snippet can be inserted with a single click, and the formatting is preserved.
Modular product table - more than just name and price
In the HubSpot listing template, you can decide for yourself what information will appear in the product table. There are up to six columns to choose from, which you can freely set and name. In addition to the standard fields, such as product name, quantity or price, you can add, for example, unit of measure, lead date, discount or stock. If you don't want to show the customer information about the discount, just hide this column. Want to highlight the gross or net total? You can change the caption and appearance of the summary to make it understandable to your customers.
Practical tips: colors, logos, links, terms and conditions
Personalization of the template includes not only the content, but also the appearance of the offer. In the template settings, you edit global colors, fonts, button colors or borders around the document. You can add your company logo, and include links to your website, payment terms or dedicated landing pages. If you operate on an export model, you can automatically pull delivery codes and payment details from your contractor's card, synchronized with ERP. All this makes it possible, even without programming knowledge, to create an offer that not only impresses the customer, but also significantly improves the work of the sales team.
Benefits for business owners and sales managers
Full control over the process and instant reporting
With HubSpot Quotes, the entire quoting process is moved to one central tool. All sent quotes are linked to specific sales opportunities and deals, and their status is visible in real time. Managers no longer have to rely on manual reporting in Excel - the system automatically records how many offers have been prepared, their value and which ones have been accepted by customers. This is an immediate improvement in transparency and the ability to respond quickly to market needs.
Faster onboarding of new employees
Traditional onboarding of new salespeople can sometimes be time-consuming, especially when a company uses scattered templates and procedures hidden in different tools. HubSpot eliminates this problem - a new employee has access to ready-made templates, clear workflows and a full history of deals from day one. As a result, the implementation process is shortened from weeks to days, and new team members can quickly start working effectively.
Standardization, professionalization and data security
HubSpot allows you to fully standardize the appearance and content of your offers. You can determine which templates salespeople use, hide unwanted elements or enforce a certain range of data visible to customers. This ensures consistency of communication and a professional image of your company in the eyes of your audience. In addition, you eliminate the risk of accidentally sharing sensitive information - access to data is controlled, and salespeople don't have to use ERP, where confidential details such as margins or production costs are located.
Increase sales efficiency and predictability
Automation of the quoting process, approval workflow and the ability to monitor each stage of the sales cycle translate into higher conversion and better predictability of results. Managers can analyze which products and offers are most popular, as well as which activities bring the best results. This makes it easier to make strategic decisions and optimize the activities of the sales team.
Summary
Fast, professional and fully controlled offer creation is not a luxury today, but a necessity - especially when real sales opportunities, company reputation and team efficiency are at stake. Traditional methods such as Word, Excel and scattered templates lead to chaos, lack of control and the risk of losing customers. ERP systems? That's often a road through the ordeal - expensive, difficult to implement and not always secure.
HubSpot Quotes changes the rules of the game. It lets you instantly generate quotes from a product library, automatically pulls in data from CRM and ERP, allows full customization of templates without a programmer, and the approval and workflow process gives managers full control over every step. This ensures that every offer goes to the customer quickly, in a consistent format, with up-to-date terms and conditions, and with status tracking.
Getting started with HubSpot's quoting module is simple: just launch the quoting function, select or customize a template, connect products and implement the approval workflow if your process requires it. From day one, the entire company gains a transparent, automated quoting system - convenient for salespeople, secure for managers and fully professional in the eyes of customers.
If you're looking for a smooth implementation, elimination of errors and improvement of your sales team's efficiency, HubSpot Quotes is the solution to take your quote management to the next level and gain a real advantage in the market.
See what modern sales looks like with HubSpot!
Don't lose another opportunity through outdated quoting processes. Make an appointment for a free presentation and see how HubSpot's fast, professional bid creation and management works in practice. We'll show you how easy it is to organize the work of your sales team, gain full control over the process and automate daily tasks.
