Today's business post is about how to write a quotation, and the process around it that stops you typing the same customer's details four times. I wrote it from the law and from SARS. This one is the other side of it: what a quote has to carry before I let it leave here, which is a list I did not have eight months ago and now cannot work without.
Where the list came from
Until the end of July my templates were in eight different places. The library README, dated 27 July, records where they had scattered to: the branding folder, legal, HR, operations, sales, finance, a sales assets folder and a loose folder actually called Templates. Some of them existed twice with different wording. A proposal built on a Tuesday could carry a clause the Thursday version had already dropped.
So the templates were consolidated into one library, by function, and the rule became: check for a template before building any document, and copy it, never edit the original. The sales shelf today holds four proposal templates and two statement-of-work templates, all at the same version, all on the same letterhead.
That was the easy part. The list below is what came after, one rule at a time, each one written the day something got through that should not have.
What a quote carries before it leaves
1. A number that cannot collide. Invoice numbers here are per client, in a sequence that starts at one for each client, and a script reads every invoice on disk and hands me the next free number before I write anything. The rule dates from 16 July. It exists because a single flat sequence had the same number live on two clients at once, and I only found out by looking. A number a script chose is boring, and boring is the point.
2. Every figure traces to something. A price on a quote comes from one of three places: a rate I have stated, a template on the shelf, or a statement of work a client has already signed. If none of those holds the number, the number does not go on the page. The instruction to myself is one line long: if no source exists, ask. It applies to the person helping me draft as much as it applies to me.
3. Two lines that are on every proposal. The intellectual property notice, and a plain sentence that says NexBDM is not VAT registered and no VAT is charged. The second one matters more than it looks. SARS's own guide says a registered vendor's quoted price must include VAT, so a customer reading a quote is entitled to wonder which way the total goes. Saying it removes the wondering.
4. The cost of doing nothing, and the return. Every proposal has a section on what the current way of working is costing, and a section on what changes if it stops. Both are built from the client's own numbers, gathered in the first conversation. If the client has not given me a number, the section says so rather than inventing one.
5. The terms and the next step, written the same way every time. Half on acceptance, half on delivery. Then a 48-hour window to review, a strategy call, and a WhatsApp number to reach me on. Four things a client can hold me to, in the same order on every document, so nobody has to hunt for them.
6. A script that reads the file before I do. The finished document runs through a verification script from the template library. It fails the file if an em dash or an en dash appears anywhere, if the header is missing the logo or the TM mark, if any visible text uses a font other than the two brand fonts, or if a fifty percent milestone amount has no matching full total somewhere else in the document. It also prints every Rand amount it finds, so the arithmetic gets an eyeball before the file gets a client. Exit code zero, or it does not ship.
7. It ships as a PDF. The source is a document on the letterhead. The client gets the PDF. Nobody outside gets a working file.
What that list is actually for
None of those seven rules makes a quote more persuasive. They make it correct, and they make it correct without me having to be careful, which is the difference between a rule and a habit. I am careful on Monday morning. I am not careful at nine at night after a demo, and that is when the wrong number goes out.
The business post says the same thing about the customer side: capture the enquiry once, build the quote from a price list, let the acceptance sit on the quote, let the reminder come from the validity date, and let the accepted quote turn into the invoice untouched. Every one of those is a way of not being careful by hand. My seven are the same idea pointed at my own paperwork.
The one that is still a habit
Rule two. The script can check that a number is present and that the maths adds up. It cannot check where the number came from. That still depends on me refusing to type a figure I cannot point to, and on the person helping me draft refusing the same. It is the one rule on the list that is a sentence rather than a gate, and I know it, and I would rather say so here than pretend the list is finished.
Chat soon.