Finstral Contacts helps to document all activities relating to the processing of an enquiry for an offer so that all information can always be found centrally in one place. Appointments must still be entered in your own calendar, e.g. Outlook. The progress in the offer process can nevertheless be conveniently viewed in Finstral Contacts.

The processing of offer enquiries in Finstral Contacts provides for the following steps:

1. Advisory appointment
2. Submission of offers
3. Negotiation date and placing of order or cancellation of enquiry

Procedure

1. If the status of an enquiry is “Enquiry open” or “Enquiry assigned”, you can schedule the first advisory appointment with the prospective customer using the action “Arrange advisory appointment”. 
2. To document the advisory appointment, we recommend that you make notes. Photos of the building from on-site visits can also be uploaded directly in the note to the enquiry. These images are then available as a list in the notes or in the left-hand column under “Stored files”. You can click on them, view them directly in the browser or sort them as you wish by clicking on the star.
3. If another advisory appointment is necessary, you can also save this appointment again in Finstral Contacts. 
4. The advisory appointment is followed by the submission of the offer. To do this, select “Arrange submission of offer” and choose the date. It has proven useful to arrange the submission in the company’s own showroom, as all product details can not only be discussed but also demonstrated here. As a rule, a number of other wishes on the part of the prospective customers will arise, which they can take into account when composing their products. But on-site submission can also be specified in Finstral Contacts. And the suboptimal emergency solution of submitting the offer by e-mail can also be documented here. You should however avoid doing this if possible or only do so with prospective customers who have already bought from you frequently, because it presupposes that the recipient is already very familiar with the possibilities offered by our products – which is not usually the case.
   It is helpful to note down an initial offer amount when submitting the offer. This can be estimated or can correspond to the actual offer. It can be created manually or linked directly to the actual offer in Finstral Composer. For this purpose, the enquiry’s ID is entered in the header data of the offer under “Contact ID” in Finstral Composer (this can simply be copied using the copy symbol in the detailed view of an enquiry). In this way, the offer number, sum and currency are automatically transferred to the enquiry. It is possible to add details to the offer before, during or after clicking on “Arrange offer submission”.
5. If further appointments to agree the revised offer follow the initial offer submission, this can also be documented in Finstral Contacts.
6. There are several subsequent options once the offer has been submitted: “Arrange negotiation date” or “Place order” in the case of positive feedback, or “Cancel enquiry” in the case of negative feedback. Before an order can be placed, the order must either be manually created in the “Offers and orders” drop-down menu of the detailed view or automatically linked to the composer. The link is created in Finstral Composer via the “Contact ID” field in the header data of the order. When you select “Place order” in Finstral Contacts, the prospective customer becomes a customer. In this process, you can also add your own customer number to the transaction.

In addition to offer enquiries, Finstral Contacts also provides for other enquiry types. These have fewer predefined steps than the “Offer” enquiry type. The only actions here are “Conclude enquiry” or “Cancel enquiry”. The following additional enquiry types are available for selection:

• General
• Product advice
• Sample
• Brochure
• Tender specifications
• CAD data
• Customer service
• Complaint

Procedure

1. The above-mentioned enquiry types are completed positively by using “Close enquiry” (i.e. the desired samples/brochures/tender specifications/CAD data have been sent or customer service/complaint enquiries have been answered).
2. If the enquiries are to be ended negatively (i.e. the desired samples/brochures/tender specifications/CAD data were not sent or customer service/complaint enquiries were not answered), you can document this using “Cancel enquiry”.
3. By clicking on the e-mail address in the detailed view of the enquiry, your e-mail program (e.g. Outlook) will open with a text template according to the enquiry type and language for the corresponding reply to the prospective customer. Please contact User Support to have your specific text templates stored if desired.

Example

You have sent the requested brochure to the end customer.

By using “Close enquiry” you can document the positive conclusion.