Wilkins IT Solutions consolidated its sales process into one step with Quoter.
By harnessing Quoter’s integrations for PSA, distributors, e-signature, and online payments, even junior staff at Wilkins IT Solutions can prepare quotes in minutes.
As an electronics engineer by trade, Wilkins IT Solutions Inc. founder Alex Wilkins says sales have never been his area of expertise. But with twelve years in business as an MSP delivering timely and professional tech solutions and support (organizations with a 1-10 person headcount is their sweet spot), he “must be doing something right.”
For Wilkins, who operates a fully remote 3-person team with clients far and near the Durham region of Southern Ontario, where he lives, quality service has always been about increasing efficiency and productivity.
“It’s the first conversation we have with people,” he says. “It’s not about selling a SKU or a particular service. It’s about how much time that solution will save you.”
Saving time: as a business owner, Wilkins can empathize with clients, investing hours and hours to grow revenue. He sees automated systems and tools as integral to reclaiming time and scaling faster.
“Time has a worth,” he says. “If you are working 180 hours a week [24/7] as a business owner, which most business owners have done once upon a time in their lives or are still doing, it’s worthwhile to use tools to make your life more effective so you can work on something different or not work as much in the grind.”
So when Wilkins noticed the time it took to send out estimates and proposals was slowing down his quote-to-cash process, he searched for quoting software and found Quoter.
Quoter consolidated our entire sales process into one step. It’s a proposal, a contract, and a payment solution all in one, so we’re now sending one email instead of three or four.
– Alex Wilkins, CEO, Wilkins IT Solutions Inc.
Going all-in on integrations
In choosing Quoter as his quote-to-cash solution, Wilkins recognized he’d need to build it into his sales process and not regard it as an add-on to see gains in time savings. This involved harnessing several Quoter integrations, including PSA, distributors, online payment processing, and e-signature. Wilkins even had a legal team build service agreements and wrap those within the Quoter sales process. Adopting a new SaaS app takes time, but Wilkins says that with Quoter, it was time well spent. His initial investment in building Quoter into his operations has resulted in a one-step sales process that takes five minutes or less.
“Now we send out one email and one proposal that handles everything for bringing on clients,” Wilkins says. “Quoter lets us section things out for recurring and non-recurring, and the e-signature compliant agreements on the final page let clients accept and sign.”
By streamlining the sales process with Quoter, Wilkins has empowered other remote team members to build quotes. Wilkins IT Solutions was a fully remote organization before COVID-19, and it’s tools like Quoter that have enabled B2B to further embrace hybrid and remote work in training and managing staff. Manager Approvals frees up time for himself while ensuring he gets the final check on every quote before it is sent.
But the most significant time-saver of all? Distributor integrations.
Once we had Autotask integrated with Quoter, and it was synching quotes back and forth, probably about a month or two in, I felt like I was getting serious ROI from Quoter. Pretty darn good for a SaaS tool.
– Alex Wilkins, CEO, Wilkins IT Solutions Inc.
Reducing sales process steps from 10 to 1
Before Quoter, Wilkins used the quoting tool baked into his PSA, Autotask. His previous process went something like this:
- Add hardware from distributor lists to the quote
- Add hardware options into the system for the quote
- Send the quote to the client
- Have the client come back and request different options
- Start the hardware and options add-in process again
- Send the quote to the client
- Receive quote acceptance in Autotask
- Send out the agreement with Docusign
- Send out the payment form or wait to receive a cheque from the client
- Direct the client to the billing area
“It was a very lengthy process,” says Wilkins. Adding hardware from the distributors was “the biggest time suck.”
By integrating Autotask and distribution tools into Quoter, Wilkins and his team can pull in product stock and check availability while building a quote, which then syncs with Autotask to create a new product in its database automatically.
With Quoter, “adding the hardware from the distys is a huge time saver.”
Along with distributor tools and Autotask, Wilkins also uses Quoter’s Stripe payment gateway integration for credit card payments. Collecting a deposit before kicking off a project provides a “flip of the switch” impact in his quote-to-cash process.
Bringing these internal processes into one place with Quoter didn’t happen overnight. Wilkins leaned on Quoter’s customer support, which he regularly leverages.
“Whenever I have a question or weird little quirk or something I’ve run into, I always email the Quoter team and get a response right away,” he says.
“It’s great to feed into feature requests; everyone is always very supportive and kind.”
[Editor’s note: You’re never alone in integrating Quoter into your sales process. Quoter offers full-service onboarding with our Partner Success Specialists.]
In five minutes, I can have a signed agreement ready to go out with all the line items and a payment button included with e-signature compliance. Quoter wraps everything up in one neat package.
– Alex Wilkins, CEO, Wilkins IT Solutions Inc.
More results: focusing on personalized sales
Wilkins IT Solutions serves businesses across sectors, but their specialty is in accounting and the mortgage broker side of the real estate industry.
“We know those two industries quite well,” he says. “We know their systems, their software, and workflows.”
For Wilkins, tools like Quoter enhance his ability to continue to support his clients with a competitive degree of knowledge and problem-solving. When he’s speaking with his clients, it’s to determine the best products and services for improving efficiency and productivity in their organizations. From there, a one-step quoting process makes it easy to close deals, kick off projects, and continue to serve his target clientele best.
Not bad for a guy who says sales isn’t his area of expertise.
For clients and providers alike, time is valuable. Quoter helps make every second count.
