Quote automation drafts a quote from the request, your price book, your past quotes and your product rules, then routes it to the person who owns the price. That person checks it, adjusts it and sends it. Measure it by quote turnaround, the time from request to quote sent, and by win rate.
For a distributor, a manufacturer or an equipment dealer, the quote is the answer the buyer is waiting for, and it waits on whoever knows the prices. This topic is part of the field guide to sales automation. It covers where quote time goes, what can be drafted, and what stays with the person who owns the price.
Where quote time goes.
Take any quote that went out late and trace it back. The time sits in four piles.
- Lookup. Prices, price breaks, stock and lead times, spread across the ERP, a price spreadsheet and the estimator's memory.
- Missing information. Specs, quantities, dates or drawings the request left out, and the emails back and forth to get them.
- Assembly. Building the quote itself: lines, options, freight and terms, and for a manufacturer the routing and materials behind each price.
- Approval. Discounts, margins under your floor, new customers and anything unusual, waiting for the one person who can say yes.
Only the last pile needs judgment. The first three are lookup and assembly, and they are where a request sits while the estimator works through the queue.
Measure your quote turnaround.
Start with your own numbers. Your inbox and your quote log, or the quotes in your CRM or ERP, already hold them. Take four weeks of requests and work through five steps.
- Pull every request.Every quote request from every door, email, web form and phone, with the date and time it arrived.
- Find when each quote went out.The time the quote was sent, by a person or a system.
- Report the median and the slowest.The median is the wait a typical buyer gets. The slowest shows what happens when the estimator is out.
- Split by quote type.A standard reorder and a custom part with drawings are different jobs, with different clocks. Report them apart.
- Mark the outcome.Won, lost or still open, so turnaround can be set next to win rate.
Write the numbers down before you change anything. They are the baseline every fix is judged against.
How quote automation works.
Automated quoting runs the same steps your estimator runs, with a system doing the reading, lookup and assembly, and a person doing the pricing decision.
- Reading the request.It reads the RFQ email and its attachments: the customer, the items, quantities and price breaks asked for, and the dates.
- Asking for what is missing.When a spec or a quantity is missing, it drafts the question back to the customer for the rep to send.
- Pricing from your sources.It looks up the price the customer is due in your price book or contract, stock and lead times in the ERP, and similar quotes you have already won.
- Drafting the quote.It assembles the quote in your format, with lines, price breaks, lead times, freight and terms.
- Routing for approval.The draft goes to the person who owns the price, with anything outside your rules flagged: a discount past the limit, a margin under the floor, a new customer.
- Sending and logging.Once that person approves, the quote goes out and is logged against the customer and the request, so turnaround and win rate can be reported.
What a person still signs.
The rule for quoting is short: the machine drafts every page, and a human signs every price and every clause. In practice that covers three things.
- Prices and discounts. A person approves every price on every quote before it leaves.
- Terms and clauses. Payment terms, warranties and anything contractual are approved by the person who owns them.
- Custom work. Reading a drawing and pricing a part you have never made stay with the estimator, who starts from the draft.
Automation shortens the wait before that decision. The decision stays where it is today.
Templates, CPQ, AI quoting software or a service.
Four approaches come up when owners look at quoting. They differ in who keeps the price rules current and who does the drafting.
| Option | What it does | Who keeps it current | Fits when |
|---|---|---|---|
| Templates and your ERP's quote screen | A standard layout, filled in by hand | Your team | Quotes are few and simple |
| CPQ software | Configure, price, quote: built for complex and configurable products | Your team or a CPQ admin, who maintains the product and price rules | You sell many options under clear rules |
| AI quoting software | Reads requests and documents, and drafts the quote | Your team, who configures it and checks its drafts | You have someone to set it up and own it |
| A managed service | Drafts from your price book, CRM and documents, and runs the drafting | The provider | You want the result without adding an admin role |
Whichever you consider, ask the questions further down this page before anything goes live. To budget them side by side, see what AI help costs.
Put a number on the wait.
A faster quote pays in two ways: more quotes won, and estimator hours back. Your CRM or quote log shows the first. Compare the win rate on quotes sent inside your own cut-off with the win rate on quotes sent later. If the two rates sit close together, the case rests on the hours. A week of timing shows those: the minutes that lookup and assembly take on each quote. The formula below prices the gap and counts the hours.
We give you the formula and no outcome figures. Every input comes from your own records, and so does the answer.
To see the method run on a made-up manufacturer, read getting quotes out faster, start to finish. If quoting is one of several workflows you are weighing, score it against the others with the Workflow Shortlist.
What to check in any quoting system.
Whether you buy software, configure your ERP or bring in a partner, ask the same five questions before anything goes live.
| What to check | Ask | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Where it reads requests from | Which inboxes, forms and portals it watches, and what it does with attachments. | A request it never sees keeps its old wait. |
| Where prices come from | Whether it reads your price book, contracts and ERP directly, or a copy someone has to maintain. | A copied price list goes stale the week prices change. |
| How it handles approvals | Which prices, discounts and terms it may draft, and who signs each one. | Prices and promises should reach a person before the customer. |
| What it logs | Whether every request, draft, change and approval lands on the customer record. | Without the record you cannot measure turnaround or win rate. |
| How it reports results | Quote turnaround and win rate, against the baseline you took. | A count of quotes drafted says nothing about orders won. |
The rule we work by on approvals is short. Every gate is a named human. Agents draft everything; they approve nothing.
The play for this.
Get quotes and contracts out faster
Drafts quotes and proposals from your price book and past wins, then runs the paper from redline to signature.
- Runs on
- Your price book, CRM and document tools
- The rule
- The machine drafts every page. A human signs every price and every clause.
- What it reports
- Quote turnaround and win rate.
P08 Get quotes and contracts out faster, from the StrikeArc PowerPlays Library, drafts quotes and proposals from your price book and past wins, then runs the paper from redline to signature. It is installed where your team already works and run as a service. Quote turnaround and win rate are reported next to every other play you run, and a person signs every figure.
It is $20,000 as a one-time install, or included in the $7,500 monthly subscription to the library, which installs one play per quarter. See the prices.
Questions owners ask.
What is quote automation?
Software and AI that draft quotes from the request, your price book and your past quotes, and route each one to the person who approves the price before it is sent.
Is quote automation the same as CPQ?
CPQ is one kind of quote automation, built for complex and configurable products. Quote automation also covers simpler quotes drafted from emails, price books and past quotes.
Can AI write our quotes?
It can draft them. A person who owns the price checks every draft, adjusts it and approves it before it goes to the customer.
How do we measure quote turnaround?
Take the time each request arrived and the time its quote went out, from your inbox and your quote log. Report the median and the slowest by quote type, and compare the win rates of fast and slow quotes.
What about RFQs with drawings?
The request, its quantities and its dates are read into the draft. Reading the drawing and pricing custom work stay with the estimator, who starts from the draft.
Do we need a new CRM or ERP?
No. Quotes are drafted from the price book, ERP and CRM you already run, and logged back into them.