Estimating workflows
Hi all,
I am new to pipedrive and hoping to use the platform to automate our estimating workflows including internal check sheets, resource coordination and submissions. Do you have advice on how to get started?
Comments
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Guess I would start by writing a flow chart on paper Where leads come from (multiple sources?) call ins, cold calls, trade shows, etc. does the data need to be entered in any other systems? Who are the people (positions) information gets passed off to in the organization. Pipedrive is so versatile and there are often multiple ways to handle transferring data from one person to the other and back again. For example until recently sales people were handing off the deal to the estimator by transferring ownership of the deal. Recently changed that to having a dedicated pipeline for ‘ESTIMATING’ that estimating piipeline has stages dedicated not to progression but priority. When the proposal is generated by the estimator the estimator then drops it back into the pipeline from which division it came.
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To what Brad said I implement as well. (I do window treatment sales for commercial projects)A great feature that Pipedrive is tweaking out right now is "Documents" this feature has been great in being able to reduce double entry and keep deals well organized with in the estimating phases you can create different templates that you can have auto filled for different segments very customizable and excellent tool before it goes into a sale and for invoicing.
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Hi @Cameron Cragg , welcome to Pipedrive and to the Community!
I took the liberty of adding some more tags to your post, so it can be seen by potentially more members who can help you with tips and their own experience. 🚀
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Brad Krause said:
Guess I would start by writing a flow chart on paper Where leads come from (multiple sources?) call ins, cold calls, trade shows, etc. does the data need to be entered in any other systems? Who are the people (positions) information gets passed off to in the organization. Pipedrive is so versatile and there are often multiple ways to handle transferring data from one person to the other and back again. For example until recently sales people were handing off the deal to the estimator by transferring ownership of the deal. Recently changed that to having a dedicated pipeline for ‘ESTIMATING’ that estimating piipeline has stages dedicated not to progression but priority. When the proposal is generated by the estimator the estimator then drops it back into the pipeline from which division it came.
I thought about that, the issue is that conversion rates in the Pipedrive reports get skewed if the deal leaves the Pipeline
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Brad Krause said:
Guess I would start by writing a flow chart on paper Where leads come from (multiple sources?) call ins, cold calls, trade shows, etc. does the data need to be entered in any other systems? Who are the people (positions) information gets passed off to in the organization. Pipedrive is so versatile and there are often multiple ways to handle transferring data from one person to the other and back again. For example until recently sales people were handing off the deal to the estimator by transferring ownership of the deal. Recently changed that to having a dedicated pipeline for ‘ESTIMATING’ that estimating piipeline has stages dedicated not to progression but priority. When the proposal is generated by the estimator the estimator then drops it back into the pipeline from which division it came.
Hi @Eli Glanz !
Currency conversion in Pipedrive is calculated from the World Bank exchange rate, through our partner Open Exchange Rates.
Pipedrive automatically converts the value of deals won in different currencies to your default currency, excluding custom currencies.
Please note that these exchange rate values are for statistical purposes only.
The conversion rate shown by Pipedrive may differ from that of the you or your customer's banks, so the numbers demonstrated in the deals may not reflect the amount received in your bank account.0 -
Brad Krause said:
Guess I would start by writing a flow chart on paper Where leads come from (multiple sources?) call ins, cold calls, trade shows, etc. does the data need to be entered in any other systems? Who are the people (positions) information gets passed off to in the organization. Pipedrive is so versatile and there are often multiple ways to handle transferring data from one person to the other and back again. For example until recently sales people were handing off the deal to the estimator by transferring ownership of the deal. Recently changed that to having a dedicated pipeline for ‘ESTIMATING’ that estimating piipeline has stages dedicated not to progression but priority. When the proposal is generated by the estimator the estimator then drops it back into the pipeline from which division it came.
I was talking about conversion % of the deals thru the stages in the Pipeline
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Brad Krause said:
Guess I would start by writing a flow chart on paper Where leads come from (multiple sources?) call ins, cold calls, trade shows, etc. does the data need to be entered in any other systems? Who are the people (positions) information gets passed off to in the organization. Pipedrive is so versatile and there are often multiple ways to handle transferring data from one person to the other and back again. For example until recently sales people were handing off the deal to the estimator by transferring ownership of the deal. Recently changed that to having a dedicated pipeline for ‘ESTIMATING’ that estimating piipeline has stages dedicated not to progression but priority. When the proposal is generated by the estimator the estimator then drops it back into the pipeline from which division it came.
My bad then, @Eli Glanz , I misunderstood your comment.
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Does anyone know of an application or portion of pipe drive to create estimates for customers ? I maybe missing something, but i how do this.
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Kenneth said:
Does anyone know of an application or portion of pipe drive to create estimates for customers ? I maybe missing something, but i how do this.
The "Documents" feature which is in Beta
Or third Party apps in the Pipedrive Marketplace which work within Pipedrive.
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But this doesnt help build the quote and then add up the total amounts for the your pipeline numbers
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Kenneth said:
But this doesnt help build the quote and then add up the total amounts for the your pipeline numbers
It does add the products you added to the deal with the totals. Check out this article https://support.pipedrive.com/hc/en-us/articles/360010866997-Sales-Documents-BETA-
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believe Kenneth refers to the calculation of the quote that occurs before the input of the value to the deal.
I also share the same need, to have an acelerator to calculate the costs based on pieces catalog, margin addition, etc.
Maybe there is some third party software that does that? and integrates with Pipedrive? Does anyone know?
Thanks!
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Gerson Andrade said:
believe Kenneth refers to the calculation of the quote that occurs before the input of the value to the deal.
I also share the same need, to have an acelerator to calculate the costs based on pieces catalog, margin addition, etc.
Maybe there is some third party software that does that? and integrates with Pipedrive? Does anyone know?
Thanks!
am not sure if it's extensive enough for you but the Product features is meant for that https://support.pipedrive.com/hc/en-us/articles/206759569-Products
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Hi Eli,
We use the product feature and that's great. But to calculate the product price, we have to calculate the entire bill of materials cost (one product consists in several parts and services) and to add a margin in top of that.
What I'm looking is for some software that integrates with Pipedrive and helps to calculate the cost of a complex product, so that after I can add it as a product into the deal.
Thanks and let me know if you or some colleague can have some tips on this.
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Gerson Andrade said:
Hi Eli,
We use the product feature and that's great. But to calculate the product price, we have to calculate the entire bill of materials cost (one product consists in several parts and services) and to add a margin in top of that.
What I'm looking is for some software that integrates with Pipedrive and helps to calculate the cost of a complex product, so that after I can add it as a product into the deal.
Thanks and let me know if you or some colleague can have some tips on this.
I think Proposify is meant for that. They have a Pipedrive integration. https://www.proposify.com/quoting-software
I use google sheets and integrate it with Pipedrive using Zapier which works very well for us.
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I have the same need for estimating.
Right now, my team completes an excel template that has the required formulas for markup based on cost. They have to save the document and add it to a deal as a file for backup for other team members to reference if the deal is won.
If an excel template could be uploaded and used in pipedrive, it would save a number of steps and could be stored on sharepoint.
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Brendan Myers said:
I have the same need for estimating.
Right now, my team completes an excel template that has the required formulas for markup based on cost. They have to save the document and add it to a deal as a file for backup for other team members to reference if the deal is won.
If an excel template could be uploaded and used in pipedrive, it would save a number of steps and could be stored on sharepoint.
Would you consider using google sheets? Pipedrive has a direct integration with google drive where you can upload google sheets to Pipedrive.
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Gerson Andrade said:
Hi Eli,
We use the product feature and that's great. But to calculate the product price, we have to calculate the entire bill of materials cost (one product consists in several parts and services) and to add a margin in top of that.
What I'm looking is for some software that integrates with Pipedrive and helps to calculate the cost of a complex product, so that after I can add it as a product into the deal.
Thanks and let me know if you or some colleague can have some tips on this.
And Miguel - If you'd like, feel free to reach out, we can talk about working out a simple customizable solution using google sheets with minimal data entry.
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Brendan Myers said:
I have the same need for estimating.
Right now, my team completes an excel template that has the required formulas for markup based on cost. They have to save the document and add it to a deal as a file for backup for other team members to reference if the deal is won.
If an excel template could be uploaded and used in pipedrive, it would save a number of steps and could be stored on sharepoint.
We are heavily integrated into Microsoft Office 365, is an integration with excel something that may be planned for the future?
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Brendan Myers said:
I have the same need for estimating.
Right now, my team completes an excel template that has the required formulas for markup based on cost. They have to save the document and add it to a deal as a file for backup for other team members to reference if the deal is won.
If an excel template could be uploaded and used in pipedrive, it would save a number of steps and could be stored on sharepoint.
Here's a workaround - Create a Custom field where you add the link to the Excel sheet in Every Deal.
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Our previous configuration consisted of one pipeline called 'sales' when we generate proposals for customers they are most often completed by a single employee so what we used to do is just transfer ownership of the deal to them and they they would transfer back ownership with the proposal attached when completed. We recently changed to try a new process. We created a separate pipeline for each 'division' or 'profit center' and then an ESTIMATING pipeline with two stages. The first stage notifies an administrator to verify and enter the details in a legacy software package that is used to build estimates based on labor and material costs that's what the estimator uses. When the contact details are proper in that legacy system then the administrator passes it to 'Proposal Request' in the ESTIMATING pipeline. We bypass the 'Slice Verification' if we know that the contact details are current.
In both instances of being received in either stage the appropriate person receives a notification email that they have received a request. Also in both cases an activity is automatically created for action to be taken. for slice verification its simply set for two days out for completion. In the case of the proposal request the due date is captured from a custom date deal detail field that's entered by the salesperson when creating the deal.
Once the estimator has completed the proposal it is attached and he drops it back in the appropriate pipeline. The owner of the deal is notified automatically by email that the deal has been moved to xyz pipeline.
We are always refining and improving our process with pipedrive and I very much enjoy building it out.
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Brad Krause said:
Our previous configuration consisted of one pipeline called 'sales' when we generate proposals for customers they are most often completed by a single employee so what we used to do is just transfer ownership of the deal to them and they they would transfer back ownership with the proposal attached when completed. We recently changed to try a new process. We created a separate pipeline for each 'division' or 'profit center' and then an ESTIMATING pipeline with two stages. The first stage notifies an administrator to verify and enter the details in a legacy software package that is used to build estimates based on labor and material costs that's what the estimator uses. When the contact details are proper in that legacy system then the administrator passes it to 'Proposal Request' in the ESTIMATING pipeline. We bypass the 'Slice Verification' if we know that the contact details are current.
In both instances of being received in either stage the appropriate person receives a notification email that they have received a request. Also in both cases an activity is automatically created for action to be taken. for slice verification its simply set for two days out for completion. In the case of the proposal request the due date is captured from a custom date deal detail field that's entered by the salesperson when creating the deal.
Once the estimator has completed the proposal it is attached and he drops it back in the appropriate pipeline. The owner of the deal is notified automatically by email that the deal has been moved to xyz pipeline.
We are always refining and improving our process with pipedrive and I very much enjoy building it out.
Interesting - We skipped on Pipedrive when it comes to the estimation Pipeline as it didn't fit our needs and I didn't like the Idea of moving between Pipelines temporarily. For us, Pipedrive is dedicated to Sales - and for everyone else as a source of truth.
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Brad Krause said:
Our previous configuration consisted of one pipeline called 'sales' when we generate proposals for customers they are most often completed by a single employee so what we used to do is just transfer ownership of the deal to them and they they would transfer back ownership with the proposal attached when completed. We recently changed to try a new process. We created a separate pipeline for each 'division' or 'profit center' and then an ESTIMATING pipeline with two stages. The first stage notifies an administrator to verify and enter the details in a legacy software package that is used to build estimates based on labor and material costs that's what the estimator uses. When the contact details are proper in that legacy system then the administrator passes it to 'Proposal Request' in the ESTIMATING pipeline. We bypass the 'Slice Verification' if we know that the contact details are current.
In both instances of being received in either stage the appropriate person receives a notification email that they have received a request. Also in both cases an activity is automatically created for action to be taken. for slice verification its simply set for two days out for completion. In the case of the proposal request the due date is captured from a custom date deal detail field that's entered by the salesperson when creating the deal.
Once the estimator has completed the proposal it is attached and he drops it back in the appropriate pipeline. The owner of the deal is notified automatically by email that the deal has been moved to xyz pipeline.
We are always refining and improving our process with pipedrive and I very much enjoy building it out.
Previously we just had a single 'sales' pipeline and we would pass it to the estimator by changing ownership. But whe thought we would give this a try.
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Brad Krause said:
Our previous configuration consisted of one pipeline called 'sales' when we generate proposals for customers they are most often completed by a single employee so what we used to do is just transfer ownership of the deal to them and they they would transfer back ownership with the proposal attached when completed. We recently changed to try a new process. We created a separate pipeline for each 'division' or 'profit center' and then an ESTIMATING pipeline with two stages. The first stage notifies an administrator to verify and enter the details in a legacy software package that is used to build estimates based on labor and material costs that's what the estimator uses. When the contact details are proper in that legacy system then the administrator passes it to 'Proposal Request' in the ESTIMATING pipeline. We bypass the 'Slice Verification' if we know that the contact details are current.
In both instances of being received in either stage the appropriate person receives a notification email that they have received a request. Also in both cases an activity is automatically created for action to be taken. for slice verification its simply set for two days out for completion. In the case of the proposal request the due date is captured from a custom date deal detail field that's entered by the salesperson when creating the deal.
Once the estimator has completed the proposal it is attached and he drops it back in the appropriate pipeline. The owner of the deal is notified automatically by email that the deal has been moved to xyz pipeline.
We are always refining and improving our process with pipedrive and I very much enjoy building it out.
I have automations set up so when it lands in the proposal request the estimator gets an email and it also creates a proposal due activity for the estimator. The due date is pulled from a field in the deal details called proposal due that the salesperson sets. It works pretty good.
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Brad Krause said:
Our previous configuration consisted of one pipeline called 'sales' when we generate proposals for customers they are most often completed by a single employee so what we used to do is just transfer ownership of the deal to them and they they would transfer back ownership with the proposal attached when completed. We recently changed to try a new process. We created a separate pipeline for each 'division' or 'profit center' and then an ESTIMATING pipeline with two stages. The first stage notifies an administrator to verify and enter the details in a legacy software package that is used to build estimates based on labor and material costs that's what the estimator uses. When the contact details are proper in that legacy system then the administrator passes it to 'Proposal Request' in the ESTIMATING pipeline. We bypass the 'Slice Verification' if we know that the contact details are current.
In both instances of being received in either stage the appropriate person receives a notification email that they have received a request. Also in both cases an activity is automatically created for action to be taken. for slice verification its simply set for two days out for completion. In the case of the proposal request the due date is captured from a custom date deal detail field that's entered by the salesperson when creating the deal.
Once the estimator has completed the proposal it is attached and he drops it back in the appropriate pipeline. The owner of the deal is notified automatically by email that the deal has been moved to xyz pipeline.
We are always refining and improving our process with pipedrive and I very much enjoy building it out.
Changing the Owner isn't right either from a sales perspective.. This makes more sense. Seems like it works well for you, that's great!
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