 Tom here from Lawrence Systems and we're going to talk about actual quotes and invoices and kind of our process for this The discussion comes up quite a bit and I wanted to actually show it So if you want to learn more about me and my company head over to LawrenceSystems.com If you'd like to hire a short project and actually have one of these formal quotes sent to you to get a project done You can do that. So there's a higher button at top if you just want to support the channel in other ways There are affiliate links down below for deals and services that we have on this channel and me and Bretter sitting here because We're just talking about the sales process. So names have been changed to protect the innocent, but these are These are actual customer invoices and I just cloned them over in our we use invoice ninja I have a few video reviews on that. There's affiliate link down below if you want to sign up for it, etc Etc. I've been a long time user. It's a free open source product You can use yourself because everyone asks what do you use for invoicing and I've done numerous videos on invoice ninja So it's it's a great. It's a great tool I enjoy I've used a lot of invoicing products and this one is easier easier than any of them Yeah, and that's an important factor So we're gonna show you walk you through the process now the first thing we were laughing about before was don't eat onions before You go on a sales call. I had a lot of onions to stuff for breakfast. So yes, he did I'm just gonna move closer. He's like you ate a lot onions. I'm like, yes That's so first rule sales don't eat stinky foods or drink coffee in between stinky foods and coffee brush your teeth for sales All right, now they got some of the jokes out of the way here. We're gonna start with the quote process So you first an email comes into us and you know or email call However, the methodology by which they found us YouTube They are going to say hey, I need this help and there's going to be like this particular job was a picture was sent to us Of the wiring room and this is a smaller job But it was I don't have a photo. I'm not gonna you know Once again didn't get permission from a customer to share their name or their wiring room Which was messy as you can imagine is just picture one in your head. There's plenty of messy wire rims, right? But there's obviously more to the story. So You made the phone call to them and you had to figure out what else they need to besides wiring Yeah, well when we were talking and when he when you see the quote, you'll see a number of things that we've done that we're going that we did for the client and it was I Believe in in actually having a conversation. So when you talk about sales process I believe in actually having a conversation and not leaving it up to email because email can can take longer than then Longer and you can go through a thread and miss something So I like to have a conversation and take notes and in and in discovery And I and you got to have a discovery of some sort when you're when you have a sales process of what the client is needing They sent us these pictures. The the the wiring was was atrocious A lot of things he were were going wrong Outdated equipment. So that was a big thing. You'll notice in this quote We're gonna we we did an sg-3100 firewall because he had an old outdated Cisco product that was passed into life that passed into life and and so we in in having that conversation We were able to develop what we came up with in this quote, right? So I'm gonna do we show you with the quote that this is how the customer sees it I've already done like I said behind the scenes of how we develop quotes and invoice center But this is what they actually look like we send the customer So Brett had the conversation on part of the discovery meeting now I will as a side note mentioned we've talked about the fact that you can high-risk for other projects like firewalls Those are a little bit different This is specifically related to the wiring because occasionally the discovery is something we'll actually charge for because it becomes consulting to evaluate Like hey, can you look at my firewall? That's not a sales call That's a action item and things like that but this well it starts with the wiring We get some photos sent to us so then we come up with this with a customer and well the client ID and this one is McTest face This is our internal testing customer. We've I've done videos with the tech's McTest face before he's becoming very popular Yeah, becoming very popular. So We'll start with you know first they're gonna need a 48 port patch panel then they needed a cabinet to mount on a wall So we got a price out for the nine you wall mount cabinet Then we have miscellaneous hardware This is all those little things you need and we line item all of these So I've talked before about we have to have a drop price, but that's not the only thing occasionally There's other stuff that needs to be done Just there's a lot of miscellaneous like little boards and things like that now if the client asks We will definitely give them a detail of it When people I've seen create invoices that are three pages long for a job like this And I'm like no because most of the time it's rarely ever how many times the people stopped and asked you Brett Hey, can you line item how many screws you used? Never never I I get that question all the time when people ask how we do bids and it's always from other techs It's never from clients clients. Just go cool 75 bucks in parts. Yeah I seen the guy he put a bunch of screws in a wall and a board went up there and etc. Etc They're like cool. That's part of the job. They're not can they just no one cares I've seen people list individual mud rings. I've seen people list like every little pool I'm like, you know, and when you look at any of our We have another one we're gonna show you next after this one But when you break some of those down, we'll just say wall fished and plated That's it. Right. That means all the accessories and we come up with a price for it to be complete And Brett through on here. We have the network cleanup. We estimated six hours to them This is still the quote part of it But that's including a number of things because we have to actually do the punching down of that 48 pork patch panel Yes, we have to do I mean so it's more than just cleaning up There's actual things that need to happen within that in the cleanup So and I tried to get somewhat specific on this so that there isn't a question But just and this client had no questions about what we did, which was nice So and most and most of most don't it's rare. So this is what they're sent You know, we talked to on the phone seen the pictures, etc. I gave them a quote game or proposal They get sent this they get to click the approve button now. You probably notice there's a deposit due That varies we we at least the smallest amount We want is half down and it depends on our relationship with certain clients And how close they are especially remote jobs are paid up front There's no question on that one because we're the remote but when we're doing local wiring cleanup We understand that they don't always want to pay for it a hundred percent up front And we generally don't ever have a problem getting paid for the most part. It gets it's not a big deal So they're gonna go to the approved process That sends us a notification sends an email to whoever sent the quote Brad and then CC's our sales team So all of us know that this has been approved and you notice that right here pay now that's an important aspect and This is where once again kind of the invoice engine. They make this easy. We have a CH payments We have credit card payments or they can write us a check which we prefer not But if they have to just some people really like checks. We're we That's just part of life and then you they have an accounting department or they have this and they have to send it We had a client that had to send us a check because right and it was a larger client But it's just the way they work. Yeah, and our we always remind them when part of the process because we you know We didn't even this whole quoting process by the way didn't happen in person not every quotes delivered in person Right that is true It doesn't have to be as much as we would like it to be there and it's not necessarily a hard cut off The larger one so the one I'm gonna show you next. Yeah, we delivered that one in person But this one in particular was not hand-delivered in person and we were fine with me You know, it's it to this little We did have conversation and over the phone and so we built that relationship over the phone it with this so yeah And now I clone this over this is for the demo purposes here and now we have it set up as a right here You can see what it looks like as an invoice So it's unpaid and this would actually allow them to pay it so we click on that and then they can pay the Invoice and the final balance do and you can kind of see you know quote for network hours and build on actual We this was no changes made so the actuals became there But generally speaking we try to go over a little when it comes to the hours We will say all right We're gonna take this and we think six would be the max and then maybe it takes only five But we got there and it took the full six so the job got completed at the exactly as quoted But we generally speaking we try to go always estimate a little over because you're the you're not a hero If you come in if I said six and it takes eight and there wasn't some obvious communication There's gonna be an inks with the client thinking what do you mean? Why is it eight then they will start to question right every little line item on every line item after that But if you quote it six and then come in at five There there's not even a question about it like oh the invoice is now less than and now We've already paid more than half because you asked for half down you become the hero It's not that difficult to do people get so worried about losing a bit because of it You just don't want to make a upset customer and that matters more to me I'd rather have a good flow of relationship right now There's times and things change we as we call scope creep because you're there We as though we called one client. We're like well They kind of borrowed our Eric for a while, but he had like eight hours that we we but this is the part when they said Can we keep Eric? We're like yes This is the rate that you can keep them at he came out there to do one thing that what but we didn't give you a Quote for him to spend the entire next two days out there essentially And but because we right away as soon as they wanted Eric to stay Eric knew this is comes down to your tech training comes on to your sales training Hey guys, they'd like me here all day. All right. Let's give them a quote, right? I mean, but that has setting the expectation is I think we're leading the expectation is important Yeah, setting that actually you told them what it was going to be for Eric to be there Yep, they knew how long Eric was there and so they expected they paid that bill right away Yeah, and they paid the bill right away These are important things in case things do change now the next question is what happens on these bigger invoices And that's one to pull up a bigger one. Let's see this one. Here's bigger Cool. Now. This is also a completed. This is completed job delivered And once again, we were talking about how he'd break things down then the client has paid this bill It doesn't it shows a balance due because when we clone them over the payments don't clone over anyways So data drop install network drop 12 outside access points unit cost 1612 now when we talk about the setup of wiring job specifically what this is related to I Do say completed but there's a lot of times there's extra hardware one There was this particular job when was scoped out needed a bunch of j-hooks mounted and beam clamps So we bill for that we charge for the hardware that goes into accessories So there's data drops when you're adding a drop, but you're using Existing clamps and things like that. You kind of have to look at that to see if it's existing this did not There's also prep work for wiring cable cabinet clean up and prep work. There's a bunch of stuff on there Server room prep and cleanup prep antenna removal Ceiling tile prefab removal we took down all the ceiling tiles You do have to account for all these things on there And this is one of those quotes like you can see this is the line item added to job for quote We add to add hours because once again We are in full communication a customer from what we originally build because as we kept popping tiles because they were Refurbishing a building essentially more things were found. So added a job exceeding quote the teal ceiling fiber loop We had to redo the fiber loop on that one Aerial removal and we just had to clean it up. It wasn't we didn't read Crimp the fiber anything was just more there's everywhere. It was everywhere Yeah, so what he's most things is surprises by popping ceiling tiles that you find in a ceiling Then we charge for the patch panels then we charge for the care abouts 14 half hours the mounting so the mounting was not included. We did that separately So there's 14 half hours to mount all the wireless access points that were included in this particular job Then we have equipment rental fees Data drops to straight up normal data drops and saw drops in office in needed office space versus drops in outside access points each one's broke out separately and Then we have the completed bill fast nurse and hardware and wiring ties There was a lot of that because it takes a lot of wiring ties. We keep that stuff really good They put wearing ties. Yes, we use Velcro case you're wondering There's a habit of predefined things to say this we have big spools of Velcro that we use for all this So it's kind of a breakdown on that well, you know, it was it was funny is is You'll see some of you if you come in and talk with us You can see some of our invoices have a lot of these things included when we talk talk about a camera or a wireless access point We will actually encompass everything the drop the mounting and everything within that this client wanted to spell Right. That's why I showed two different invoices one client. These are two separate clients Even though we put them under the same client for demonstrations of this video But one client was fine with this the other client they wanted things broke out That's even why the data drops aren't summarized together as data drops for the office There's data drops for what they referred to as the backbone correct because they wanted a redundant link between the two It's like a big warehouse. There was different sub buildings that you I guess you could say there's a warehouse in the shipping Building area and the shipping part and there's a front office area And they wanted the double backbones between them because in between is warehouse space But they wanted those line items and it also made it easy because they added a drop in one of the I don't wish those areas got a drop it have to look at the quote But either way they dynamically changed and they know when the price went up It's because we changed it and we added one more drop to you know those offices So you kind of get the idea of why there's different things So these are two different quotes done slightly differently both are completed paid jobs Because I got a lot of people say you need to have like six pages attached to this you need to have this that and the other and I'm just like okay, you guys keep telling me that in Tell me that I need to list all the mud rings out and I'm not and we're still winning bids left and right Doing this. I'm not trying to be full of myself on it But I'm just trying to tell you as myself as a business owner. I've said this many times I I have enough complicated things to deal with I don't want a line item for all the salt that goes on in a parking lot I just want to know that he salt it not the brand. Well, it's information overload for a client Yeah, when you when you look think about your customer what they don't know what you know So when you sit there and try to line item every specific little thing thinking that you're doing a service to this to this Potential customer. It's not because they start to read through this and they go okay This this and this and the next thing they do is when they get about to the second or third line item They go down and just look at the price. Yes, because it's too much They don't know the technical aspects that you know to give this quote. They just know that you're gonna get it done Yeah, and that's one of the things you're selling you're selling the confidence that you can do the job You complete it. You're not information overloading them. That is something that you know It's even hard for us when we've gotten handed bids from other people We're like they we come in with like our little two pages on what was that like a 17,000? How much that our bid was? Yeah Yeah That bid was for 17,149 dollars and it fits on two pages And I seen some of the competitors that have what looks like a mortgage It was 37 pages long. Yeah, it was insane. I'm like, what are these guys doing? Like what is everything was this this initial on these seven pages and Even the customers like I just need my warehouse to have some wireless access points like seriously It's like I'm not in and we're actually dealing with they have internal IT This is a large company. They have internal IT but not they contract us to put these wireless access points up but these are some of the crazy things I see in there and This is one of the things I can at least my own opinion is I feel that brings us to higher levels success because it's clear It's concise I was able to explain to you in a short video and this short video if you were buying would you buy for me? You know someone's going no I like my legal papers and 37 pages I don't like when the terms and condition can be read in 30 seconds or less or 10 seconds or less It says codes are valid for 14 days from which to quote This is only a quote actual cost may vary depending on changes in scope or unforeseen circumstances So we've covered our bases in that and if someone really pushes it Yes, we will change that to say not to exceed because if they say what our unforeseen circumstances well We pop a tile and we get fiber landing on us. That's unforeseen So we will either a charge you to inspect the building ahead of time and do a small fee for an inspection and dive into climbing up In a ceiling, but this that other one required lifts to even get up to some of the areas, right? So we kind of said look we don't know what's up there. You don't know what's up there either you can look we can look Someone's gonna have to do that or we'll put a bunch of extra hours and say not to exceed not to exceed Yeah, but that means the quotes gonna be higher. We'll still gonna be on actuals But I just want to rattle this out there because people ask it What does it look like when you're done and when you're starting a business? This is something people really get hung up on and maybe that's why they go so complicated And maybe that's why so many people do it because well I've always the other place I worked for had these you know 37 page quotes for every time they did a job and so does this now I'm not saying there's not room to put legal and liability type of things in when you're writing Brett came from the insurance world I mean insurance policies. Yeah, there's some legalese you have to cover because you're covering insurance, right? But when you just want to get some of a price on a job, I That's what they want is the price I mean you did if at the end and with the one customer was showing you we did come up with a scope of What we were to do, but that was only one page. Yeah, that scope was only one. Yeah they did want a scope of work summary on there and I Maybe I'll do it separate when we do a video about something like that This is mostly the quoting process. Sometimes there are some extras terms conditions scope of work summaries and things like that those are You know relatively important things to have if the client really requested But always start with the simpler and see if they request more you don't have to if you start dropping 37 pages I'm even if you have the best price, they're a little worried because they're like the jeer How much time did you spend on attorneys right right writing this quote out? They want to keep it simple stupid right that kiss method. It's it's important. You're only quoting You're only quoting they don't you don't need to sit there and tell them every last minute. You're gonna be there Figure out your time Maybe overestimate a little bit and then you can scale back at the end when you go to invoice And the scope of work was written after they approved the quote Yeah, it was they just wanted a few details clarified and it was it's the scope of work is really just some real Specifics like you they wanted to line item where things would physically be put what days we would be there They had some real details and let's take back and put your business owner hat on again This project that we did in this warehouse that remember they acquired a building Do you know how many other like teams that you have alarm teams? You have people building offices office furniture people architects You had so many things now think about every one of them has to give them some type of quote Right and they have to make a decision on all this This is a big facility so step step step step step you start adding all the steps of it if everyone I mean illicitters 10 vendors in your easy mall 37 page. Yeah, give them all 37 page quote They they would suddenly have a department just based on it So you when you come in simple and some of the other people did too by the way I you know I just from talking to them They seemed the alarm people were pretty sure forward with them They were not certified alarm people the certified alarm people work nicely with us. We had no problems. They didn't Know no conflicts all the wires Nobody crossed right everything everything was handled right the thing is I think the bottom line is keeping it simple Yeah, keeping it to the point We won this bid on a number of reasons But the main reason was was we kept it simple and to the point and concise they understood what they were getting They understood what we're delivering and both of these bids like I said they went through like that So I just want to share this and give this breakdown for you If you're interested in more details and maybe I'll do an updated video about because that The in what you use for do quotes and invoicing comes up a lot and it's the invoice ninja system We're still using it the videos I've done maybe over a year and a half a long time ago and invoice ninja are Very relevant and for the last thing I've answered about invoice ninjas I was bringing this up a couple times. This is quote number 24,000 375 because we yeah, we have imported all of our previous customers in there so currently invoice ninja has about 6,000 customers and Because we imported old stuff because we don't even use an invoiceship for a few years But we're there's a lot of quotes in it, right? So definitely makes it handy for that Maybe I'll just like to do some updated videos But that is why the invoices look like this because I will admit I've seen quotes from quick books They look awful. Yeah, I just think it's maybe it's because they didn't take the time into it But I'm not a quick books fan It just comes up in the comments all the time in invoice ninjas by far the superior product any other invoicing system I've ever used he worked for large commercial agencies like a billion dollar insurance agencies literally be not Billion dollar big companies and their quoting processes were a headache right a headache and this is this is it simple Yeah, keeping things simple is a is a big part of the overall theme of the way we like to work It makes it easier to interact with your clients and obviously having a smooth payment method for them They can just click the pay button get you paid a lot faster. That's a big secret So we're not really see maybe it's a secret to some but just me it's an important aspect very important aspect Alright and thanks and thank you for making it to the end of the video if you like this video Please give it a thumbs up if you'd like to see more content from the channel Hit the subscribe button and hit the bell icon if you like YouTube to notify you when new videos come out If you'd like to hire us head over to Lawrence systems calm fill out our contact page and Let us know what we can help you with and what projects you'd like us to work together on If you want to carry on the discussion head over to forums not Lawrence systems calm We can carry on the discussion about this video other videos or other tech topics in general even suggestions for new videos They're accepted right there on our forums, which are free Also, if you like to help the channel in other ways head over to our affiliate page We have a lot of great tech offers for you and once again, thanks for watching and see you next time