Sales quote

The offer is in the commercial sector is a part of the procurement process. By offering a provider responds to the request of a potential customer and sets the conditions under which it is prepared to deliver goods or provide services. The submission of an offer can ( orally by telephone ) done informally, but widespread is the writing. Usually leads a buyer with reference to several incoming offers a range comparison and are then an order from. If this coincides with the offering, two identical declarations are issued and therefore a purchase contract has been concluded. If the order deviates from the offer, the supplier can confirm an order confirmation this otherwise order. This is a contract of sale, to which the goods or services and further processing of related goods in the performance process followed.

Legal binding

The offer is legally binding on the seller. The bond expires only when timely revocation or modification or to order later. Will the provider unbind, he must receive a free subscription clause in the offer. Typical exemption clauses are:

• Binding, without guarantee, without commitment, subject to change
• Delivery reserved
• Price subject, price subject to confirmation
• While stocks last

After judgments of various district courts, however, such exemption clauses may constitute an infringement of competition law.

Components

The site contains numerous details, especially at high amounts. In practice, the following points are mandatory components of an offer, unless it is apparent from the terms and conditions:

• The exact description of the goods and their quality
• Cost of freight and packaging
• Place of performance, place of jurisdiction and retention of title
• Delivery time
• Terms of payment
• Arrangements for delivery, acceptance and payment problems and poor delivery

Creation

To create an offer the following steps may be necessary in particular for major projects:

• The management decision as to whether the creation of an offer is at all useful
• Creating a concept as can be and with what products the customer satisfied
• Determine the replacement cost of purchased goods or by subcontractors deliverables goods
• Determining technical, legal, commercial, service-related and other conditions
• Calculation of the necessary personnel to perform the contract
• Determining the time frame for the execution
• The compilation of any further emerging costs (transport, customs, permits, etc.)
• The pre-calculation, ie the compilation of all the costs and the determination of the desired margin and thus the offer price, taking into account the presumed competitors' offers
• The internal release of the tender work and possibly
• The legally binding signature of all relevant pages of the offer
• The delivery of the range of potential customers

To bundle the above tasks may be in the role of a parent company sales engineer (also Proposal Manager or offer managers) make sense, which acts both as an offer project director, creator and as a coordinator.

Industry-specific

In the project business, the preparation of offers several hundred thousand euros cost (including staff costs). In the construction industry, offers are usually standardized; Here the default output directory ( STLB -Bau) is used, whereby a largely contentious free agreement about the services and the prices should be made possible. It often also the reputation or the reliability of a provider is considered in previous transactions. Providers who do not get alone with cheaper offers from other a supplement permanently or be removed from the narrow considerations are called out bid.

In the area of ​​public procurement tenders can be made through a bidding process. The procurement law distinguishes according to several criteria, such as for construction or other services as well as on the project size.

It happens that for the creation of individual offers a preparation fee is required which is usually deducted from the contract, when it is issued. In many cases this is not possible; for public contracts, the refund of costs for tender preparation is normally excluded.

The more complex the quotation, the more important is an appropriate project selection to reduce the cost of the quotation. If the tender preparation costs but low compared to the potential revenue, it does not matter. The tender preparation costs can be in simple cases, less than one per thousand of potential sales.

In complex projects, the quotation cost several percent of potential sales. Therefore, it is in some industries become customary offer an appropriate process for the creation, the so-called " Internal offer" to introduce as " validated cost estimate ". Principal and agent are located in an internal ratio of the respective legal entity. But, the parties recognize the cast in " Internal offer" statements within the meaning of any resulting transaction as binding. The stakeholders ( Sales Engineer, Product Manager, Sales Manager, designers, production, procurement ) provide through operational transparency economical processing internally safe and achieve sound processing through this process and the end customer, Whereas a common understanding facilitates the project start-up in case of order. In the case of a non-award the deliberate offer content for reuse in product or project business are still available.