CorsPro is happy to provide our SDA users with Did You Know (DYK) messages, short snippets of technical tips and information that we think you’ll find helpful when using SalesDoc Architect. We send them to our current clients on a regular basis and provide an archive below of all distributed DYK messages.
If you need help or have a question about SDA please check the support FAQs on our website, or send an email to support@corspro.com and we’ll be happy to respond.
We also welcome your feedback for future tips, feel free to send it to us. It’s our goal to help you sell more in less time by using SDA as your proposal generation tool!
DID YOU KNOW topics…
Getting Started
Goal Seek
Customer Specific Pricing/Price Book
Options
Generating Outputs
Customer Specific Pricing/Price Book
Miscellaneous
The Qualification Tab is a great way to ensure you don’t forget to ask customers important questions that can be reflected back in the Executive Summary. The Qualification module lays out the important sections of an Executive Summary that proves you’ve listened and understood the customer’s requirements.
Download the “5 Keys to Writing a Powerful Executive Summary” and see just how easy it is to write an Executive Summary that grabs your customer’s attention and sets you apart from your competitors.
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Automate the pre-sales processing
Working with your SDA Manager, you can set rules and alerts to let you know when you’ve missed a key item or need management approval.
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Approval and Email Notifications
The email notifications feature makes it easy to generate and send notification emails to individuals who need to review or approve quotes. If your administrator has set it up to do so, you can be auto-prompted to send an email requesting quote approval that contains a link to the quote file along with a list of the reasons why a quote needs approval. See it in action in this short (2:28) video.
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Do more with Goal Seek
Sometimes you might want to set pricing for your customer at a specific overall discount or margin, or perhaps set pricing on a line-item basis. SDA’s Goal Seek function gives you the flexibility to fine-tune your pricing. Watch the 3-minute video showing all you can do with Goal Seek.
With recent enhancements you can now:
• Goal seek by pricing category or system discount
• Goal seek by line item
• Reset line item pricing to the default
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Users are now able to insert notes
You can easily insert customer notes that will print out on the Schedule of Equipment and Services. These notes allow sales to provide fine-tune information based on a particular part or category of parts. For more information, watch the video now.
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Take advantage of Collapsible Product Categories
Users can take advantage of Collapsible Product Categories. Once your SDA Administrator has made a Product Category collapsible, you will have the option to suppress items on a schedule of equipment and services so as not to overwhelm the customer with too many details (e.g., cabling, surcharges, miscellaneous). View a short video (about 1 minute long) to see Collapsible Product Categories in action.
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You can create new quotes when offline and SDA will push them to a centralized location when you are back online. Did you also know you can now auto-save and auto-name both quote files and output files?
Sophisticated client opportunities typically require multiple configurations, proposals and scopes of work to be generated during the sales cycle. Our latest enhancements will assist you in two tangible ways.
1. It will use a consistent naming convention across your enterprise for all quotes and outputs generated.
2. It will ask if the version needs updated each time the quote or output is saved, allowing you to easily save the changes as a second version if needed.
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It’s best to NOT modify your configuration within the manufacturer configurator output (.xls or .csv file) after it’s been exported.
If you need to change your configuration after exporting it from the manufacturer configurator tool, it is best to do so within SDA’s Write-In tab after importing the configuration. Here’s a few ways to do that:
•Manually add parts to the Write-In tab
•Create a small Excel file to add parts that were left off or that are not included in the manufacturer config tool and import using the Import Excel File option.
•Zero out an entry on the write-in tab to delete a part
•Adjust quantity or pricing in any blue open cell
Users can further customize their customer-facing outputs with Dynamic Bullets
Dynamic bullets is a way that users can select from a list of possible bullets (including “write-in bullets”) – like a list of prospect needs and issues – and to dynamically push only the selected list of bullets to your Word outputs. Your Architect Managers can define how dynamic bullets should look in proposals, scopes of work and other Word outputs.
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Detailed information about your bundles and packages can be added to the schedules of equipment and services in your outputs
When you quote a bundle or package from a manufacturer, only the basic information is listed in the description that appears on the schedule of equipment and services. SDA’s parts database often has more information, however, and you can choose to include these additional notes in your schedules of equipment and services with one easy click! Here’s how:
1. Create your quote using SalesDoc Architect.
2. When you are ready to create your output, check the “Add Part Notes” box on the Customer Pricing Schedule Options dialog.
3. Click OK to create your proposal, SOW, pricing schedule or other output.
If you want to see what the part notes say before you add them to your outputs, click on the row, of the part you would like to look up, then click the Part Notes button in your SDA toolbar to see the notes that are associated with that part.
How to easily unfreeze SDA menu freeze?
If your SDA menus freeze you can easily unfreeze them.
CorsPro has recently become aware that the SDA toolbar for some Excel 2013 SalesDoc Architect users occasionally freezes up. This issue is isolated to those users who have SDA and MS Office 2013 installed on their machines. The good news is that you don’t have to use drastic measures to unfreeze the SDA toolbar. Instead…
Press Ctrl-S to save your quote.
Navigate down to your Windows taskbar and hover over the Excel icon. Switch to another open Excel file by putting your cursor over that window and clicking on it. If no other Excel file is open, press Ctrl-N to open a new one.
As soon as the other Excel file comes up, use the Windows taskbar to switch back to your SDA quote file. The menus should all work properly now.
If all else fails, kill Excel via Task Manager, making sure to first press Ctrl-S to save your work, then re-open SDA.
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You can use SDA’s Goal Seek function to help refine the pricing in your quotes
SalesDoc Architect users can use Goal Seek to auto-adjust quote pricing to achieve a certain margin, sell price, markup or discount for their quote. Most of the time, Goal Seek calculates a lump-sum discount based on the total price, margin or markup/discount that a user is targeting. However, you can also use Goal Seek to adjust pricing based on the margin, sell price, markup or discount that you’d like to achieve for a particular pricing category. Here’s how:
1. Navigate to your Pricing tab and click on the blue discount/markup input cell you want to goal seek against (e.g., AvayaSets, Services, MitelSW). You can select more than one pricing category at a time by holding down your Ctrl key and clicking on each input cell to select them.
2. Now click the Goal Seek button, enter your target margin/markup/discount/price, and click OK.
Please note that if you click on any cell on the Pricing tab other than a blue discount/markup input cell, SDA will assume you want to goal seek against the entire quote (instead of a particular pricing category.)
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Using the wildcard character helps you locate items in the SDA price book faster
SalesDoc Architect users often have a need to add parts to their quote that don’t come in from a configuration tool. Many times these parts are already in the SDA price book and easily accessible to SDA users. If you can locate the part you are looking for in the price book, you won’t need to enter the part information yourself on the write-in tab. To make this easy, SDA supports the use of a ‘wildcard’ character to quickly match and locate items you are searching for in the database (note: you can also search for items without using the wildcard character, but unless you know the exact way something is spelled or entered into the database, it can be time consuming to locate.) Here’s how:
1. Open the SDA price book by selecting Price Book from SDA’s toolbar.
2. Using the wildcard character (the asterisk, *) enter in the text you are searching for. Here are some examples: *subscription*, *5604*, *POE*, etc. You can enter search criteria into multiple fields if you wish.
3. Click on Search SDA Price Book. Any items matching the criteria you entered will populate the window. You can then click on an item – or multiple items using the Control or Shift keys – then click Insert Selected Items into Quote to add the part(s) to your open quote.
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It’s possible to build a quote that contains more than 5 optional packages
Using the Options feature of SalesDoc Architect allows you to easily present different combinations of products and services from which customers can choose, or to offer add-on solutions that complement the core solution that you’re selling. When you select the Options button from the SDA toolbar you are presented with 5 optional packages you can create – but if you need to present more than 5 options to your prospective customer, here’s how:
1. Create your core solution quote and then create the first 5 options you want to present. Save your quote file.
2. From the SDA toolbar select Architect > New quote based on current. This will retain your Base Info tab information from the previous quote.
3. Re-import the configuration for this solution (you’ve now created a second copy of the core solution quote file).
4. Use the Options button to configure additional optional packages you’d like to offer your customer. Make sure to update the “Site Description” with a description that describes the option(s) you are presenting, rather than just entering the traditional site description. Save the quote file.
5. Go to the Outputs menu and select Generate multi-quote outputs, and then the output type (Proposal, SOW, etc.). You’ll be prompted for which quote files to use for the multi-quote output and you’ll want to select the 2 files you just created and saved. The resulting document will be a proposal/SOW that contains your core solution and all of the optional packages you’ve created for your customer.
Depending on your particular SDA implementation, you might adjust some parts of the resulting Word document – pricing schedule options, pagination, etc. – but that’s easy to do from within the Word output you’ve created.
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You can save time and gain consistency in your quote file names and the folders where they are stored using the auto-naming and auto-saving features of SDA
you can save time and gain consistency in your quote file names and the folders where they are stored using the auto-naming and auto-saving features of SDA?
NOTE: These features are implemented by the Architect Manager (or SDA Admin) at your company. If this functionality appeals to you, please ask them to add it to your setup!
SDA users often end up with folders full of SDA quote files named “Quote1”, “Quote2”, etc. In the same vein, users can ‘lose’ their quotes if they are stored in a non-standard place such as on the desktop, or places like your main Documents folder. To address the confusion, Architect Managers can customize SalesDoc Architect so that the information contained within the quote file (such as customer name, site description, your name, etc.) can be used to automatically name the quote file and save it to a specific folder on the network simply by clicking SAVE. No more browsing for folders or manually typing in file names!!
Using auto-saving and auto-naming saves you time, ensures consistency and makes it easy to quickly find the quote files you need. It also simplifies your quote file management and maintenance tasks (such as file backups), provides company-wide access to quote files, and prepares your organization to take full advantage of the upcoming SDA pipeline management tool, SalesManager. If your organization doesn’t have these features implemented yet, be sure to do it ASAP!
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Selecting pricing schedule options for your Schedule of Equipment and Services can make your sales outputs more professional and precise
SDA users often accept the default values on the Customer Pricing Schedule Options panel. Users begin with a set of default values and can modify those selections prior to creating their outputs by checking or unchecking the boxes on the panel. This gives users the ability to customize each and every output with the exact Schedule of Equipment and Services they need.
If you’re working with the same quote and want to keep selecting the same set of checkboxes, be sure to select ‘Memorize options for this Quote’ at the bottom of the panel. Users can set the default pricing schedule options for themselves for all quotes they create via the User Setup screen, which is accessed by clicking the Architect button, then Setup, then Set pricing schedule defaults within SDA.
Some of the items you might consider modifying on your Schedule of Equipment & Services:
1. Add an End date. You can enter a date your quote expires, or a period of time that your quote is valid.
2. Hide Services detail. This collapses all line items in the ‘Services’ product category into a single ‘Services’ row, and is useful if you don’t want to reveal your labor structure to your customer.
3. Suppress Cents for Extended Pricing. In some instances, when SDA rounds the values for calculations within a quote, it can appear that things aren’t calculated accurately. Suppressing the cents for extended sell pricing takes this issue away.
The SDA defaults for pre-selected check boxes are created when you initially set up SDA, but can be modified by your Architect Manager. They also have the ability to create multiple templates with pre-selected options for specific outputs. Imagine a version of the schedule with equipment pricing elements shown if it’s a purchase-type proposal or that doesn’t show equipment pricing if it’s a lease-only proposal. This personalization of outputs can make the quoting process much faster and can significantly help drive consistency in outputs created across your organization.
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You can build better outputs if you fully populate the Base Info tab
Your Base Info tab is where you populate your customer contact information, and where you set basic quote file parameters such as Sale Type. It’s also where key information is entered that drives automation on other quote tabs and outputs. The information that you put on this tab, when fully populated, can increase the value of your proposals and help you to know more than just who or what the quote is for. The resulting sales outputs you create can help set your customer’s expectations correctly and provide a frame of reference for who will be involved in the particular sales opportunity.
When you build an SDA quote file, be sure you are filling in:
1. The Site Description cell. If you are building a multi-site proposal this is mandatory to populate, as it is how SDA shows which items in the proposal are associated with which physical site. It is also often used as part of an automated file naming scheme for quote files (if your SDA admin has enabled this feature). Many users choose to put a physical location in this cell, such as ‘Boston, MA’ or ‘Fairfax Office’. We recommend that you always fill in the Site Description cell, and suggest that your SDA admin set up a workflow rule to ensure that it’s filled in before outputs can be generated.
2. Detailed quote data. In the Quotation Reference section of the Base Info tab there are several dates defined, such as Projected Order Date, Cutover Date and Agreement Date. These dates can sometimes drive other quote parameters such as manufacturer promotions and special pricing to customers, so depending on your setup (implemented by your SDA admin), these might be critical inputs.
3. Project manager information. Identifying all of the players involved in the effort gives you a more complete and professional-looking proposal output. If your company has a small number of PMs consider asking your SDA Admin to pre-populate this field with the project manager’s name, or to build a dropdown menu in this cell so that you can select from a list of available PMs.
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Save your quote files more quickly in Excel 2013 by avoiding the ‘Backstage View’
(NOTE: This Did You Know applies only to users who have version 2013 of Office. If you are using an earlier version of the MS Office software, then this DYK does not apply to you.)
Microsoft Office version 2013 introduced a new view called the Backstage View. To save or open files, Excel 2013 by default takes you to the Backstage View. This causes users to have to click Browse and then navigate to where they want to save or open a file, rather than being brought straight to a browse dialog or, in the case of SalesDoc Architect, auto-saving the file with no further intervention. It can be annoying to go through this additional step each time you are opening and saving files to your Office applications!
However, you can turn off this default – which we highly recommend all Office 2013 users do – by clicking the File tab within Excel, then selecting Options from the left side panel, then selecting Save. Next, check the “Don’t show the Backstage when opening or saving files” box and save your changes.
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If you update your SalesDoc Architect software any existing quotes on your computer are not updated with newer versions of the tabs
Updates can include modifications to the core SDA software and also manufacturer content you subscribe to. Any existing quote file you’ve already created is not modified or updated with new tab versions. CorsPro uses this approach so that SDA users can retain an exact copy of what they quoted clients at a specific point in time (meaning those versions of the tabs/pricing/promos, etc.) – if SDA automatically updated tabs when it opened you wouldn’t be able to keep a copy of what you had originally proposed!
An SDA quote file is built by bringing tabs into an Excel spreadsheet. The quote file is static, meaning when you start a quote, it pulls the empty ‘template’ tabs into the quote file and the user updates that specific set of tabs. If you have installed a newer version of a tab on your machine when you applied a software update, you’ll see a message when you open the quote with SDA, at the top of your tab like this, letting you know an update to the tab is available.
When you do a tab update for this existing quote file from the Add-Ins > Update tabs(s) menu it will reload that tab (and preserve the current user inputs if you select that option) if it sees a newer version of the template tab in your CorsPro folder.
If a user creates a brand new quote on a machine with the latest release of SDA then the quote file will have the latest version of the tabs.
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You can make modifications to the MS Word-based outputs you generate with SalesDoc Architect
This is a continuation of the DYK sent 4/22/15 covering ways you can adjust the content of your documents. Within MS Word you can:
1. Save your SDA-generated Word-based proposal as a PDF document. The default format for SDA to save your proposal (and other Word outputs) is an MS Word document. If you are sending the proposal to a client electronically, however, you may prefer to send it in a non-editable format. To do this, click ‘Save As’ and change the value in the Save As Type box at the bottom of the Save dialog window to ‘PDF’ and click Save. This functionality is available for MS Word 2007 and higher.
2. Paste additional text into your document. You can insert text from another source such as a website or other document into your SDA Word-based outputs – but you want to make sure that you insert just the text and not the formatting from that source. It’s important to maintain a consistent text style, size, color, etc. throughout your document. If you have selected a block of text from somewhere to insert into your document, first select Copy or use Ctrl-C to copy it to the clipboard. When you paste it, make sure to select ‘Paste Special’, then ‘Unformatted Text’. This will put the text but not the formatting into your SDA document. Note that inserting text into your document may mean you need to regenerate your table of contents so that the pagination is accurate.
3. Adjusting the Normal style template. (Note: proceed with caution here, as this is an advanced feature of Word.) Your SDA Word-based outputs use several built-in styles such as Heading 1 (generates an entry in the Table of Contents), Heading 3 (bolded text; also generates an entry in the Table of Contents) and Normal (the body of your document.) If you want to adjust elements of your document body (such as the spacing between paragraphs, the size of the font, etc.) you can make changes to the Normal style template, and any part of the document that uses this style will be modified to reflect the new elements. Be careful when you do this as it will impact the entire document! To make a change, right-click the ‘Normal’ style from the Styles section of the Home ribbon and select ‘Modify’.
Then, in the panel that opens go to the bottom and right click on the Format button, then select the item you want to modify.
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You can make modifications to the MS Word-based outputs you generate with SalesDoc Architect
These Word-based outputs are just that – Word documents – and you can adjust the content if you need to. Here are some of the more common/useful changes:
1. Changing the pagination. The length of your proposal or SOW is not pre-defined, but based on the dynamic content of your quote, such as the number and types of equipment you are quoting and what you select as pricing schedule options. Because of this, your proposal or SOW may include extra blank pages, or perhaps an equipment description section may run across a page break. To increase the visual aesthetics of your output, you can move a section of the proposal to the next page by pressing Control-Enter, or delete a blank page by clicking into the page and then hitting the Backspace key to delete the (invisible) page break character. Once you adjust the pagination, make sure to regenerate the table of contents so the page references are correct, and then save your revised proposal.
2. Regenerating a table of contents. If you make changes to your proposal such that items may have moved to/from their original position within the document, you should regenerate the table of contents for your proposal so the page references are correct. To do this, go to the table of contents page and right click anywhere inside the table and select ‘Update Field’. At the next prompt select ‘Update Entire Table’ and click Ok.
3. Moving and Resizing pictures. To move an embedded graphic in your document you can simply click on the picture to select it and then drag it to a different location. Be careful if you do this, as the text associated with the graphic may also adjust/move, and you don’t want to disturb the continuity of your proposal content. If you need to resize a picture you can click on the image to select it, and then grab one of the corners of the image to stretch or shrink it. Again, be aware that if you change the graphic the associated text may also change its position/location. Finally, make sure you regenerate a table of contents after adjusting a picture, as doing this may cause your content to shift within your document.
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You can generate multi-site proposals in three easy steps
Here’s how:
1. Create an individual quote file for each site. You can speed up the process by first filling out the Base Info tab for a quote file. If you’re creating one quote file at a time for each of the sites, you can click Add-Ins > Architect > New Quote Based on Current to push that info to the Base Info tab of the subsequently created quote files. Some manufacturer configuration tools allow you to configure multi-site solutions and, when the export file from the manufacturer’s tool is imported into SDA via the Import menu, SDA will auto-create a quote file for each site. In that case, SDA will use the info on the Base Info tab of the open quote file as the basis for the quote files that it auto-creates.
2. Fine-tune the quote files for each site. Be sure to populate the Site Description field on the Base Info tab for each quote file, since this is used as the site name in all generated outputs. Fine-tune your solution configuration by adding financing information, discounts, additional products and services, etc., making sure to save all of the quote files to a single folder so that you can easily select them when you generate the multi-site proposal in step 3 below.
3. Consolidate the individual quote files into a multi-site proposal. Click on Add-Ins > Outputs > Generate Multi-quote Outputs and select Generate proposal. Follow the prompts to select the quote files that you want included in the proposal, as well as which site should be treated as the primary/main site. Next, click OK and then select your pricing schedule options for the proposal. You’re done – sit back and watch while SDA builds your multi-site proposal for you.
The CorsPro website has a webinar in our Webcast Archives that covers creating multi-site proposals in detail, and we encourage you to view that for more information. There are also detailed instructions in the SDA Help guide, available via the Help button within SDA (search for ‘multi-quote’ in the help application.)
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You can pull additional document sections into your quote that can enrich the content you’re providing in your proposal
You don’t have to stick with just the equipment document sections for items you’ve configured – sometimes it’s helpful to include additional documentation for items you haven’t configured to aid your customer in their decision-making process. It’s also a great way to produce an information packet for your customer, who might need education on manufacturer offerings and equipment.
Option 1 – Adding Manufacturer Provided Content
1. In your SDA quote, select Add-Ins > Get Tabs and select the documentation tab for the doc sections you want added to your proposal (i.e. Mitel docs, NEC docs, etc.)
2. To have a doc section included in your quote, place a ‘1’ in column A next to the doc section.
3. Generate your proposal.
Option 2 – Adding User Derived Content
1. Go to Architect/Add or Delete Proposal Content
2. Click “Add” and complete the fields (don’t forget you can also add an image)
3. Click “Save” when you are done
4. Generate your proposal
You can change your pricing within SalesDoc Architect to get more margin than what your default pricing would give
Here are two approaches:
1. Use the Goal Seek function on the SDA toolbar and seek for a specific sell price. The discount on the Pricing tab will adjust (and go negative) to meet your sell price.
2. Enter a negative system discount on the pricing tab, in the blue highlighted cell.
In either case, if you set pricing above list price, or you calculate a negative discount (i.e., you’re increasing the customer’s price via a negative discount), make sure you do NOT show line item pricing on your schedule of equipment and services in such a way that it reveals that you are selling above list price (by showing MSRP) or providing them with a negative discount (by showing line item sell pricing).
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There are several ways to get pricing/costing information into your SalesDoc Architect quotes
Here are some suggestions to consider:
• The most current pricing information comes from what you import from a manufacturer’s or distributor’s configuration tool (Mitel Sales Workbench, Catalyst, Jenne, etc.). Always start with that, and set customer pricing on your SDA pricing tab by changing the discounts or mark-ups on that tab.
• If you don’t import pricing from a configurator, you can pull in pricing from SDA’s price book (or Tigerpaw’s pricebook if you use Tigerpaw) or an Excel file containing parts/pricing that you create and import.
• Users can manually type in parts and pricing on the Write-In tab.
If your database already contains pricing/costing for parts and you want to override that (for a particular quote) with pricing/costing data from your imported quote file, you can do it by checking the “Get pricing from import file” checkbox at the top of the write-in tab before you import the manufacturer/distributor config file (NOTE: you can set this to be a user default on the Architect > Setup > User Setup panel, at the bottom of the popup window).
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You can manually add parts to your quote, other than just those in the price book
If you have a lot of parts to import, you can put them in an excel file and use the Import function (read the User’s Guide within SDA for more information on how this works), or if you have just a few parts to add, you can write them in manually on the Write-In tab.
Writing them in manually on the tab is easy – within a SDA quote switch to the Write-In tab, enter a quantity and a part number for your new part and then click your cursor to the Description field. Click Update Tabs/Update this Tab from database so that SDA checks to see if the part is already in the database. If it isn’t already there, several blue highlighted cells will appear in the line for your entry so you can enter the information or select from dropdowns for your write-in part. You can enter information in all blue-highlighted cells, but the basic cells you need to populate are
• Description
• Price (move cursor out to the right to view)
• Disc Cat – discount category is usually None for write-in parts
• Price Cat – select the pricing category from the dropdown list
That’s it! Generate your proposal and see your write-in parts are included on the proposal.
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It’s possible to import specific pricing schedules for your customers in SalesDoc Architect
If you are offering unique pricing on specific products and services to certain customers because you are contractually obligated to provide specific items at agreed-to pricing (e.g., government pricing) you can easily import that pricing (and also costing) into your quotes. You do this by accessing “Architect/Connect to external price list” in SDA after setting up the price/cost list in Excel. We’ve written a blog article with the details, or you can also access the section in the user’s guide (search for customer-specific pricing) for more information.
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You can use SDA’s Options button to create additional value for your customers
We’ve recently posted a recorded webinar as well as a blog article to our website that explains how to access and use the Options functionality in SDA. Using option packages in your proposal is a great way to upsell additional opportunities and increase your margins on a sale.
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