I have a frustration with doing quotes for the random inquiries. What is happening with paper prices is they are going up monthly as new stock is imported at new exchange rates. So for just about every quote we have to check whether we are still using a current price. Then when discussing the specifications you start getting requests for using 3 different papers and 5 different quantities. I just got a request for a quote on 200/300/500/1000/10000 folders. I just say the quoting programme can only handle 3 quantities choose 3, we have an option of quoting a runon price but 90% of the customers can not get the concept of this.

What increases the frustration is the conversion rate with new customers is only 5% and when you follow up the "customer" say they have canned that printing.

With the existing customers there is about an 80% conversion rate. So how do you guys qualify RFQ so that it is a worthwhile exercise. One thing I saw in an appliance shop is you pay a R75 quote fee which is taken off the final invoice. Would that work with printing.

Thanks for "listening" I needed to vent.