CRM ROI Calculator for Manufacturing: Put a Value on Quotes Nobody Followed Up

The leak is the quote that was sent and forgotten

Industrial buyers rarely say no. They say the requirement is under review, the budget moves to next quarter, and the file goes quiet. On the seller's side, a quotation that costs real engineering time to prepare is despatched and then left alone, because chasing feels like discounting. Look at any manufacturer's quote register and the largest category is neither won nor lost. It is unresolved.

The second leak is the enquiry you never quoted at all

RFQs arrive to individual email addresses, need a clarification the buyer takes three days to answer, and expire. Quote coverage, the share of received enquiries that actually receive a quotation, is a number most factories have never calculated, and it is frequently well under nine in ten. Every point of coverage is cheaper to recover than a point of conversion, because the demand already exists.

Six. RFQs received per month across all channels. Quote coverage, meaning the share actually quoted. Quote-to-order conversion over at least two quarters. Average order value. Contribution margin percentage, from costing rather than from the price list. And the number of sales engineers and inside sales staff who would hold a licence.

Two supporting inputs are worth the effort: median days from enquiry received to quote despatched, and the count of open quotes with no recorded contact in fourteen days. Both respond quickly and both are honest indicators of whether anything has changed.

These are example figures, substitute your own. They exist to show the arithmetic and are not measured outcomes, sector averages or predictions.

Before adjusting C2, try adjusting B. Raising quote coverage from 89 to 96 per cent costs nothing but process, applies to demand you already receive, and does not require any belief about persuading buyers. Most manufacturers find the coverage lever both larger and easier to defend than the conversion lever.

Record a baseline quarter, not a month; RFQ volumes in manufacturing are too lumpy for a single month to mean anything. Capture RFQs received, quotes issued, orders won, average order value, median quote turnaround, and open quotes with no contact in fourteen days.

At day 90, quote coverage and turnaround should have moved if the rollout is genuine. Conversion will not be readable yet on a sales cycle measured in months, so do not declare a result on it. Instead, check whether lost reasons are now being recorded on closure. That single field, populated for one quarter, usually changes commercial decisions more than the ROI model that justified the purchase.

It ignores capacity. A factory running near full utilisation cannot convert more orders into more contribution without either overtime, subcontracting or a longer lead time that costs you the next order. It assumes recovered orders carry average value and average margin, when follow-up tends to recover the price-sensitive enquiries that stalled precisely because of rate.

It also treats each order as independent, which understates repeat business and overstates the effect on a single quarter. It ignores payment terms and receivable risk entirely; an order won on ninety-day credit is not the same asset as an order won on advance. And it credits software with a change that is partly managerial: a sales head who insists every quote is chased twice captures some of this without buying anything.

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