Creating a quote takes twenty minutes, but sometimes it doesn't reach the client until three days later. That is exactly where AI can make the difference.
By Anthony Raaijmakers
THREE DAYS, ONE QUOTE
The real work is in everything that precedes it...
Creating a quote takes twenty minutes, but sometimes it doesn't reach the client until three days later, and that's not because of the quote itself.
The quote is not the work, it's the endpoint of all kinds of loose context that you have to gather first:
🔹What exactly did the client ask?
🔹Which version of the agreement is correct?
🔹What margin is acceptable?
🔹Which example should be included?
🔹What was promised earlier and who still needs to give internal approval?
All those questions don't take minutes but hours, spread across email, notes, and memory.
For many SMEs, this is a much more practical AI opportunity than a chatbot on the website. Not AI that sends quotes independently, but AI that does the preliminary work for you: summarizing the conversation, structuring the client's request, identifying what's still missing, retrieving previous agreements, and preparing a proposal text. You no longer start from scratch.
And because this runs on your actual client data, you decide where it is stored and who can access it, not the tool.
Humans remain the owners of price, promise, and relationship, but the time lost beforehand to searching, reconstructing, and aligning—that is exactly where AI makes the difference. This is how I see the real value of AI in sales: not typing faster, but gaining clarity faster on what you need to send.
At OneMinded, we therefore never start with the question of which AI tool fits here, but with the question of where in your quotation process the most time leaks away before anyone starts writing.