Should Integrators Be Offering Multiple Options / Quotes?

However I don't do this on the access control or fire side of things. Once in a while for an alarm system (Bosch & Honeywell)

I often provide Two solutions. Today I did a proposal for a 128 camera system and provided options for two different VMS platforms. I agree that not everyone wants the top tier system and I want to make sure I provide whatever I can to meet their needs while balancing the fact that I have to be the one to ensure it functionA after the sale. it is more work but I believe it does win deals.

One of the sales reps at my last job did this a lot. Not all the time it seemed to depend on the customer. I like Steve Beck's reply, you can sometimes get an idea where the customer may be leaning just by seeing how else they've spent money in their building, or by simply talking to them.

Depends on the customer, and how far they seem to trust me. If they want to do the research themselves, I'll write two or even three quotes, bracketing price (two, more usually). But I get a lot of customers unwilling or, more usually, unable to research themselves, and for them I'll just write the most reasonably priced quote I can and send it out.

In general, my philosophy is "the cheapest good one that'll accomplish what the customer wants to do and last a reasonable amount of time", but of course I'm not paid a commision, so YMMV.

But, yes, for customers who want to see all their options, I'll write a gold plated system and then one reasonably priced system, and sometimes a bare-bones system. When I write three quotes, I always make sure to be specific about the limitations of the cheap system, so the customer isn't suprised when they try to get the system to do something it isn't capable of.

Whos prodict does a better job for the end user and for how much savings. Axix vs Arecont is not a true match up. Also Exact will perform must of the functions but Genetec has a few feature set the will be hard to match. The question for the customer is biggest bang for the buck.

I always say that "Good, Better, Best" works great when you're buying a television, but not with security. In the end, either the system does what it needs to, or it may as well not be there. For a specific requirement, there's no point to having double the resolution you need, just like there's no point to having half the resolution you need.

That said, I do like offering customers at least two options, but they tend to be more "different approaches" rather than one being better than the other. For instance, I'm working on a project for a warehouse that needs to see down long isles. I'm proposing that we can either use Axis cameras pointing down either end or a Mobotix camera in the middle looking both ways. Both have their pros and cons, but they're both a good fit for what they're trying to do (Mostly comes down to labor costs vs. camera costs).

Customer still likes that they get to make that choice, though.

Convincing arguments on when, how, and why to use multiple quotes.

All good comments and validation for proposing multiple options...but ran across this situation that I thought would be good to add to this discussion.

Recently attended a pre-bid for a large complex access control project where 12 manufacturers are listed as "approved" solutions. A question was asked if Integrators could propose more than one solution. The end-user stated there was nothing preventing them from doing so, but they would get scored lower because the end-user wants the Integrator to propose the solution they believe best meets their requirements from the information in the RFP. Additionally, the end-user mentioned in a side discussion that they approved this many systems knowing that some will not meet their requirements. The reason: to eliminate Integrators that were either choosing older technology and/or didn't fully understand their requirements.