What is Proposal Software?

You spend countless hours of time writing a sales proposal- collaborating with the key stakeholders for outlining the scope of services, developing timelines, estimating the cost, and implementing recommendations.

After all the hassle you finally send it out to your potential client and after sending it off you keep wondering whether the recipients ever opened your proposal.

And with each prospect, you repeat the exact same cycle. 

You know there is a simpler way to efficiently control the proposal creation process – Proposal software.

It’s a tool that helps you streamline the sales proposal process, right after the prospect is identified as closing a deal with it. It involves creating proposals, collaborating with the team, managing proposal content, sending & tracking proposals, and checking performance using a proposal dashboard.

Why do you need proposal software?

Here are the top 3 and probably the strongest reasons why you should use online proposal software, 

1. To Speed Fast, the Proposal Process: Proposal management software can automate and speed fast the entire sales process right from developing impressive proposals with the help of templates to obtaining approvals from key stakeholders.

2. Better Collaboration with the Team: With proposal software, everyone can refer to one single copy of the proposal, where anyone from the proposal creation team can add their comment or update the proposal directly.

3. Tracking and Managing Various Proposals in Different States: With proposal software, you will be able to know the real-time status of your proposal like when your client has opened the proposal, how many times s/he has opened it, and which section s/he has spent more time on.

7 Things to Look For In a Proposal Software

Now that you know the reasons why you should start using a software tool to manage your sales proposal process, the next question comes what are all the things you should consider while choosing the right proposal software?

Let’s go, and find out!!!

But before you go ahead here have a look at G2’s Fall 2022 Report in which Fresh Proposals is awarded as a High Performer Tool in the proposal software category.

Fresh Proposals Review

1. Easy Proposal Creation using Templates and Online Editor

Creating a new proposal every time from scratch to promote or sell your product or services is simply not practical, because it’s a complete waste of your valuable time and money. 

Proposal templates are something that can save you from this big concern as they will not only help you reduce your rework time but will help you create a professional-looking sales proposal. 

So make sure your proposal management software provides a pre-built framework of proposal templates that you can customize completely to create your own as per your needs. 

2. Electronic Signature

As a leader, you need to keep up with the current industry trends to keep your business competitive in today’s marketplace. Innovations are meant to make certain processes easier. 

And e Signature is one kind of digital innovation that you should look for when choosing proposal management software.

E-signature not only provides a seamless experience to your prospect but also saves everyone’s time by eliminating the entire process of printing, signing, scanning, and sending physical copies of your proposal. 

3. Interactions, Notifications for Better Collaboration

Choose a proposal software that provides precise intelligence about how prospects interact with your proposal. Why?

Imagine getting real-time notifications whenever a client opens and reads your proposal or getting to know the actual time your prospect spends on reading it or the insights about which all sections of the proposal he has viewed and for how long etc.

Wouldn’t it be great?

With the help of such proposal interactions, you’ll be able to track the status of your proposal, and plus such intelligent inputs will put your team in a lot better position to have successful communication with your client.

Along with that, proposal software must allow online collaboration with the team and managers. It should help you get your internal team members from sales, marketing, accounting, and legal teams to work together. 

This particular feature of online collaboration should allow you to bring any of the team members into the conversation with mentions so that there won’t be any confusing email trail or file exchange.

4. Integration with Existing CRM, AccountingTools

CRM integration is one more important thing you should consider before choosing proposal software.

With CRM integration you can create more personalized and highly specific sales proposals by eliminating the need for the manual creation of each proposal.

So if you’re already using CRM software, then choose a proposal management tool that integrates with it. This should be the primary thing, especially for small businesses to tap into the global marketplace.

5. Proposal Comments

After sending a proposal to your client, they should be able to add comments, feedback, notes, questions, or clarifications while reviewing it. Here are a few features a good proposal software should provide related to commenting you can add to your business proposals,

• You should be able to receive an email notification when anyone comments on the file you’ve shared.
• You should be able to manage private comments that your clients can’t see or public comments that they can see.
• The internal team members should be able to discuss the activities such as client visit and their interactions, etc

6. Staying on Top of All the Proposals with the Dashboard

The dashboard offered in proposal software provides a clear view of how many proposals are live, how many of them won/ lost this month, last month, and so on. This allows you to view and track your performance based on the number of proposals sent and accepted. 

A good proposal software offers a proposal dashboard that gives you a purposeful and visual insight into every phase of your proposal development process.

7. Can You Save the Proposal Audit Trail for Legal Purposes as a PDF?

Good proposal software always allows you to download a proposal PDF for future reference so that you can save the proposal copy for further legal purposes.

That’s it!!! Now make sure you pick an online proposal software that meets all of these criteria and let it do all the heavy lifting for you.