Selecting the right proposal software is more than just finding a tool to create documents. It’s about enhancing your sales process, maximizing efficiency, and boosting your team’s ability to close deals. But with so many options on the market, how do you choose the right one for your business?

Here are seven key factors to consider before making your decision.

What is Proposal Software?

Before diving in, let’s get clear on what online proposal software really is.

You’ve likely spent hours crafting sales proposals—working with key stakeholders to define the scope of services, create timelines, estimate costs, and refine your recommendations. After all that effort, you send the proposal off to your prospective client and then anxiously wait, wondering if they’ve even opened it.

And this same time-consuming process repeats with every new prospect.

There’s an easier, more efficient way to manage the proposal creation process—enter proposal software. This tool simplifies the entire workflow, from creating proposals and collaborating with your team to managing content, sending and tracking documents, and using a proposal dashboard to monitor performance—all while speeding up the sales proposal process.

Why do you need proposal software?

Here are the top 3 and probably the strongest reasons why you should use the best 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 generator, 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, staying abreast of current industry trends is essential for maintaining your business’s competitive edge. Innovations are designed to streamline processes and enhance efficiency.

One such digital innovation to consider when selecting proposal management software is e-signature functionality. E-signatures not only offer a seamless experience for your prospects but also save time for everyone involved by eliminating the cumbersome steps of printing, signing, scanning, and mailing physical copies of your proposals.

Plus, with proposal software, you can scale your business effectively, allowing for quicker turnarounds and greater productivity.

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 proposal 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 specific feature of online collaboration enables you to involve any team member in the discussion through mentions, eliminating any confusing email threads or file exchanges. As a result, your team will be able to grow sales by streamlining communication and ensuring everyone is on the same page.

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 highly specific and more customized 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.