Challenges faced when developing a consulting proposal

Are you facing challenges in developing a consulting proposal? Deadline is approaching fast and you are not sure how to start writing the proposal?

Calm down!!!

You are not alone.

It’s not you but it’s the sales process that needs to be corrected.

A consulting proposal creation is a kind of process that demands a well-developed approach and a thorough investigation before submitting the document to the prospective client. (Follow this checklist to stay focused throughout the process of proposal creation)

This article is written to highlight the challenges you and your sales team faces when developing a consulting proposal and how you can overcome those challenges by avoiding a few mistakes.

5 challenges faced when developing a consulting proposal

Challenge 1: No central library

Not having a central hub for standard marketing collateral such as logo, images, best-written piece/well crafted ‘About Us’, Why Us’ ‘pricing/investment’ and likewise branding stuff and every time you have to search through folders and email marketing tools.

Unable to find the files, you get frustrated and end up creating or modifying some of these elements thus more time is wasted, no easy way to schedule content for consulting proposal sections.

Challenge 2: Requesting multiple teams

You have to keep requesting information from multiple teams in order to fill out the proposal.

Challenge 3: No transparency

The proposal owner can not easily know who has reviewed and approved the proposal internally and have to keep following with stakeholders before sending the final proposal to a client; thus spending even more time.

Challenge 4: Too many versions of consulting proposals

Every single proposal ‘writer/contributor/reviewer’ involved in the process of proposal creation, continues creating his/her own version of the consulting proposal and because no one knows who is filling which particular portion of the proposal.

Challenge 5: Review and approval

Then there are challenges related to review and approval. Reviewers and approvers get plenty of files and versions of those files to look and they are in a puzzle to figure out which file to take up (so they call the proposal manager to send the LATEST file again.

Its time to go for the right process to develop the right consulting proposal template

How to Overcome These Challenges

You know these issues already. It is a time to correct the process to create a consulting proposal, automate most of the mundane tasks, increase collaboration among team members and bring more transparency as well as clarity to everyone involved with online proposal software that offers features like

• Central online platform: Involve consulting proposal writers to a central online platform that is easy to use and accessible on the go
• Proposal team: Invite internal reviewers, approvers set a deadline for the review, and let them be automatically reminded about the pending review/approval.
• Proposal comments: Proposal team members can add their comments specific to a given proposal. These comments are internal to the team. Client’s will not see those. Even better, teams can discuss activities too, such as client’s online visit, its interaction, etc
• Content library: Store, organize, and reuse the commonly used sections, marketing collaterals, visuals like images, videos, infographics at a central place.

Although developing consulting proposals is an inevitable part of every consultant’s life, it doesn’t have to be that challenging. You can find ways to make that process much easier. And one way is using proposal software. It has some obvious benefits for businesses who decide to use it.

Read more on the guidelines to create a winning consulting proposal.