Proposal Management Software

Business proposals are just like any other business documents comprised with content and infographics. But it’s not as easy as it sounds, only your proposal management team knows the real struggle behind developing and managing a winning business proposal.

Your proposal team needs a tool to help increase collaboration among team members and bring more transparency as well as clarity to everyone involved in the proposal creation process.

Table of Contents

What is a Proposal Management Software?

It’s a tool that helps you streamline the sales proposal process and boost productivity, right after the prospect is identified as closing a deal with it. It involves creating proposals, collaboration with the team, managing proposal content, sending & tracking proposals, checking performance using a proposal dashboard. Beside automating proposal process of collaboration, review and approval, it provides sales signals or insights based on prospect’s interaction with proposals to convert more sales deals

Your proposal team needs a tool to help increase collaboration among team members and bring more transparency as well as clarity to everyone involved in the proposal creation process.

Without a Proposal Software

With a Proposal Software

What are the challenges in creating impressive proposals?

Time Challenge

Every sales team needs to know the submission deadline for RFP, RFP, RFI, well before time and should be able to create, review and send proposals on time.

Quality Challenge

The higher the quality of your proposal, the higher are the chances of your proposal getting selected

Accountability Challenge

If the sales team is going to commit its resources without realizing whether the company will be able to achieve stated goals or implement/deliver projects; it will not only challenges the accountability of its resources but also put a big question mark in the mind of the customer, whether you are a reliable business to deal with or not

Customer Buy-In Challenge

Typically when you email a proposal to your client as PDF/PPT/DOC or such formats, there is no way for you to understand whether the client has opened your proposal or not. There are no signals

What are the Challenges of Managing Sales Proposals?

You have to keep requesting information to be filled in the proposal from different teams
Every involved proposal ‘writer/contributor/reviewer’, keeps creating his/her own version of the proposal and no one has an idea about who is filling which specific section of the proposal.
You do not have a central place for standard marketing collateral such as logo, images, best-written piece/well crafted ‘About Us’, Why Us’ ‘pricing/investment’, and likewise branding stuff.
You have to pour 7, 10, 12 hours of work to assemble a single proposal.
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 the client; thus spending even more time.

Why you Should Use Online Proposal Software?

The use of pre-defined proposal templates in online proposal software will ensure, every ingredient is in place and you are not missing out. Plus seamless collaboration & approval will help you figure out that everything is included and nothing is missed out

With the online proposal software, you have a central content repository, no need to copy-paste content & and in turn there is no need to keep correcting errors due to copy-pasting items (such as client name and other placeholder content)

With online proposal automation software, you can collaborate with your sales team. Everyone invited can refer to one single copy of the proposal, add their comments, update the proposal directly. There won’t be any confusing email trail or file exchanges

There are various ways an online proposal tool help you grow your sales. One of which is it provides precise intelligence to help you, track whether/how the client is interacting with your proposal. You know exactly when your client has opened the proposal, how many times s/he has opened it, which section s/he has spent more time

Explore the critical features and non-feature aspects of a proposal software before you choose one for your sales process.

What are the Benefits of Using a Proposal Software?

Here are the few benefits of a proposal software:

Online proposal gives you a great head-start with ready-made, industry-specific sales proposal templates which save many hours

With the proposal template and placeholder tags ( also know as merge-tags or variable-tags), your sales proposal, the quotation becomes more accurate and consistent

Online proposal software offers a built-in digital signature that your prospective client can use to sign its name online to accept and approve your proposal legally.

Online proposal tool provides precise intelligence to help you track client interaction with the proposal, such as the number of times the client was on a particular page, how much time has s/he spent on a given page/section, etc

If you are already using CRM software, you can make your CRM tool work with the online proposal easily. These tool’s integration will allow you to see better information in the CRM tool and vice-versa

Find out the different types of proposal software.

What Does the Best Proposal Software Offer?

Stunning pre-built business proposal templates packed with key components of a proposal

Cover Page

You only get one chance to make a first impression and the cover page of your proposal is your only chance. A cover page of your business proposal should look neat and should be easy to read.

Cover Letter

The cover letter in your proposal sets the tone for the rest. The best practice for writing an impressive pitch is using your prospective client’s words to them. This means simply describe the problem they are facing.

Scope of Services

This section should include the details about your approach. However, the details should only be about the approach and not about the solution.

Implementation of Timeline

This section should include the details about your approach. However, the details should only be about the approach and not about the solution.

Your Investment

Make use of a pricing table with a range of options that let your prospect or customer edit the quantities, select the services that best fit their needs, and allow them to customize your solution.

About Us

You can fill out this section with the expertise you have, the awards you won, the big list of your happy clients.

Case Study/Testimonial

In this section, you can make your clients visualize themselves working with you by telling the past clients success stories with similar issues.

Terms of Services & eSignature

Always keep the contract and your terms and conditions part of your proposal and get them signed together to avoid future conflict.

What is the Difference Between RFP, RFQ, and RFI?

RFI (Request for Information)

When an organization is collecting information about solutions to its business problems

RFQ (Request for Quotation)

When an organization is seeking detailed cost of service/product so as to make budget provisions and decide baseline cost

RFP (Request for Proposal)

When an organization is seeking details of possible solutions options along with budget/cost implications

Why Interactive Sales Proposal is the Next Big Thing?

A paper sales proposal is rapidly becoming an old-fashioned thing in a connected and interactive world. It’s clear that sales proposals have evolved in many ways. Sales proposal files have been replaced by fancy proposal tools. You can also call it a technological leap.

Today’s selling world has become more competitive than ever before.
Buyers have become more sophisticated.

Now, the look and feel of your sales proposal are equally important as the content and quality of it. In this day and age, you can’t have a general sales proposal approach; they have to be cutting edge to dazzling your potential clients. It doesn’t have to be a crazy formal document, especially if you don’t need to present it to the bank or the investor

The time has come where you need to create a glamorous living sales proposal (but also keeping the sales proposal checklist in mind) that will shine and help you win the deal.

Here is a list of the top 6 quoting software

Why You Should Use Proposal Templates?

Creating a new proposal every time to promote or sell your products or services is a total waste of your valuable money and time. Instead, you can shift your focus to using proposal templates.
Templates are an efficient way to enhance and improve the identity, ensure consistency, and make an awesome impression on your prospects, customers, and organizations.
The proposal templates help you to hit the right targets. If you choose the right proposal template, it will not only assist you to show off your core qualities but also make you look more impressive.
Templates give the biggest benefit is standing out from the crowd. Templates put the entire proposal document in order by giving it a stylish professional look. And once you set yourself apart from others you will probably get more responses than ignorance.

How to Choose the Right Proposal Template?

Check these 5 things before you pick a sales proposal template,

Business proposals must have the right tone to ensure it is effective. If the tone makes the content unclear, confusing or even worst – offensive, the reader will not be able to soak up or react properly to the proposal.
The look and feel of the proposal template should differ depending on the type of industry. For example, you can’t just pull up the real estate proposal template and use the same for a marketing industry deal. And hope that you will magically walk away with a sale
You may have the best content but if you fail to present it well, you won’t be able to catch your potential client’s attention. Keep one thing in mind that you have to make your proposal dynamic and memorable. A well-designed business proposal will not only sell your business but also help you win more deals.
The goal of any business proposal is to sell something and if you want to sell something the first task you need to accomplish is to grab the attention. And of course, color plays an important role in capturing attention and setting up a path for the readers’ eye to follow.

What are the Challenges in Designing and Formatting Sales Proposal?

Graphics: A typical proposal filled with lots and lots of words doesn’t influence the prospect to read furthermore. Graphics can make readers’ experiences more memorable.
Design: A messy and unattractive sales proposal can be a real turn-off to your prospective clients. It sends a message that you didn’t care enough to make your proposal look good.
Heading and Subheading: Headings and subheadings play a major role in the readability of the user. It provides context and a path to navigate throughout the document. It helps the reader to visually scan the document.
White Space: When a text forms a solid block, it directly affects the readability. The reader feels negative about it even before they begin to read. White space is about letting your reader breathe.
Alignment: Aligning a document is one of the most frustrating challenges we face while writing a sales proposal. Alignment determines the position of the text, images, or videos. It’s so important to give your document a basic structure.
Collaboration Challenge: Most of the deals are discussed and decided in a group. Because each person reads the proposal on different devices. So making your proposal easily accessible is a big challenge.

How a Business Proposal Should Look Like in 2020?

A strong, well-written proposal can help your business thrive but a poorly-written proposal can send your qualified lead packing. Below are the factors you should consider before creating your next business proposal.

Length: While drafting business proposals, there is one thing you need to keep in mind that they should be lengthy enough to get to the key points such as who is offering what and how they will overcome the pain point. Simultaneously, they should be concise enough to hold their attention.
Design: Selling and design always go hand in hand. In this day and age, you can’t have a general sales proposal approach; they have to be cutting edge to impress your potential clients.
Interactive Pricing: Providing interactive pricing is the one important factor of a successful business proposal. You need to incorporate interactive price tables with a variety of pricing options where customers can modify the quantity, select products or services that suit their needs.
Electronic Signatures: You need to keep up with the trend if you want to be successful in the marketing industry. And e-signature is one of the digital transformations that you need to implement in your sales proposal.
Proposal Comments: After sending a proposal to your client, they should be able to add comments, feedback, notes, questions, or clarifications while reviewing it.

Also, check out the below comparisons that’ll encourage you to switch to a sophisticated proposal management tool,

Explore the list of proposal software for your sector/industry.

USE FRESH PROPOSALS TOOL AND INCREASE YOUR SALES

Send Professionally Designed Proposals. Clients Will Readily Prefer of You

100 % Customizable Template

Though this template is professionally designed, it is 100 % customizable. You can modify its design, fonts, images as well as content as you would like.

Show Your Best Work

Include your portfolio of photoshoots, images as well as videos in your proposal. Let your prospect/ client experience your capabilities, skills better

Interactive Quote

One time fees or recurring / hourly pricing; no worry. Simply include your fees item and let your prospect change quantity or select option things.

Drag-n-Drop Content Editor

You have lot more flexibility and superior control how your proposal is going to look like. You can drag-drop desired content using online editor.

Track Prospect Insights

Know exactly how your prospective client is interactive with your proposals. Use these insights to smartly convert your prospects into customers.

Online Signature, Acceptance

Be that forward looking vendor who uses cutting edge tools and technologies. You will be sending proposal that your clients can sign online.

TRY FRESHPROPOSALS NOW