5 Methods That Innovative Companies Use Business Proposal Software
If you’re spending many hours or days drafting proposals – from describing the scope, curating photos, keying estimations, outlining recommendations, and then sending direct mails to various departments – know that there is a better way.
One more thing that is frustrating about the old method is that it leaves you guessing whether the client has looked into the proposal you sent or if he has even opened it. And with every prospect who asked for a recommendation, you will need to start the drafting process over again. Should you wish to know more about direct mail marketing strategy, check out FinancesOnline direct mail marketing guide.
Companies need a more efficient means to draft, file, and manage the process as well as to obtain better insights into their performance and sales pipeline. The best business proposal software could streamline the process and help you minimize the time spent drafting sales proposals. It will also give you a better understanding of what is more important to your prospects.
Below are a few methods that innovative companies use business proposal software:
Create impressive business proposals in no time
If you are neck-and-neck with competitors, your chance of winning a client over increases with the right tool that produces visually-appealing proposals faster on any device. Some business proposal solutions have integrated reuse tools for generating automatically formatted and highly customized proposals for different purposes.
They can also help you convert the proposal into an automated invoice with one click. Others go beyond and above in offering you with several types of business proposal template which you can use in creating a professional-looking proposal you can embed on your website or reuse them to push out more proposals faster. They come with tools to allow you to import images and your logo and quickly modify the design to suit your preference.
Add video into the proposals
Aside from helping you write a good and professional-looking business proposal, business proposal solutions enable you to add introduction video into the proposals. They allow you to choose between YouTube or Vimeo, among others, to embed your videos. Meanwhile, some of them enable the integration of live chat to enable face-to-face interactions.
Connect payment portals
To enable quick payment, decent business proposal software allows you to connect payment portals such as GoCardless, Stripe, and Paypal. It also comes with an option to auto-create invoices as well as for clients to e-sign and pay their deposits right from the proposal. According to a study by Zervant, e-invoicing is relatively well used in the B2B industry, with almost one in four are B2B invoices.
Streamline team management and ensure careful collaboration
Some powerful business proposal solution comes with team management and automation features to streamline workflows. They enable you to create multiple workspaces so you can keep abreast of the proposal creation, manage roles, and access permissions. You can also control who can view only or can make edits.
An audit trail is often available to help you keep track of the progress of your proposal, from changes made to comments and shares until the client approves of it. You will receive real-time notifications for each interaction.
Document and analyze the process and results
A good business proposal solution can help you document and keep track of everything so you can perform analysis and identify trends. You get the chance to know, for instance, when clients usually open or accept proposals, which area got the most interest, and which proposals are generating the most profits. The insights you obtain can, in turn, aid you in improving your proposals in the future as well as determine who your best clients are.
Business proposal software also enables you to create reports and other necessary documents to keep your existing clients in the loop regarding your projects. All of the content is stored in the cloud to enable quick access to any device whenever you need them.
Should you invest in business proposal software?
Proposals are necessary to keep your business up and running. You can use them to win prospective clients or to initiate business partnership deals. Hence, it goes without saying that your ability to write effective business proposals determines the success of your company. This can be hard to achieve when your business proposal creation is slow – that is when a proposal has to pass through several people before it gets to the client.
However you use them and for whatever purpose, a tool that will help you manage every aspect of the process is vital, from creating and sharing a proposal to monitoring its progress. Business proposal software can help you prepare proposals and even contracts so you can start on projects immediately. This is one of the many reasons why many businesses implement such technology.
Check out some available software today and find out which one will work best for your business needs. Try Propfire’s user-friendly platform for free.
