Fresh Proposals
It is time to make a fresh start and take your proposal process to next level! Have more Power and more Confidence to your sales team. Make your clients say "Yes" in a flash
The wikipedia definition: “Proposal software also known as proposal management software, proposal writing software, or proposal automation software is a computer program designed to help users develop proposals, presentations, and responses to RFPs. Proposal management software is becoming increasingly popular in companies that manage frequent and extensive proposal writing projects. Such software allows businesses to automate the more routine tasks while easily tracking multiple versions. ”
In simple English language: An online proposal software is a computer program tool that allows you to create and manage sales proposal document which can be shared with your customer.
If you have started researching proposal tool for your team/company, I must appreciate your intent o break the status quo, to leave behind the age-old way of working. You are on the right path and improve your sales process and in turn help your business grow.
Your research must begin by asking few questions and try to find honest answers to those.
1.What is the biggest pain in your proposal process? spending week to create a proposal, days to get it internally approved, no conclusion/closure to 80% of the outstanding proposals
2.What do you want to achieve using a proposal tool? e.g. cut down turn around time to say 3 hours (including internal approval), smart follow ups instead of blind ones to close 15% more deals.
Then while answering these questions, it would trickle down to answering tactical level questions or identifying sales / marketing operations deficiencies, such as
Is it the process that involves too many people or too less?
Do you spend to much time in just creating it or more time in editing/ refining or designing it?
So let me list down critical proposal software features
1.Proposal Creation-Editing
2.Proposal Design
3.Proposal Collaboration
4.Proposal Automation
5.Interactive Proposal Pricing/ Quote
How to increase revenue? is the question that appears on the action plan of every company regardless of its size and industry it operates in. For me, the answer seems to be quite obvious- with robust sales analysis.
Today’s age is all about data where everything is driven by the power of data and analytics. In today’s hyper-competitive sales environment, it’s more important than ever to find new ways to do business.
How Fresh Proposals can Help You Achieve Your Sales Goals with Proposal Analytics
Fresh Proposals is a proposal management software made for smart sales pro and marketers like you that not only creates and manages your proposals but it also provides actionable proposal insights to close more deals.
It shows data like,
1.Total time the prospect spent on the proposal
2.How many times the did prospect view your proposal?
3.Average time viewing
4.What parts of the proposal your prospect looked at the amount of time spent
5.The other proposal activities like whether the prospect opened, viewed, or signed the proposal
The automation of customer journey right from identification of opportunity/lead to creating/ sending proposals, getting approval for proposal, turning proposal into invoice and onboarding customer for product/servicing is a mega trend in last few years, And that’s why sales proposal software has gained a lot of popularity. Let’s see how proposal management software can be beneficial for you.
Microsoft Word is an amazing word processor tool and we have used it for decades.
But there are certain limitations when it comes to using MS Word. You realize these limits not only you are about to write your first proposal but also when you keep writing hundreds of them in a month. On the other hand, online proposals tools give us much greater control to make every proposal look as much best as possible, but without spending the entire day to get it right. Let’s see how.
By the way, the idea of this post is not to bash MS word, but to highlight the benefits of using an online proposal tool over Microsoft Word
So let’s get started.
As technology evolved, as the pace of doing business became speed-fast, older or conventional methods (like printed, mailed proposals) are becoming obsolete; and need to be replaced with sophisticated, collaborative and engaging processes & tools. In this post, we are talking about benefits of using online proposal software over conventional Microsoft Word or emails, etc.
The categorization of proposal software can be done based on these;
1.General purpose editing software or designed for managing sales proposals?
2.Free/ Open Source vs Proprietary/ Commercial
3.How can I access it?
4.Who all will access it?
5.What all features will it provide?
6.Where will the data reside?
7.Meant for individual, small business or enterprise?
8.Part of software suite or standalone proposal tool?
9.Designed for all sectors or specific industry use cases?
Depending on these aspects, sales proposal software vendors have developed and offered proposal tools for their customers.
We have seen it over and again, multi-million dollar software purchased by companies are put to dust in a matter of year for various reasons including it was difficult to use, lack of change management, no on boarding/training or support, challenges in accessing it, etc.
Though I am calling it a non-feature aspect of proposal software, these are supposed to be must-have kind of characteristics of the tool.
Non-Feature Aspects of a Proposal Software
1.Intuitiveness
2.Easy On boarding
3.User-Guide, Training, Support
4.Availability
5.Accessibility
6.Robustness
After lead generation, if there is one task/area that sales team find very challenging is creating & managing sales proposal. Automation of sales proposal has been a trend for last few years and that’s why sales proposal software has gained lot of popularity. If you have been evaluating sales/quotation/RFP proposal software, which all features you should look for in the tool? Let’s look at the essential features of proposal automation software you can’t miss.
8 Features of Proposal Automation Software
1. Proposal Management and Automation
2. Proposal templates
3. Reusable Sections
4. Proposal Approval
5. Proposal Analytics
6. Centralised Proposal Database
7. Team Collaboration
8. Digital Signature
Sales is tricky but if you have a right process you can grow it. Business growth can only be achieved if it is measured.
Of course your revenue is the main figure that you will be looking at every month or a quarter and per year. A lot of time hours are invested/wasted in doing activities. You don’t realize the how crucial it is to address bottleneck such activities create and let those hours be invested in doing actual sales or improving-meeting customer experience.
Before a deal gets closed and deal-size is added to your revenue number there are lot of things have to fall in right place: such as identifying prospect, assessing requirements, sales meeting, proposal writing, following up, signing the contract, etc.
Here are the 5 Ways to Use Proposal Software to Grow Your Sales
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