Why Digital Proposals?
Chances are, your proposal process looks similar to the way it did in the 1990s.
- You’ve had a call with the prospect and qualified the deal.
- You go find an old proposal that somewhat matches the criteria of your current deal.
- You update the required sections, frantically performing a search-and-replace of any mention of the previous prospect’s name or company.
- You save out the PowerPoint deck or Word doc into a PDF.
- And you fire off an email with the proposal attached.
And then you wait…
Does This Sound Familiar?
If it does, take comfort in knowing that you’re not alone. An astounding number of sales teams still use this process to get proposals out the door. And through this anachronistic process design, you’ve probably wondered why there isn’t a better way to do it. Well, there is.
The Problem With the Standard Method
A few problems are easily identified in regards to the process outlined above.
- Your sales deck and that of your co-workers likely look very different with no brand cohesion.
- Let’s face it, you’re not an artist. That proposal could look better, but you don’t have the time to dedicate to the visuals. So you send it anyway.
- Once you send that proposal as an email attachment, it’s gone. There’s no editing it or getting it back.
- When documents go into an email, you get no intelligence on how your prospect is using your content.
- You have no idea if that document has been forwarded to third parties, perhaps your competition.
- You lose control and the ability to clawback your content or modify it.
- You end up chasing “ghost prospects” that may never turn into an actual customer.
Digital Proposals Are Simply A Better Way To Do It
Cloud-based software has been around for a long time. The marketing team enjoys a monopoly of knowledge in understanding how content is used, engaged with, shared, and re-purposed. You and your colleagues on the sales team don’t get that luxury. You’re stuck using Office Suite products to bootstrap your way into sales success.
But not anymore.
Digital proposals delivered by Proposa give you the ability to create truly remarkable proposals in half the time. Not only will they be visually stunning, but they’ll also be mobile-ready and packed with intelligence to help you sell better, smarter, and faster. Your new proposal process could look like this:
- You create a new proposal and pop in reusable content that you’ve found has worked before.
- Your proposal is visually stunning and auto-formatted to any mobile device. After all, business is often done on-the-go.
- You send a link to your proposal, not an emailed attachment.
- You realize you want to tweak the language on the proposal after you’ve sent it. No problem, you log in and make changes in real-time.
- You receive open notifications of when your prospect opened your proposal and what city they opened it from.
- You get a heat map showing you what sections of your proposal were read and which sections were merely skimmed.
- You decide when to follow-up with your prospect with a wealth of knowledge on what matters most to them.
This is an example proposal built on Proposa. Click to view the proposal in its full glory.
Controlling Your Content – A Case Study
It seems ridiculous that some of the most valuable content your company has exists in sales proposals and those proposals are wantonly attached to emails. You have no control over how that content is distributed.
At Proposa, we had a customer of ours start a live-chat session with us. The conversation went like this:
Customer: “Does your team employ developers in Ukraine.”
Proposa: “No, all of our developers are at our headquarters in Raleigh, North Carolina.”
Customer: “I’m getting open notifications of my proposal being opened in Kiev.
Proposa: “That certainly seems strange. Is your prospect traveling internationally, by chance?”
Customer: “No, they’re located in New York and I just had a call with them yesterday.”
After a 5-minute pause.
Customer: “I’ve figured it out. We sent a proposal to our prospect who is now shopping our proposal with overseas talent. They sent them the proposal that we made for them.”
Proposa: “If you would like to cut access to that proposal, you can delete that prospect from the proposal or turn off the proposal altogether by marking it as a Draft.”
Customer: “I just did that. This is a lifesaver and I’m a bit angry as well as relieved that I can use Proposa to figure this out.”
Your sales content is too important to simply send and forget. With Proposa’s insights, you are in control over your content and who is able to see it.
The Transition Cost to Digital Proposals
Introducing a new system may seem daunting. But you would be surprised at just how shallow the learning curve is for Proposa. Within an hour, you’ll build a brand new proposal format that your team can use and reuse in future cases. It’s time to equip your team with the right tools to close deals more efficiently than you ever have.
And the hard costs? Less than you think. Plans start at $25 per month and come with a 14-day free trial. You’ll spend more at Starbucks this month than you will on Proposa. So what are you waiting for? Give it a shot.
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