The general idea is that proposal automation helps you to increase productivity, which in turn leads to win rate.
Being able to quickly pull together an error-free proposal, and submit it before a deadline is your path to a successful business.
This is especially true if your company is involved in a lot of bids, so it would be time you get your proposals done quickly through automation. Even if handling a proposal on a small scale, it takes hours and then some, and lots of effort to pull it all together.
The more complex the proposal, the more automation you would need to streamline the business. Just to throw in a couple of facts:
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40% of a salesperson’s time is spent on researching for the information and relative content for a proposal.
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A whopping 83% of writers say they can’t find the right content for a proposal.
Why is proposal automation an ingredient to success is a question you might be wondering about. There are quite a few reasons that we’ll get into, but first let’s discuss how it works.
Proposals are often sent as a response to RFPs (requests for proposals, or requests for pricing), which are sent to notify suppliers and providers to make a competitive bid on a sales opportunity.
Automated software is created with powerful analytics, designed to discover insights from accessible documents of a client.
This is a solution that helps sales and marketing to align their proposal along these insights, such as the client’s needs, interests and plans.
Users of a software can then send their proposals to clients, either in a hard copy, an electronic file, or through a link to a custom URL if it’s an online proposal. Automated software has many features, including but not limited to:
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Content library update: Users can update saved proposal language and standard proposal content.
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Database: Proposals can be organized centrally where users can easily locate past proposals within the database.
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Templates: The ability to utilize proposal templates for standard proposal layouts, with variable fields.
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User permission and editing control: The ability to set appropriate control over who can view vs. edit proposals.
Major benefits are many to list. So, we can start here by telling you some of them.
Speed: Your team doesn’t have time to waste, and the truth is working on proposals, or especially working on quotes is very time consuming.
More importantly, it’s often a repetition of work where usually only the quantities, prices and people you are addressing are different while the rest of the quote is basically the same. This means your team could spend more time on clients than on other tasks that can be automated.
Sales: Using Proposal Automation to increase sales is a common practice now for winning companies. The software works directly into Word, PowerPoint and Excel; all programs that your sales team is already familiar with, meaning they would need less training time to learn a software.
Being able to give on the spot estimates, or being able to input key information with just a few clicks means turning out a proposal within a few days rather than a few weeks and generating revenues.
Tailored needs: The best bids and proposals tailor to the needs of the client. This degree of personalization can be fostered easier and quicker with automation software.
Keep it simple
There are several software to choose from, but you want to choose one that isn’t overly complicated and should be easy to learn to be efficient.
Find the balance between what you require and the features of a given software to come up with one that will ease the work that goes into proposals and increase your sales rate. It’s past time to bring your proposal drafting into the modern age.
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