6 Tips to Consider While Choosing a Proposal Management Software

In my analysis of proposal management software, I found that modern tools offer significant advancements over traditional methods like PDFs and PowerPoints. Key features to consider include detailed reporting and dashboards, mobile optimization, a variety of integrations (especially with CRMs), electronic signatures, payment integrations, and the availability of proposal templates. These elements not only streamline the proposal process but also enhance client engagement and potentially speed up payment times. My research also highlighted the importance of templates in saving time and improving proposal quality.
Proposal Management Software

Whether you’re a freelancer, agency or you run an enterprise business, sales software can be of great help when convincing clients about the value of your work. Business proposals have been around for quite a while now and the good news is, they changed quite a bit from the days of sending PDFs and Powerpoints in emails.

Nowadays, there are plenty of proposal tools out there that can help you get new clients more easily and paid more quickly. Here are some considerations to keep in mind when choosing your new proposal software.

6 Tips to Consider While Choosing a Proposal Management Software 1
Source: Unsplash

Detailed reporting and dashboards

You can’t improve what you don’t measure. Your new proposal software should have the ability to track what your customers do with your proposals at all times. For example, it should show you:

  • When a customer opens your proposal
  • When they sign it
  • When they pay
  • How much of the proposal they read
  • Which sections they looked at the most
  • And more

In essence, the more data that you have, the more you can analyze your current proposals and make better decisions for the future.

6 Tips to Consider While Choosing a Proposal Management Software 2

For example, our research showed us that the one section where customers spend the most time is the introduction, followed by pricing. You can collect similar data to find out if this holds true for you and what type of sections could use a few improvements to make them better.

Moreover, this can show you immediately when the client opens up your proposal so you can join them as they read. For example, we have a live chat integration that allows you to chat with the customers in real time as they go through the proposal and answer their questions.

Mobile optimization

It’s 2021 and people don’t spend that much time on computers and laptops as they did before. Mobile devices are where it’s at, and this is important to know for any business. Whether you’re creating content or doing sales, you need to optimize for a variety of mobile devices.

Your business proposals need to be perfectly optimized for tablets and phones. Our research shows that more than 37% of all proposals are opened on a mobile device first, so you need to make a great first impression.

If they are not optimized, your proposals will take longer to load on mobile, they will look strange and will require lots of zooming in and out to be read properly.

In short, your proposal software should behave like a well-optimized web page that quickly adapts to any type of device.

A variety of integrations

Business automation is something you need to take quite seriously if you want to save time and money and make your employees happier. Whichever new tool you’re getting for your sales stack, make sure it integrates well with everything else that you’re currently using.

In the case of business proposals, you want to look into one thing specifically – CRM integrations. If your new proposal software integrates with your favorite CRM, that means that you can just import your contact data instead of manually entering it.

In short, our research shows that connecting your CRM and proposal software means that you will create proposals 83% faster compared to manually typing out or pasting information to complete a proposal.

Also, you need to take a look at your tech stack and see what kind of apps your sales team uses the most and consider if your proposal software has these integrations. For example, your business phone service software, cloudtalk.io, live chat, help desk software, email marketing software, etc.

Electronic signatures

Whatever business you’re in, contracts and agreements are a standard part of your day and signing them in person can become a hassle if you’re doing business worldwide. Everything is slowed down as you wait on the signature from someone as close as your town or from a different part of the world.

Electronic signatures have become commonplace nowadays, and not just in sales. Instead of waiting for papers to arrive, your customers can sign the moment they finish reading your proposal. As expected, having electronic signatures shortens the time it takes to get signoff and the time it takes to get paid.

6 Tips to Consider While Choosing a Proposal Management Software 3

Moreover, electronic signatures instill a feeling of security for all parties involved. Once a signature is in place, your customers will feel more confident about paying you and seeing the results of your great work.

Payment integrations

This is standard sales logic, but the more payment options you have, the more conversions you will have as a result. Customers love the convenience of choosing their ideal payment processor, but not all proposal software has the option of paying straight from the proposal.

When choosing your proposal management software, make sure to go for a provider that allows your customers to pay you immediately from the proposal document. The more payment processor options you have, the better. From credit cards to Stripe, Paypal and others, make sure your customers have a variety of options to choose from.

This will not only improve your conversion rates but will also help you get paid more quickly since you won’t have to chase outstanding invoices.

Proposal templates

If there is one game-changer for everyone using this type of software, it’s the ability to use templates. In essence, a proposal template is a proposal that is about 90% finished. You have a wireframe and all that it has left is to fill out the details related to the specific customer and their business case.

In our proposal template library, we have more than 200 different templates for different industries and use cases. Our customers love them because they are taken from real-life scenarios and they’re proven to work.

When you start from a template rather than a blank canvas, you can wrap up most business proposals in as little as 15 minutes. The best part is, you can even create your own templates based on what works well for your business and your clients.

Cloudtalk.io

Cloudtalk.io is a cloud-based phone support software. It is an affordable option for sales and support teams of start-ups, SMEs and e-commerce businesses. Cloudtalk.io has voice features like call queuing, call recording, voice mail, number porting, etc.


Besides voice features, it also offers intelligent call routing where the call is routed to the right agent based on pre-defined criteria. It helps make your customer support more effective and meaningful. Not just this, you also get to track your call data, gain helpful data insights with the call statistics feature.

Pricing

  • The cheapest plan us Start plan that starts @ $25 per user per month.
  • The essential plan is priced at $30 per user per month.
  • The next is the Expert plan priced at $50 per user per month.

Our Experience:

A great proposal management software can be a major asset for your sales team and a superb way to improve your processes, close more deals and get paid faster. When choosing your next software for writing, managing and sending business proposals, make sure to have these considerations in mind.

Petra Odak
Petra Odak

Petra Odak is a Chief Marketing Officer at Better Proposals, a simple yet incredibly powerful proposal software tool that helps you send high-converting, web-based business proposals in minutes. She's a solution-oriented marketing enthusiast with more than 5 years of experience in various fields of marketing and project management.

We will be happy to hear your thoughts

Leave a reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Sprout24
Logo