August 15, 2024
Sales proposals are the pickup lines of the business world. Difficult to nail down, but it can help you land a date (read deal) if done right.
Pickup lines are the icebreakers, and there’s a 50% probability they’ll fail because you don’t know your date. Not in the business world. You’ve already had the discovery call with your prospect, walked through their requirements, and built a rapport, so you know their pain points and needs.
What you now need is a deal-breaker proposal that your prospects can review to make it official.
Feel like creating ‘that proposal’ is a tough nut to crack? You’re in for a treat. We’ll talk about the software that has what it takes to build killer proposals and why it is the sun to your earth in this space. Let’s get decked up.
What’s All The Fuss About Sales Proposal Software?
Why do you need sales proposal software if you could generate great content from ChatGPT and combine it with a good old document and a PPT? Wrong!
The unaltered process is best for your grandmother’s recipe, not sales proposals.
In traditional methods, you’re always neck deep in proposal documents, and personalization becomes impossible quickly. Finding relevant documents reminds you of Finding Nemo. On top of that, follow-ups for updated versions of documents are the next nightmare.
Even if you find the documents, you will need help collating and formatting them. At the end, you will have ten content assets you want to share with your prospects, resulting in heaps of shared links that could be easier to navigate. Result? Your prospects need help finding what they need, lose interest, and the deal falls apart.
Above all, the process is also labor intensive, as you have to create, share, track, and secure all the proposals.
If you believe in the traditional approach of sending text-heavy sales proposals, you are missing out on too much.
That’s where a sales proposal software like Journey comes to your rescue. This software has everything you salespeople need to create proposals to close leads. They come along with templates you can use on the go. Texts, images, videos, audio, links, you name it, they have it. Other great features they offer are reporting, analytics, integrations, security, and more. Sounds like a deal?
Lately, digital sales rooms are the talk of the town. They are the latest version of proposal software. You can know how your proposal is consumed, who is consuming it, with whom it is being shared, and more, leaving you with tons of insights that you can use to close prospects.
So, Would Any Proposal Software Do the Job?
There are many options online, both free and paid, offering you the best of both worlds. Your work capacity and the manual load you can take determine what’s best for you.
If you have the time to do proposals manually, fix formatting issues, and have just a few leads to deal with, a free tool would do the job. Choose a template, edit the fillable fields, change client data and your quotations, import it as a PDF, and send it across.
But when you want to leave a remarkable impression and create an amazing selling experience, you must find premium tools that support your vision. For example, you have an amazing content asset designed on Canva that you want to include in your sales proposal, and not all tools support this. Similarly, some have HubSpot integration, others offer inbuilt analytics, some have fantastic design features, and others provide automation options. Pricing is another major factor you need to consider when making a call.
And What’s The True Potential of the Right Software?
We’re glad you asked. You can churn out a proposal faster that could become a closed win. Plus, tracking the status, collaborating, and making edits is a breeze.
That’s right, there’s so much a sales proposal software can do for you.
Such software allows you to create detailed, creative, and professional-looking proposals that convert. It will enable your sales team to include all the details they want and do it creatively. The built-in automation feature helps with efficiency, saving you time. Collaborating on proposals on such software is an absolute pleasure because making edits is easy and spares you the hassle of slip-ups. Analytics also gives you all the juicy bits about your clients that can help you close deals.
Ultimately, your sales team will not have to worry about minor things like formatting and will have all the time to sell your product.
How to Identify The Software’s Next Door & Your Showstopper?
There’s no good or bad sales proposal software. One with the necessary features and functionality is your match made in heaven. But how do you know what’s “the one” for you?
Creativity vs Technicality
Freedom in creativity is a thing for some teams. For others, integrations are a priority. What’s it for you?
You have to narrow down your requirements. Do you want to make your proposals attractive as a summer day with access to texts, voice notes, graphics, videos, and many other creative options? Or do you need to integrate it with your CRM, emails, project management software, and more?
Affordable vs Expensive
Budget is always a deal breaker. So, check out the software prices. If you are just getting started and have a bunch of proposals to work on or want to take a pivot project to shift to proposal software, a free tool is ideal for you. But don’t forget to consider the limitations of such software, like functionalities and security.
If you prefer paid options, you do not have to spend a fortune. Sales proposal software is cost-efficient, like Journey.io, which starts at a monthly fee as low as $29. Here, you unlock many features and possibilities that can lead you to create ‘wow proposals.’
Features vs Benefits
Let’s talk about a jack of all trades or a master of something dear to you.
Fancy software with kickass features like eSign, payment options, integrations, workflows, automation, and many other features you are not sure you need? I mean, you could use all the features and buy a one-stop solution kind of software.
But you could also have specific needs. Do you believe in a minimalist proposal document that is easy to track and close deals and other specifics like that? You should probably hunt for software that can help you do just that. There is no point in spending more on features you will never use.
Experience vs. Accelerated Delivery
What would you prefer, software enabling your champions (like how CoachEm enables champions in multi-stakeholder deals) by creating an experience for the entire sales cycle, or do you just want a practical proposal to hit your prospect’s inbox ASAP?
Some tools support the entire lifecycle, including getting to know your brand, pricing, social proof, use cases, benefits, and more. They also make getting buy-in from key decision-makers easy, among many other benefits.
On the other hand, tools that offer accelerated delivery are easy to use, give you all the basics you can tweak, and allow you to turn in a proposal in no time.
Boilerplate vs. Customization
Templates are another factor to consider. Do you need a template you can plug and play with, or do you have a dedicated design resource to help you create proposals from scratch?
You must define the level of customization you need in advance. One mind-blowing customization in proposal software is the liberty of being able to make edits even after sending the proposals to your prospects. Do you need such bespoke options, or could you do without them?
Jot your requirements down to a tee to find your ideal match. I’m rooting for you!
The Top 3 Sales Proposal Software
Proposify
Proposify is for the design nerds. If designs take up a major space in your sales proposal creation process, Proposify is a great option. It offers an easy-to-use drag-and-drop feature, and its templates can be customized.
In-depth tracking and analytics are another major attraction of this software. It provides data on each section of your proposal, giving you all the major and minor data points that improve decision-making.
PandaDoc
One of the most popular software that stands up to its popularity, PandaDoc is the opposite of ‘laden with tons of features.’ With simplicity as the main principle, it offers features that help you create, send, and track your sales proposals. Speed is perhaps its biggest flex, and you can create sleek proposals in minutes using its customizable templates.
It comes with CRMs and payments integration, a content library, custom branding, and more. But this would cost you on the higher end, which is why it looks like a good fit for enterprise and corporate-level salespeople.
Qwilr
Salespeople who want to make their proposals stand out by infusing them with interactive elements like videos, cooking calendars, ROI calculators, and more while cutting through heavy text would like Qwilr.
It helps you create proposals faster with a fast, efficient, and simple-to-use proposal creator. There isn’t much choice for customization, but tons of interactive options make up for it.
The Missing Ingredient - Journey.io
Did this make you think you must compromise many things along the way? Not with Journey.
For example, you shouldn’t have to choose between having good looks and intelligence. Journey has good looks, and it can pick your brain.
Besides the hard sales life of wooing prospects, the sales process is challenging. Email threads, follow-ups, attachments, meeting notes, and so on create a gigantic ball of problems that can be kicked into a digital sales room and groomed into one shareable link.
One link that gives your prospects access to website pages, Calendly links, content assets, videos, contracts, loom presentations, voice notes, etc.
That, my dear friend, is Journey.io for you.
Journey.io is a unique spin on the concept of DSR - tell a story. We’re all in for storytelling, and our platform gives you everything you need to present your story to your prospects and win them over. Because a great story will sit in your prospect’s mind and make them refuse to leave.
We let you create a journey that delights your prospects, gives them a spectacular experience they can immerse themselves in, and shouts out all the reasons to consider you over your competitors.
All by keeping your efforts on proposal creation low. It's time to watch your productivity spike.
Let’s Conquer the Sales Proposal Land
Some extra homework on your proposals speaks volumes, all the good stuff.
Going out of your way to understand your prospects and creating a proposal that resonates with their problem is engaging and easy to evaluate. It would hardly ever go in vain.
That’s the sole purpose of a proposal, isn’t it?
And making it count is 100% on you.
You need buy-in from many stakeholders beyond the AE you just impressed. The proposal enables and makes it easy for the AE to sell you internally, and you can do it with Journey.
Experiment with videos, slide presentations, product demos, support documentation, technical overviews, call recordings, and more to find what type of proposals will appeal to your prospects. Use our best-performing templates, or better yet, start them from scratch.
Track and analyze all data insights to learn what’s working for you. Expound on it to regain your prospects' lost interest or amplify their interest to close the deal. Keep your prospects hooked at every stage of the sales journey.
These are just the starters; there’s so much more that Journey has in store for you.