Winning Proposals: 5 Data-Driven Ways to Create Them

How to Write a Winning Proposal

We took an in-depth look at winning proposal examples in our Proposify database and found common threads among them. So we've extracted five pro tips from our State of Proposals report to help your team increase their close rate.

1. Broaden Proposal Content

Your reps may feel that a short proposal is the best option to avoid taking up too much of a prospect's time, or just to close more quickly. But go too short, and a rep runs the risk of leaving out important information, or bogging the deal down at a later stage when that information still needs to be covered.

There's a happy medium. A proposal can be succinct while still including all the necessary information. In fact, our data shows that winning proposals contain an average of twelve pages divided among seven sections.

Cover Page

The cover page doesn’t have to be flashy, but it must be on-brand in its design, and include important details such as the prospect's name (make sure you spell it correctly!), the rep's name and contact info, and the date submitted.

Executive Summary

Contrary to popular belief, the executive summary isn’t a summary of the entire proposal. It’s a summary of why your solution is the right one, demonstrating why the prospective customer should choose your company over the competition.

Approach / Solution

By outlining the approach to addressing the potential customers' pain points and the process involved in doing so, your reps can set and manage prospects' expectations. Also, demonstrating that they understand the prospects' challenges can help build confidence in the solution.

Deliverables

Get everyone on the same page by describing the scope of what the prospect can expect to receive and when. Plus, lay out anything your company might need from them, such as approvals or feedback. This also helps to set and manage expectations, on both sides.

About Us / Our Team

Use this section to explain who you are as a company: what you do, why you exist, your expertise, and your unique value proposition. Remember to make it sound human, though. Prospective customers want to deal with people, not the company as a whole.

Pricing / Investment

This is probably the section most prospects flip to first: the investment. Here, your team will include pricing tables, available packages, and product or service descriptions.

Terms and Conditions / Sign-Off

This section includes all the language to satisfy the legal departments on both sides, with a spot to capture prospects' signatures.

If you’re having trouble keeping your proposals succinct, our experts recommend editing out any information that doesn’t help the buying decision, or that won’t come into play until the deal is closed.

For example, your reps can always send more detailed deliverable timelines separately or as part of a welcome package once the deal is signed. That way, the decision-maker won’t get bogged down in the details.

2. Automate the Process

Your team needs to move quickly to get ahead of the competition, and to stay top of mind with prospects.

The easiest way to do both is through automation.

Let's look at a few stats:

• 50% of proposals are created in 17 minutes or less

• 55% of proposals are opened in less than 2 hours of sending

• 45% of proposals are won less than 24 hours after opening

That kind of speed is accomplished with automation. Here are three ways it can help your team speed up the sales process from start to finish.

Faster Workflow

Having too many touchpoints in your proposal workflow means too much time spent, and we all know what time does to deals. If you’re still using Word, PowerPoint or Adobe, you’re already running behind.

Proposal software like Proposify can reduce those manual touchpoints in your process. For example, it can automatically create a proposal once a deal hits a certain stage, and pull in all the details from your integrated customer relationship management (CRM) program.

Bottleneck-Free Internal Approval Process

At Proposify, we often hear from sales teams that their internal proposal approval process is where some of the biggest bottlenecks occur. A modern approval process can—and should—be automated.

In Proposify, users who need approval before sending simply click a button to notify an approver that there’s a proposal awaiting their review. The approver then receives a notification and can click right over to take a look and leave feedback, approve or reject it.

Simple Sign-Off

Automating signatures is a quick way to get a win. When you have an agreement in front of a hot prospect and the electronic signature box is right there, all they need to do is click and boom, it's done. No printing, no looking for a pen, no printing, scanning and emailing back.

With an all-in-one proposal tool like Proposify, you can drag-and-drop signature boxes right into your proposal and even add unassigned signatures if you’re not exactly sure who will be signing on the prospect side. That means your team can send the proposal out even more quickly since there’s no need to wait for that confirmation.

Ultimately, adding automation in these areas keeps deals moving forward—without taking up any more precious selling time.

3. Sign Before Sending

Countersigning is the technical term for when a proposal or contract is signed before it's sent to the prospect for their signature. We found that countersigned proposals were five times more likely to close.

And when your rep countersigns, it should be with an e-signature. Getting back to that need for speed, we found that electronically signed proposals close three times faster than proposals signed via conventional means.

4. Make Proposals More Attractive

What else has a positive effect on close rates? Features that make your proposals more attractive and easy to use. Here are a couple of the most important ones.

Add Images

In addition to breaking up blocks of text, images can convey important information to prospective clients. They can show everything from examples of the products and services being purchased to the team the prospect will be working with.

And images are a big part of winning proposals. We found that:

• 82% of winning proposals have images
• 66% of winning proposals have at least 3 images
• winning proposals contain an average of 13 images

Incorporate images when possible. And if photos aren't available, graphics and illustrations can help too.

Use Customizable Forms

Capturing administrative details (purchase order number, billing address, etc.) during the proposal process can help the deal move more quickly once everything's signed. Your reps can help prospects provide that information more easily through the use of customizable forms.

We found that customizable client forms:

• increase close rates by 45%
• close deals faster by 26%
  
  Collect that information at the proposal stage, and your reps won't have to chase it down later.

5. Invite Feedback and Revisions

While reps may occasionally fall into the trap of feeling as though the proposal is the end product, it's important to remember it's a gateway to a potentially long-term relationship. The more the prospect is involved in creating the final version of the proposal, the more likely they are to sign it.

This isn't just a supposition. In our research, we found proposals revised:

• once have a 31% higher close rate

• twice have a 44% higher close rate

• thrice have a 55% higher close rate

Remind your team not to take feedback and revision requests personally. Instead, they must see their prospects as partners in getting the deal across the finish line.

Two Bonus Tips

When keeping so many ways to write a winning business proposal in mind, it can sometimes be easy to let the simplest actions fall by the wayside.

Here are two that are small and easy, but could actually make or break a deal.

Submit the Proposal on Time

This should go without saying, but hey, things happen, your reps get busy, and a proposal deadline comes and goes. The last thing your prospect needs to hear is crickets when they're waiting for a proposal.

Get proposals in on time—or even better, early.

Express Gratitude

The simple act of saying thank you goes a long way in just about every part of life, and that includes when submitting winning proposals.

When your reps let prospects know they're valued and appreciated, it can make the entire process go much more smoothly than if the prospective customer just feels like a source of revenue.

Plus, it's just polite.