Your sales team probably puts a lot of time and effort into accelerating sales velocity in a number of ways such as increasing the number of opportunities they pursue and trying to bump up their win rate.
But one accelerator you may be overlooking is your proposal. Kyle Racki, co-founder and CEO of Proposify says,
The proposal often takes a backseat in a lot of cases. We see it as a necessary thing. But your proposal can have a huge impact on sales velocity.
If your team is still creating proposals manually as Word documents or PDFs, they may be slowing down the entire sales process. But faster creation isn't the only way proposals can speed up sales velocity.
First, it's important to understand sales velocity's role in your sales efforts and in your business overall
Sales velocity measures how quickly you’re generating money, which can help in a number of ways:
That's great, we hear you saying. But how can proposals accelerate sales velocity? We're so glad you asked!
Increasing sales velocity through proposals doesn't happen by accident. It does take a little work on the front end to see more speed and efficiency on the back end.
The good news is, once some of that work is done, it doesn't have to be done again.
Here's how proposals and your proposal process can impact sales velocity:
It can sometimes take hours—or even days—to prepare and send a proposal. A proposal may go from sales to marketing, back to sales, then to managers, then back to sales and back to managers before it's finally approved.
Your team can speed things up quite a bit with proposal software, which in turn means they can shorten the sales cycle and even respond to more opportunities.
When we've talked to customers who've adopted Proposify, a lot of times they'll say before Proposify, they were taking days, sometimes weeks to get a proposal out
says Kyle.
Now it takes them ten to twenty minutes. Companies that are used to these long, drawn out proposal processes will often turn down opportunities because of the time it takes. But if it only takes them ten minutes to send out a proposal, why not respond to more opportunities?
The average time for Proposify users to create and send proposals is 17 minutes. That leaves a lot of time for other tasks like generating new leads, following up with prospects and closing deals.
Proposal software can clear the way to closing by changing your process to be more streamlined and efficient. And it does this without sacrificing quality or brand consistency. In fact, it increases both.
Here's how you can use proposal software to build a more efficient, faster proposal creation process:
Looking for some inspiration and guidance?
Check out our Proposal Makeover video series on our YouTube channel. Our own professional services team shows how they converted some of our customers’ existing proposals into Proposify templates that are more efficient, professional-looking and tailored to how they sell.
While every proposal will cover your core offerings based on your discovery calls, it never hurts to include additional services you may be able to provide to the prospect. This could lead to future engagements.
Also, though you may not want prospects to share your proposal, it does happen. But it can be another way to increase opportunities.
Scott says
If you have a proposal that looks awesome and is very clear on the value provided, at least if that gets passed around, it may actually lead to others wanting to do business with you as well. If you're always putting your best foot forward in your proposals, you look professional, you look like you know what you're doing, you're establishing yourself in the market as a leader, and that can pay off in other ways.
Kyle says
If you present just one price, there's no wiggle room or negotiation room unless you do a lot of back and forth, and that can slow down your sales cycle.
Instead, offer your prospects pricing options. Here are a few ways to do that:
Scott says
If you send something static, the prospect may be able to reach out to you for changes. But sometimes, that barrier just leads people to say, 'Oh, I'll start with what's here, and if I need more, I'll ask.' We find when we include interactive pricing tables, it allows the prospect to opt for the bigger package or additional service, and ultimately, you'll see deal sizes grow pretty passively just by giving them that option.
One of the drawbacks to being able to respond to more opportunities and send more proposals is that your close rate is probably going to go down.
Kyle says
Close rate is one of those things where so much of it depends on how much risk you're able to accept into your pipeline. If you only accept the hot leads, then yeah, you're going to have a high close rate. But if you take weaker deals, it's going to impact your close rate more than what goes into your proposal. Improving one number might weaken another number.
But your proposals can still increase your close rate. Scott explains:
One thing you can do if you really focus on your proposals to improve close rate is to get visibility into how and when prospects interact with proposals.
When you send a static proposal (a Word document or PDF), you can't know how your prospect is interacting with it. By using proposal software like Proposify instead, you can see when the prospect opens the proposal, how many times they open it, what sections they linger on, and more.
This can help your reps follow up at exactly the right times to make sure questions are answered and that the prospect feels heard, thereby also improving the close rate.
Another way to increase visibility into deals is to link proposals to your CRM. This way, managers have a better view into what's out there, and there's less chance of details falling through the cracks.
Improving your close rate may come down to coaching reps not just when to follow up, but how. Scott says
Giving some coaching on that can help you win deals you might otherwise lose.
Also, don't just send the proposal to the prospect. Yes, you read that right. But hear us out: of course you're going to send the proposal. We're saying do more than that. Get a call booked on the calendar and require that call before the prospect even gets to see the proposal.
Then, use that call as an opportunity to walk the prospect through the proposal, step by step. Kyle says
In this way, you can make sure you get ahead of any objections, and if the prospect has any questions, you're able to address them right then and there. If you just send it and they look at it on their own, they might get cold feet and never get back to you.
In an ideal world, you'd have the walkthrough call every time. But sometimes that's not an option. When that happens, opt for video.
When you can't get the prospect on a call, send a walkthrough video of the proposal instead. In it, you can anticipate objections and questions, and make the prospect feel seen and taken care of, even when you're not speaking to them live.
Scott says
Send the video first. If you send the video and the proposal at the same time, and they skip the video and go straight to the proposal, you're right back where you started. Trying to cover as much as you can beforehand can improve your close rate, and speed up the sales cycle.
This is the only metric that you subtract from your sales velocity. Obviously, the longer your sales cycle, the worse it is for your sales. Improving your proposal process can have a profound effect on your sales cycle.
Kyle tells a story about being a buyer in a process where the proposal was clunky, not created by the rep but by another department, written in legalese, and sent via third party signature software so he didn't recognize it. He says
It created so much friction that it took probably a month for me to buy it when I could've bought the same day I had the call with the rep.
If you can tighten up that process internally—even if you're not using proposal software—and put yourself in the buyer's shoes, you can get the sales cycle down to days when before, it might've been weeks or months.
Electronic signatures are a must-have. Our State of Proposals 2024 report found that giving your prospect the ability to sign and accept a proposal electronically can close deals 30% more quickly, which is a huge win for such a small addition.
As an added bonus, proposals with e-signature capability are 3.3 times more likely to close, and signing before you send it boosts close rates by another 26%.
Knowing who on the buyer’s side is going to be involved in the decision and bringing them into the discussion at early deal stages can help move things along. It applies doubly to the proposal stage.
Scott Tower, Director of Sales at Proposify says
Having someone to champion you on the buyer’s side is great, but having several champions is even better.
Sending proposals to multiple recipients can help prevent slow-downs, which saves time and helps prevent the deal from going cold. It can also improve relationships with other people in the organization, which helps build trust and paves the way towards a closed deal.
Every task your team needs to do manually takes time. So it only makes sense that automating some of those tasks will save time. Proposal automation can be accomplished by using proposal software that integrates with CRMs and project management tools, like Proposify does.
Just a few of the automations you can create are:
Your team's deals don't have to languish in a black box of uncertainty. When they track what’s going on with their proposals once they're in the prospects' hands, they'll know when to follow up and close the deals.
Protip: To help you stay on track, you can also set up a reminder if you haven’t sent a proposal after a certain amount of time has passed since you started creating it.
It’s one of the oldest tactics in sales, but it still works. Some people have a natural tendency to put off making decisions, but if your reps can create a sense of urgency, they may get prospects to want to close the deal ASAP.
More opportunities. Sent more quickly. Closed more often. Increased sales velocity, all through an improved proposal process. What are you waiting for?
Proposify provides a wide range of essential features to create professional proposals and a streamlined process that can help you gain more opportunities, raise your average deal value, bump up your win rate, or shorten your sales cycle, thereby increasing your sales velocity.
Schedule a demo or sign up for a free trial today to learn how Proposify gives you end-to-end visibility into and control of your proposal process to help you close deals more quickly and efficiently.