June 10, 2024
Think of Coca-Cola's red and white can with the instantly recognizable font. Or Best Buy's bright yellow and blue colour scheme. Or Nike's swoosh and "Just do it." tagline.
Change any one of those elements, and the brand loses some of its recognizability, which means it also loses some of its credibility. Is Coke the real thing if it's in a blue can? Does Nike sound as bold if they simply say, "You can do it."?
The same applies to your team's proposals, regardless of whether you’re B2B or B2C. They're representing your brand, and without consistent logos, colours, fonts, tone and style, your brand is weakened, which can lead to your proposal being shuffled to the bottom of the pile.
How do those inconsistencies happen? And what can you do about them to make sure your brand is being represented consistently with every proposal that leaves your reps' desks?
How Inconsistencies Happen
Ensuring brand consistency in business proposals can be a formidable challenge, particularly for organizations that operate on a large scale or across multiple locations. Common inconsistencies often arise when different teams or departments have their own styles, when there's a lack of centralized guidelines, or when sales reps go rogue.
Geographically Separated Sales Teams
For instance, sales teams in different regions may use varying fonts, colours, or layouts in their proposals, which can lead to a disjointed brand perception. This is especially problematic in global companies where regional nuances must be balanced with overarching brand standards, necessitating meticulous oversight and regular training to ensure all teams are aligned with the company’s branding objectives.
Proposal Input from Multiple Departments
Also, other departments participating in the sales process may independently develop content that diverges in tone, terminology, or messaging, further diluting the brand’s cohesive image. Such variations can confuse potential clients and undermine the professionalism and reliability of the brand.
Scott Tower, Director of Sales at Proposify adds,
Where sometimes things can be misaligned is when the marketing team doesn't put themselves in the shoes of the seller. This can mean there's way too much stuff that's not valuable to the prospect, or the functionality of the template is set up in a way that prevents the rep from personalizing the proposal. I think that can be a source of friction.
No Centralized Guidelines for Franchises
Businesses that manage multiple brands or franchises, or serve diverse markets often face additional complexities in maintaining brand consistency. For example, each franchise may have its own unique identity and require distinct proposal templates and content strategies that align with its market positioning.
A lack of control and visibility into each franchise's sales process can create a chaotic mixture of brand elements, leading to inconsistent presentations that fail to accurately represent the brand. And this can lead to inefficient processes, or worse, lost sales.
Sales Reps Going Rogue
Proposify Co-founder and CEO Kyle Racki has a theory about why sales reps go rogue.
I think salespeople in general can be cowboys and girls. They want to get the deal over the line, and they're not always accustomed to following processes. And maybe they feel processes slow them down. So it's a universal thing.
Scott agrees.
I think sales reps are naturally wired with a bias towards action. That's a good thing in a lot of cases, but it can also be a hindrance when you want them to follow guidelines.
When sales reps individually customize the proposals they send, your branding can take a hit, and we can't overstate brand consistency importance.
The Importance of Brand Consistency in Proposals
Consistent branding in business proposals isn't just about visual aesthetics; it conveys a company’s professionalism, quality and attention to detail.
In competitive sectors, where prospects often weigh multiple offers, a well-branded proposal can significantly influence the decision-making process. And as companies scale and begin dealing with larger firms, unified branding is essential to present a professional image.
Consistency in branding elements such as logos, colours, and fonts, as well as in the tone and style of the content, also helps to build trust and credibility. This uniformity ensures that every piece of communication reflects the company’s values and commitment, making the brand instantly recognizable and differentiating it from competitors.
Professional branding in proposals also plays a critical role in shaping client perceptions and expectations. It conveys a sense of stability and reliability, suggesting that the company is well-organized and capable of delivering high-quality services or products.
When clients encounter consistent branding across various touchpoints, it reinforces their confidence in the company’s capabilities, thereby increasing the likelihood of successful deals.
Your team can get that consistency and close those deals with Proposify.
Proposify: The Solution for Brand Consistency
The best proposal management software supports brand consistency, and that's where Proposify's content library and template editor come in. You can create your own on-brand templates from scratch with Proposify's customization features, or use existing ones and tailor them based on your branding. Sales reps can then use a pre-approved, ready-to- go template to create their proposals and you have the confidence that they professionally and accurately represent your brand.
But even with customization, adherence to brand guidelines can be maintained. Those with administrative access can lock some parts of the templates while allowing reps to personalize others parts with details specific to the prospect and deal. So even if two reps customize two proposals in two different ways, a consistent brand aesthetic is maintained.
Proposify templates can be used for more than just proposals. Any kind of documents that need to be included in a sales deal can be stored in the content library. From non-disclosure agreements to contracts to quotes, every document will align with the company's branding, ensuring a consistent image throughout the deal.
This can be especially helpful for companies that franchise their brand.
How 360clean Created Consistency with Proposify
Companies that operate franchises face a particular set of issues in branding consistency. When locations are geographically separated, it's easy for each one to create its own processes and fall into diverse habits.
This was true for 360clean, a janitorial service company. They had more than 70 franchises, each following a different process for creating proposals. The result was a level of inconsistency that damaged service delivery and owner morale.
That answer was Proposify, a single solution that could be used by headquarters and every franchise location. Lisa said:
I was able to quickly and easily jump into Proposify and instantly see the value. Knowing I could set up all the pre-approved content and templates for owners meant we were back in control of the brand and franchisees were set up for success.
Using Proposify's content library, franchisees create proposals with pre-approved documents that are all consistent with 360clean's branding. Instead of 70+ distinct businesses, it's presented as one business with multiple locations.
Your team can create and maintain that same kind of brand consistency by following a few best practices.
Best Practices for Consistent Proposal Management
Establishing and maintaining brand integrity across various departments within a company requires a strategic approach to proposal management.
Establish Brand Guidelines
Brand guidelines should detail specific visual elements such as logo usage, colour schemes, and fonts, as well as the tone and style of writing that reflects the brand’s voice. Ensuring that every team member has access to and understands these guidelines is crucial.
Review and Update Brand Guidelines
Periodically review and update brand guidelines and templates to keep them current with any changes in brand strategy or visual identity. This helps prevent discrepancies and keeps the brand modern and relevant.
Conduct Training
Regular training sessions can be instrumental in reinforcing these standards and keeping your team aligned with the brand’s core messaging and aesthetic.
Implement Template Management
Leveraging a centralized template management system like Proposify's content library can also significantly streamline brand consistency. By using a single, unified platform where proposal templates can be created, stored, and accessed, you can ensure that your team uses the most up-to-date and brand-compliant materials.
This approach not only minimizes the risk of outdated or off-brand content, but also increases efficiency by reducing the time spent on creating new templates from scratch for each proposal. Implementing these systems provides a clear, consistent framework that supports the brand’s integrity across all communications, in all departments and regions.
Monitor and Collect Feedback
Regularly collect feedback from proposal recipients and review how visual brand consistency—or lack thereof—is affecting business. Use this feedback to make informed adjustments to your proposal strategy and branding guidelines.
Leverage Technology
Use technology solutions that support branding consistency, such as marketing automation platforms (like HubSpot) integrated with proposal management tools (like Proposify), that automatically align with brand guidelines.
In addition to managing proposal creation, the way you design proposals greatly contributes to your brand consistency.
Tips for Designing Consistent Proposals with Proposify
Proposify puts tools in your hands to help your reps create winning proposals that are also consistent with your brand.
Lock Down Templates
Sales reps typically aren't designers, so you don't want them choosing elements that don't fit your brand standards. You can select elements such as your brand font and colours in Proposify, and then lock access so they can't be changed.
This ensures the reps have access to what they need, but they don't have edit permissions. This will help keep proposals consistent, and can prevent sales reps from going rogue.
The really cool part is, when a rep pastes text into a proposal, regardless of what font or text colour they used, Proposify will automatically reformat the text according to those locked brand formatting selections.
By reducing the amount of work your reps have to do for their proposals, you'll also reduce the amount of time it takes to create each proposal. We've found that with Proposify, it takes sellers an average of 17 minutes to create a proposal. Just think how many more proposals your reps could create, or how many other things they could be doing with all that saved time.
Scott says,
Ultimately, a lot of sales reps don't care if they can't change something in a document as long as they know it will have the outcome they want. So if you show them that reducing the amount of customization they can do will actually make things easier on them, they'll get on board pretty quickly.
Use Placeholders
You can lock down parts of a proposal template that the reps won't need to customize, like the background. But for other things you do want them to be able to customize—images, for example—you can use placeholders.
In our State of Proposals report, we found that 85% of winning proposals contained images, and the average number of images was 12. Giving your reps the ability to add images to their proposals can help them close deals.
One of the most important spots to add an image is the cover. Kyle says,
On the proposal cover, don't just put your logo, put the buyer's logo so they can see themselves in your service. Seeing their logo next to yours makes it more personalized.
The rep can click into the placeholder, find the prospect's logo, upload it, and paste it into the proposal. Scott adds,
When you use a placeholder, upload the image, and the image snaps into place and resize itself, that's heaven for a sales rep versus trying to become a photo editor on the fly.
You can also use placeholders for text so your reps know which spots need to be personalized.
Maintain Branding Consistency with Proposify
If you're ready to build a proposal process that aligns with your brand, you're ready for Proposify. It has everything your team needs to create and send consistently branded, consistently beautiful proposals. Our proposal software gives you end-to-end control and visibility into your sales process.
Schedule a demo today, and see how you can preserve your branding with every proposal.
