How to Shorten Your Sales Cycle with Proposal Software

If you've noticed your team's sales cycles are longer than you'd like, it may be time to evaluate how they're creating proposals and leveraging tools. 

Sales experience and a talented rep will only get you so far before sales start to lag or go dark altogether. And a long sales cycle leaves room for competitors to step in with stronger, better, faster solutions, causing you to lose prospects.

Put those talented sales reps and their experience together with the right software, and you'll be surprised by how short the cycle becomes.

How to Shorten the B2B Sales Cycle

While your team can use several overarching strategies to improve the sales cycle length, we decided to focus solely on how proposal software can help them do this.

Use Proposal Software

The first way to shorten the sales cycle with proposal software is to use it to begin with. Simple, right?

Good proposal software—like Proposify—streamlines the proposal creation process, allowing your team to quickly generate professional proposals tailored to each prospect. Instead of spending hours crafting each proposal from scratch in word processing documents or slides, reps can rely on pre-built templates and automation features that ensure consistency and accuracy.

Proposal software is also like the ultimate team player—it easily integrates with your CRM and other tools, making your sales process smoother than ever. Imagine syncing prospect data, tracking interactions, and automating follow-ups all in one place. No more juggling between apps. It’s like having a super-powered assistant that keeps everything in sync.

With its tracking capabilities, proposal software gives your team valuable insights into how their prospects interact with proposals. They'll know when a prospect opens, views, or comments on a proposal, enabling sales reps to follow up at the right time and move the deal forward more efficiently.

By using proposal software, you’re not just saving time; you’re also improving the prospect experience. A streamlined, professional proposal process reflects positively on your business, making it easier for prospects to say "yes," shortening the sales cycle, and helping your team close deals more quickly.

Now let's look at some of those features in detail.

Take Advantage of Templates

Starting with a blank screen for every single proposal can be daunting, not to mention tedious. And creating each proposal section manually—for every proposal—will definitely lengthen the sales cycle. 

Enter templates. Instead of starting from scratch every time, reps can use pre-designed templates that already include the essential sections and structure they need.

Proposify's proposal templates are customizable, allowing you to design the look and feel to align with your brand. Your reps can then tailor the details specific to each deal without altering the content you've already created and approved. Built-in brand consistency saves time, but more importantly, it helps create a professional and polished impression with your prospects. 

Plus, having a solid starting point means your team can focus more on tailoring the content to their prospect's specific needs, rather than worrying about formatting and design.

Finally, using templates keeps everyone on the same page, ensuring that the proposals sent out are aligned with your company’s standards and messaging. This uniformity can reduce errors, improve efficiency, and help your team turn around proposals faster, thereby shortening the sales cycle.

Pre-Approved Proposal Content

Imagine this: You're a rep in the final stretch of closing a deal, but you hit a roadblock because someone needs to approve the proposal content. Suddenly, your quick win turns into a waiting game. Sound familiar? 

Nothing slows down a process like bottlenecks created by needing multiple stakeholders' permissions to get things done. Having pre-written and pre-approved proposal content can save the day—and shorten your sales cycle.

Pre-approved content means key sections of proposals—like pricing details, terms and conditions, or service descriptions—are written, reviewed and approved ahead of time. That way, your reps can quickly choose the right pre-written, pre-approved content, and drop it into the appropriate sections. With pre-approved content, you eliminate the last-minute rush to get sign-offs and ensure that your team's proposals are ready to go at a moment’s notice.

This both speeds up the process and gives you peace of mind. You’ll know that everything in your team's proposals meets company standards and has been vetted by the necessary stakeholders. You'll also know none of your reps are going rogue, adding unapproved information to proposals, creating inconsistencies. 

Plus, with Proposify, you can easily store and access these pre-approved sections in a content library, making it a breeze to plug them into new proposals without any fuss.

Making pre-approved proposal content a standard practice is a simple step that can save your reps time, reduce stress and boost your closing rate.

Integrate with Other Software

Proposal software doesn’t just work on its own—it plays nicely with other software tools your team's already using, like a CRM, email platforms, and project management apps. Think of integration as the glue that holds the sales process together, making everything smoother, faster and easier.

When your reps integrate Proposify with your CRM, for example, all their prospect data is automatically pulled in, so they're not wasting time entering details manually. It also helps avoid human errors, which can be costly.

And it doesn’t stop there. Integrating with email platforms means a rep can send proposals directly from their inbox, while syncing with project management tools ensures that once the deal is closed, they can hit the ground running without missing a beat.

Integrating proposal software with your existing tools turns your sales process into a well-oiled machine, helping you shorten the sales cycle with less effort.

Include Interactive Features

Why settle for static, boring proposals when you can make them interactive and engaging? Interactive features in your team's proposals will grab prospects' attention and keep them engaged from start to finish. Plus, it can seriously speed up the sales cycle by making it easier for prospects to say "yes" right on the spot.

Interactive proposals let prospects do more than just read—they can click, explore, and even make decisions directly within the document. For example, reps can add pricing tables where prospects can select the options that best fit their needs, or include embedded videos that explain your services in a dynamic way. Proposify even allows prospects to sign electronically, so you can close the deal without having to be in the same room with their rep.

And when prospects can interact with proposals, they'll feel more involved and empowered, which can lead to quicker approvals, and to a shortened sales cycle.

You can find more statistics and insights about proposals in the State of Proposals report.

Dive Into Analytics

Guessing just doesn't cut it when it comes to closing deals. Instead of wondering what’s going on after they hit send, proposal analytics will give your team the inside scoop on how prospective customers are interacting with the proposals they receive. 

Want to know whether your prospect opened the proposal? Proposify will tell you. Curious how much time they spent on each section? You got it. By diving into these insights, your reps can figure out what’s working and what might need a little tweak. If they notice a prospect lingering on the pricing page, it’s the perfect cue to follow up and address any questions the prospect might have.

But the magic doesn’t stop there. Your reps can also see which proposals are converting the quickest, helping them refine their strategies for even better results. It’s like having a secret weapon that makes the sales process smarter and faster.

With detailed analytics, your reps will be able to make data-driven decisions that keep your sales cycle moving quickly and efficiently.

Shorten the B2B Sales Cycle with Proposify

Tired of sales cycles that never seem to end? Consider Proposify. It has everything your team needs to do away with manual proposal creation, from templates to software integrations. Its insightful data will help your team track progress and follow up at the right times. Our proposal software gives you total control and visibility into your proposal process, from start to finish.

Schedule a demo today, and see how you can streamline and shorten the entire sales process.