5 Key Steps To A Successful Business Proposal
Large or small, all deals start with a proposal. As a result, it makes sense to invest in the system you have in place for creating and delivering these crucial accessories to winning new business. When it comes to creating a business proposal, you need a dependable method that can bring efficiency to your process at the same time as driving real value.
Don’t jeopardise your chances of success by getting things off to anything but the most stable of beginnings. In this article, we’ll explore the five key elements that help to ensure a successful business proposal.
No Unnecessary Obstacles
The need to send out a proposal is a promising sign of potential customers or clients demonstrating considerable interest in your offering. Because of this, there’s a very definite need to act quickly – capitalising on high levels of motivation while these remain at their peak. No avoidable barriers to the easy acceptance of a proposal should exist.
What does this mean in practice? Leaning on automation wherever possible. By creating an automated proposal workflow, everything flows seamlessly – no waiting for responses, no need to manually progress a deal on to the next stage.
With MyDocSafe, businesses can ensure the smooth progression of proposals right through to acceptance stage. All steps can be easily chained together and the whole process set in motion to advance automatically when the next action is required. From signatures through to payments, client actions can be easily embedded within fully branded, customised proposals, building trust and progressing the deal efficiently.
Compare this sleek process to the stilted exchange of emails, bulky attachments and the need to leverage multiple pieces of software to read documents and give approval…
Transparency And Access
When creating a business proposal, you need to give your prospective client everything they need to make up their minds about your offer. This will help limit the back and forth required before they can progress ahead to accepting your offer. With this in mind, it’s important to ensure that your proposal system has the capacity to pull various forms of information and documents together into one cohesive experience.
One way to ensure a smooth process here is to look at the option of leveraging client portals. While some may only start to consider the benefits of these adaptive and highly functional management tools after a proposal has been accepted, and onboarding begins, client portals can also play an important (and helpful!) role at proposal stage, bringing together all signed documents, contracts, outlines and associated documentation, into one easily accessible shared location.
Portals offer easy access and instant ability to find and view documents on demand – great for clients (who are empowered to find their own answers) but equally beneficial for businesses, who avoid being overwhelmed with high levels of requests and an extra communication burden associated with getting deals over the line.
Absolute Accuracy
No one wants to find themselves in the position of having to recall and revise a proposal as the result of having based it on inaccurate or outdated information. At best, it’s embarrassing, at worst, it will cost you a client. The best proposals are the ones with fully informed quotes – and the ability to get this right for a client, first time, is paramount.
A great way to ensure accuracy here is to leverage forms of data collection within your proposal process. If you choose to work with a supplier of business proposal software such as MyDocSafe, you’ll have the opportunity to build out workflows which include “fact-finding” stages, enabling the final proposal delivered to be perfectly judged.
MyDocSafe offers flexible and highly customisable eforms, which can be embedded within your proposal flows to request, capture and apply all the information relevant to the offer you’re making. Create accurate and dependable quotes, so that proposals are easily accepted and can move ahead.
Dependable Security
Building out and sending proposals over email is rapidly becoming outmoded. When it comes to sending confidential or sensitive information, especially in an exchange with a business which, by the very nature of a proposal, you have probably not had interactions with previously – total security should be prioritised.
By working with dedicated portals, your business is able to guarantee that all documentation has been stored safely and efficiently in one central depositary – where access can be controlled easily.
Working with trusted, verified software shows that you’ve invested in going above and beyond to demonstrate the reliability and security of your proposal process. Working with a platform such as MyDocSafe, which leverages the highest standards of security, including digital signatures stored with encryption protocols for added security and peace of mind.
Professionalism and Trust
As the proposal represents the first formal interaction between your business and the prospective client, there’s a distinct need to implement a proposal system that actively builds trust – ahead of a deal being struck and a proposal accepted.
First impressions are lasting, so working with a system that enables fully branded, recognisable workflows is important. Working with MyDocSafe means you’ll be able to send fully branded, familiar flows to clients. Form-filling, contract signing and even payment can all be included within one trustworthy workflow that showcases your brand consistently throughout – keeping things feeling polished and professional.
Create Better Business Proposals
As the starting point for all future and ongoing business, it makes sense to ensure your proposal process is streamlined and optimised. The opportunity to quote shouldn’t be squandered. Taking care to deliver a proposal that is complete, accurate, relevant and secure should be the baseline expectation, with your business going above and beyond to achieve the best first impression.
Make sure that all opportunities for business are given every chance to succeed by investing in a more efficient and effective proposal system. MyDocSafe offers streamlined and safe proposals to be created in an initiative and flexible manner, improving your client’s experience, whilst helping your team to work more efficiently.
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