How proposal tools can help your team save time and win more business.
You just finished up a call with a prospect and you’re scrambling to send them a customized proposal by the end of the day.
Or someone on your team recently sent a proposal with outdated information about your packages, so you must honor a lower price for your product.
Or you received an RFP from a prospect that is due in five days, and it will take all hands on deck to complete it in time.
If any of those situations sound familiar to you, it might be worth looking into proposal management software for your business. Proposal tools can help your team expedite the process of building proposals and responding to RFPs, while improving the quality and consistency of the documents. Ultimately, proposal tools should help you work more efficiently and win more business.
Read on to learn more about proposal tools and how to find the best solution for your team.
What are Proposal Tools or Proposal Software?
Before we talk about finding the right proposal tool, it’s important to understand what this software does for your business.
At a high level, proposal tools streamline the process of writing, managing, and sending business proposals. Some solutions help you build documents that can be shared with customers or prospects, while others primarily help with responding to requests for proposal (RFPs) – and some solutions do
both.
When evaluating proposal management software, it’s important to know which type(s) of solution meets your needs. If you’re primarily sending outbound proposals, you may only need a proposal builder to help you standardize your process. If you’re winning most of your business through RFP, a response management tool might be right for you. If you’re doing all of the above, an all-in-one solution is a great way to consolidate and streamline processes.
Why are Proposal Tools Important for your Business?
Whether you’re looking for a tool to help you build sales documents, respond to RFPs, or both the solution you choose should provide a few key benefits:
- Automate Repetitive Tasks: Many proposals contain the same information, formatting, etc. Proposal software should save your team time by automating the repetitive work required to assemble each individual proposal and RFP response.
- Maintain Accurate, Up-to-Date Content: Your proposal tool should double as your source of truth for content and language used to describe your company and product. Additionally, it should provide features to help you collaborate with team members and manage content.
- Produce Polished Documents: A proposal tool should help you maintain consistent formatting and branding for all of your documents.
Now, let’s take a look at the types of proposal tools that you can implement for your business.
Proposal Builders
Assembling a proposal can often be inefficient, with multiple content inputs, layers of approval, and discussions with various teams. Alternatively, the process can feel scattershot, leaving your proposals with inconsistent content and branding.
A proposal builder can help you streamline and standardize the proposal process in a few ways:
- Centralize Content: Rather than tracking down disparate pieces of content from multiple teams, a proposal tool should be your one-stop shop for accurate, updated content.
- Customize Proposals (or not): Sometimes you want the ability to customize proposals per prospect…and sometimes you’d like to limit your team members to canned language or standard pricing. A good proposal solution should give you the flexibility to do both.
- Implement Your Company’s Branding and Templates: Your proposals should include your branding. A proposal tool helps generate documents that automatically adhere to your brand standards. Standardizing and automating proposals can save sales teams hours. But for many companies, building and sending proposals is only half the battle.
Response Management Tools
Anyone who has answered an RFP knows that it is a lot of work. A response tool can help your RFP team manage this process by storing your content in one place and allowing you to easily deploy it in an RFP response.
Key features to look for in a response tool include:
- Content Management: When responding to an RFP, content is king. Your proposal tool should double as your repository for accurate, up-to-date content, allowing you to easily organize and search for responses.
- SME Experience: RFP responses usually require consulting with multiple teams and subject matter experts. Your proposal solution should help facilitate this collaboration.
- Integrations with Existing Tools: Your proposal tool should fit with your existing processes, not the other way around. Integrating with tools you already use – like your CRM or Microsoft Word – will help increase adoption of the tool and minimize disruptions. These features are vital aspects of a viable solution.
Implementing a response management tool not only helps with RFPs but can help build efficiencies across teams.
The Value of an Integrated Solution
For businesses that are responding to RFPs and building sales proposals, an all-in-one proposal solution is a great way to consolidate and streamline your processes. Using an integrated proposal tool allows you to leverage one content library across teams. Having one source of truth for all content means less upkeep and more consistency in all of your documents and responses.
Ready to look at a proposal tool for your company? RocketDocs allows you to respond to RFPs and build proposals from a once centralized content hub. Request a demo of RocketDocs today!
