How to help your sales team produce their own proposals without a marketing nightmare

A good proposal is the backbone of a successful sale. A creative, concise and well-written document can convince prospects who need more 'proof' of your company's expertise and experience. It can engage those who may not have hit it off with your sales team, and it can be passed on to people who have not met your representatives but who could influence the decision-maker.

But sales and marketing teams are busy, and too often they don't work together the way they should. Add the fact that deadlines are often very tight and you can understand why really good proposals are a rare thing these days. We're drowning in a sea of 'vanilla' proposals.

How specialised software can bridge the gap

Proposal management software falls under the umbrella of business process automation (BPA). It uses technology to simplify and automate the vital yet non-strategic elements of creating a proposal - speeding up the process, freeing up the marketing team and empowering the sales team.

1. Speeding up the process of creating proposals

Proposal software usually has two elements: a content library and a process for merging stored content into a proposal template.

The first element (the content library) could be considered the marketing team's domain. It's where proposal sections like executive summaries, product overviews, company bios and pricing tables are stored.

The second element - automatically pulling this content into a proposal - is the sales team's domain (more on this in point 3 below).

2. Freeing up the marketing team

There are a few ways in which proposal software can free up the marketing team. The first way is that it saves them time. Rather than having to create a new proposal every week, search for content, or re-write content because they can't find it, the team can focus on creating really robust content for each section of a proposal - once.

Storing the content in a dedicated library that's easy to search and has workflows that remind you when content needs to be reviewed or updated, makes managing your content easy. It becomes easier to see which sections you have and which still need to be developed. It also ensures that useful content creating in one case is available to everyone. For example, a sales person might create an executive summary that's specific to the motor industry. Saving it for re-use by others saves time and money.

The second way that proposal software can free up the marketing team is by giving them some peace of mind. If they have control over the content stored in the content library, have designed the proposal template, and can ensure that all the necessary sections of a proposal are included, there's no reason they can't trust the sales team to generate the documents themselves.

3. Empowering the sales team

Proposal automation enables the sales team to create an accurate proposal in minutes, and spend more time tailoring it.

My business (Qorus Software) uses proposal management software. My sales team is able to create a standard proposal (with pricing details pulled directly from CRM) in about ten minutes. They usually spend a bit of time tailoring the document and selecting relevant supporting materials, before sending the proposal to the client - almost always on the same day.

We've saved a substantial amount of time, which means that we can send out more proposals in a shorter space of time and spend more time building relationships with warm leads.

Embracing new sales and marketing automation tools

Marketing automation technology presents a huge opportunity for marketing and sales teams to differentiate themselves by becoming more efficient without compromising on quality. Proposal management software is simply the next era of marketing automation - another string to the bow of successful business development teams.

For more information about the APMP conference, visit www.apmp.org.za

Qorus Software is a Silver Sponsor of the conference.