Business proposals have become one of the most important sales documents in recent years. A good business proposal can turn prospects into paying clients and convince them to trust you with their business. Writing great business proposals has become an essential skill for a good sales professional in 2020.
Our customers have sent hundreds of thousands of proposals through our system over the years. This gave us a lot of opportunities to find out what makes a proposal great and what you should do if you want it to convert properly.
Here are some of the lessons we learned.
Keep the format modern
You probably know that most internet visitors nowadays are increasingly switching away from desktop devices and that mobile is the way to go. It’s no different with business proposals because our research showed that 34% of proposals are opened on mobile devices first. Sure, 41.4% are still open on a PC, but there is a trend that we’re noticing. Even though business proposals are in the B2B world, the number of proposals read on mobile devices increases every year.
This means that your business proposals must be web-based if you want them to be opened and read. More specifically, your business proposals should look and feel like a web page. You could try out using a Word or a PDF document, but they don’t open properly on every device and you’ll have to do a lot of zooming in and out to view the document properly.
Your best bet is to use proposal software to ensure that your documents are ready to be viewed across different devices. Laptop, tablet, phone or something else, the proposal will look beautiful on every device because it will be optimized for this type of view.
On a related note, make sure to use the full benefits of the web-based format, including branding. Most of today’s proposal software allows you to use your own custom branding and domain for your proposals. For example, when you send out a proposal, the client will see it as www.yourwebsite.com/businessproposal instead of an address on someone else’s website. This feature will increase your conversion rates by 7.2% and every little bit adds up.
Keep the proposal just long enough
Asking about the ideal length of a proposal is like asking how long a piece of string is. It depends on your offer, your industry and the client reading it. However, there are some general guidelines that you can follow.
Think of business proposals in terms of sections instead of pages, because pages are for PDF and Word files – which you don’t want to use. You need 6 sections to keep your readers interested, which is the ideal length if you want to keep your readers interested long enough and motivated to sign after reading.
In general, these are the sections that we suggest for every business proposal:
- Introduction
- Detailed specification
- Timelines
- Proof
- Terms and conditions
- Guarantee
- Pricing
- The next steps
If you take a look at our proposal templates, you’ll see these 8 sections in every template on the website, for one simple reason – they just work. The sections that will get the most attention from your potential clients are the introduction and pricing, so make sure to spend more time on them.
Whatever you do, never encourage the client to print the proposal
The year is 2020 and if saving the environment is not a good enough reason to stop printing proposals, there is something even more important. According to our research, if a client prints your proposal, you’re 78% less likely to get it signed. We still don’t know the exact reason why this happens, but logic says that once a proposal gets printed, it’s shared in a group of people, which reduces the chances of getting a signature. We still have printed as an option, but we strongly recommend avoiding it at all costs.
Avoid upsells
Traditional marketing logic says that any chance you have for an upsell should be used. After all, if someone is buying a $50 product, why not convince them to buy an online course for an extra $200? This logic is sound and makes a lot of sense in traditional sales.
In business proposals, your main aim is to get the client to say yes and sign your proposal. Once you introduce choices to the equation, things get slightly more complex. Not only does the client have to say yes but they also have to choose the option that works best for them. While they may eventually choose the more expensive version, you will have to wait longer to get their decision, and that’s not the worst part.
According to our research, if you do not offer any upsells, you’ll be able to earn 20.6% more on individual sales and 33% more if you sell on a monthly retainer package. In short, don’t use upselling as a technique in your business proposals.
Send them out quickly
If you think of business proposals in terms of dating, you probably send yours out a few days after the call. After all, you don’t want to seem like you’re desperate to win their business. In reality, this is not such a smart move and as you might imagine, dating logic does not apply.
According to our own customers, you get the best results when you send out the proposal as soon as you’ve had a call with a potential client. In fact, sending out your proposal within 24 hours from the call increases your chance of winning the job by 14%.
This doesn’t just improve your conversion rate but also ensures that you get paid sooner. Our records show that most proposals sent through our platforms get paid as early as 12 hours from being received. If you’ve sent invoices before, you’ll know that it usually takes months for invoices to get paid, so this is a major improvement.
Use the benefits of live chat
As mentioned before, using proposal management software to create business proposals has a lot of benefits. One of the biggest ones is being able to use everything that is nowadays used on websites, including live chat.
In practical terms, live chat is one of the best things that you can use with your potential clients. As the client is reading the proposal, they can talk with you in real-time and you can guide them through the proposal, as well as answer any questions they may have.
In fact, this can have a tangible effect on your sales. Our customers report a 13.2% increase in conversion rates when they use live chat software, compared to using proposals without this addon.
Conclusion
Writing business proposals used to be a difficult task that many sales professionals feared. Nowadays, thanks to proposal software and a variety of sales and marketing tools, you can now write business proposals in a matter of minutes, rather than hours, and you can win new business deals easier than ever before.