Back when I was the director of sales force automation at WorldCom, we polled the sales force to determine which administrative tasks were
the biggest wastes of their time, and chief among them was proposal writing. Proposals need to be written clearly, in a clean, professional format, and
they must have a consistent sales message. Poorly written proposals do more
harm than good.
Today, the Sant Corporation has re-invented proposal writing and automated
it to a new a level through ProposalMaster.
By making it into a web-based solution, a busy rep can generate a proposal
while on the road and email it to his prospect even before he returns to his
office.
ProposalMaster's wizard-like
interface guides you through a series of screens to select content in order
to create an accurate, consistent and complete document. All draft proposals
are then generated in Microsoft Word where they can be further edited by the
user. Sounds like a time-saver, right? Right. Let me tell you a little more.
Remember, with ProposalMaster
there is no software to download or install. You login to the web-based
application and begin using the wizard and menus to navigate and build your
proposal.
You enter your contact information, and the contact
information for the prospect who will receive your final proposal. After that
you begin to pick and choose content to be included in the proposal using a
familiar library interface. You highlight what content you want in the left
column and then click the arrow to include it in your proposal. You can change
the order of the content at this point to accent certain aspects of the
proposal that may be more important to this particular prospect.
When you are done, you can also add additional graphics or
client logos to help give the finished proposal some added splash and
customization.
Once you click "Build" your proposal package begins
to generate. You have the option of hiding Microsoft Word while this process
is active, or you can sit back and watch it all happen. If you choose to
watch, then you will see Microsoft Word launch and begin rapidly opening
and closing several temporary documents. Then these all get compiled into a
single file, and using the contact information you previously entered, the
document gets customized with names, etc.
The first document to appear in your file will most likely be
a business letter as pictured above with all the customization done for you.
The resulting proposal will be laid out ready for review and
printing. As you can see, the end result is quite attractive. You can
select the layout from several templates or create your own using Microsoft
Word. These custom templates can be uploaded to the web-based library along
with your custom text, section headings, and graphics.
ProposalMaster
also enables you to leverage your existing technology investments. If you use
any of the popular sales tools out there such as Goldmine, ACT!,
SalesForce.com or others, you can take advantage of ProposalMaster's
built-in integration.
As with any proposal generation tool, the caliber of the proposal has as
much to do with the final layout and design as it does with the content. Just
as you invest in technology such as ProposalMaster
to build your proposals, it is also recommended that you pay a
professional copywriter to write your basic proposal boilerplates. Remember,
sales people need all the help they can get!
So what does this mean to you at the end of the day? Plenty. First, your
proposals will be more client-focused. That's important because your clients
want to feel like their needs are being treated with a custom solution -- not
a cookie-cutter solution. Second, by automating the majority of the proposal
writing task, your salespeople get the job done faster, leaving them more time
to sell, sell, sell. Third, more responsive proposals result in higher sales
closure. Fourth, your marketing message is treated in a consistent fashion
from one proposal to another. Lastly, with a web-based solution such as Sant
Corporation's, there's no software to install on your laptops or desktops --
less to go wrong, less to manage. Everything can be accessed and administered
from a central location, making this an easy to use tool for your sales people
and your sales automation support team.
To see a demo and learn more about ProposalMaster
and the entire suite of tools from Sant Corporation, please click here.
ProposalMaster
