May 25, 2022
Are you a sales executive working in meetings and events and still delivering offline proposals to your customers created in Word or PowerPoint? Is manually drawing up a separate contract losing you time, and creating time for the customer to reconsider? Is a slow buyer experience losing you sales? Even if you have a killer product or service, if you can’t get this in front of the customer’s eyes quick enough, and it’s not an easy buying process, you could be missing out on sales. Using these traditional methods might be sending your potential customers in the opposite direction. A digital proposal tool not only helps to curb this but is essential to provide buyers with an experience they desire. Below, we cover the reasons why.
Buyers advance through a purchase process known as ‘the buyer’s journey’. The buyer goes through this process before making a purchase for a product or service. At the time of sending a sales proposal, the buyer is most likely at the final stage — decision. Therefore, it is crucial to present your product or service in the best light and make it simple to purchase. A seamless, hassle-free buyer journey makes for a great buying experience and that alone can lock in the buyer. What many sales teams don’t realise is that using traditional offline content is not just slowing teams’ sales activities down, but also pushing prospects away. For instance, sending proposals as PDF attachments via email can appear outdated and less professional in comparison to digital proposals. PDFs are also a static document, which means the sent document cannot be updated, and can result in a longer waiting time for the potential customer to receive these updates.
A digital proposal solution, however, essentially provides the buyer with a website — a dynamic proposal which buyers can access simply via a URL. This URL is lightweight and so can be shared via any channel — email, instant messenger, or whichever the preferred channel is for the buyer. If there are any updates the buyer can simply use the same URL to access the same proposal.
Even printing off documents to sign and send back can 1) Be a hassle 2) is not helpful for the environment, whereas digital proposals can be accessed and viewed online.
Qondor has its own built in functionality for electronic signing which makes an agreement legally binding. This makes it so much easier for the buyer to accept and sign immediately and is great for closing your sales faster too!
Once upon a time, we all needed a computer and a desk to do business. Fast forward to today, a small laptop on the go, and even a smartphone can be enough to access emails, spreadsheets, contracts, conduct video meetings — you name it. Buyers are therefore becoming more and more savvier with technology and likely own multiple devices that allow them to work on the go as well, so it’s no surprise that your proposal should be optimised for multiple devices. This way, the buyer can access proposals from wherever they are and on the device that they prefer. Whether your proposal is being viewed on desktop, tablet or mobile, it is still important to ensure that it is optimised for all of these devices. An offline document such as a PDF cannot be made adaptable for several devices, whereas a good digital proposal solution will have factored this in. This will ensure any sales proposals you make are instantly optimized for more than one device. This means your proposal will always look good and buyers will be able to view proposals comfortably, conveniently and as you intended.
The majority of digital proposal tools out there should offer this, but if the one you’re using doesn’t, you might want to reconsider. We’ve recently completed a huge update to Qondor’s digital proposals platform, making proposals responsive and modern, so proposals stand out and deliver the best buying experience for the end customer.
Buyers want to be wooed, so using a platform that makes your proposal look attractive and professional shows effort and is a direct reflection of your customer service. If you are using modern, up to date solutions to make the experience better for the buyer, they will favour your service over another. Using a digital proposal tool that allows you to easily tailor your proposals for more personalisation will also go a long way. Qondor’s digital proposal solution offers the ability to include Customer web home pages, where you can create a personal message for customers, and they have easy access to view all other proposals they have received from you.
Navigation is a big difference between digital proposals and offline proposals, providing buyers with an interactive experience, so that they can easily navigate your proposal and pick the products that are relevant for them. Without this, they may have to scroll and squint through a long pdf. Again, as it works like a website, the buyer is guaranteed for a more intuitive experience compared to an offline proposal.
Digital proposal tools may also offer instant feedback functions. This keeps the prospect engaged throughout the buying experience, allowing them to ask questions and provide feedback conveniently in the same place. This is vital for a B2B prospect, which often involves a longer purchasing period and the customer may be presented with several options or may need to request updates throughout the sales process. A feedback function also provides a history of conversation, so whatever has been discussed is always logged preventing any misunderstandings along the way.
If you are using Word for your proposals, you will likely have to create separate documents for the proposal, terms and conditions and the contract. Once the proposal is accepted, you then have the task of drawing up the contract, and spending more time getting this across to the buyer. I have previously worked in this environment, in a hotel’s meeting and events department, and have witnessed firsthand the amount of admin required. It can be really time consuming, slowing the whole sales process down. With a digital proposal tool, this is much faster, especially if you a choose a tool where you can tailor your own templates. These will then be readily available so you can get these to your customer quicker. Dates, numbers, and other requirements can change several times over the course of a negotiation, and therefore it is beneficial to be able to update terms quickly as and when required. It is also important for buyers to be able to view their proposal and conditions clearly, along with any updates and allowing them to be kept in the loop.
A bonus in Qondor is that a contract is automatically generated once the proposal and its conditions are accepted and the customer receives a copy instantly. This saves time for both you and your customer as there is no need to manually prepare and send across a separate contract, neither does the customer have to print and sign a separate document.
The digital shift has been on the horizon for several years, and buyers no longer expect, but demand online solutions which are convenient and easy to use. Having the means to digitalise the buyer’s journey is no longer an option, but now a necessity if your product or service is to stand out and sell in a competitive market.
Buyers care about the journey and experience whilst purchasing a product or service as much as they do the product or service itself. As we’ve witnessed, the COVID-19 pandemic has reinforced the importance of this. The use of interactive digital content to portray products and services has become increasingly popular, and customers expect to even be able to see a video of the service or product they are buying. In Qondor, you can simply paste a video link and it will be nicely formatted to display within your digital proposal.
Investing in a digital proposal solution will put you ahead, and transform your buyer’s experience, encouraging them to buy from you and no one else.