Creating Better Proposals Is A Key Marketing Strategy

If you’re a small business owner, we’ve got a newsflash for you: Your sales process is a marketing opportunity. 

Whether you’re an eCommerce or online business (in which case, by the sales process, we mean product page, FAQs, live, checkout funnel) or a service business (in which case we mean your conversations with prospects and proposals), the same truth holds true: thinking of sales as a marketing opportunity will help your conversion and ultimately your growth. 

As a CRM-driven marketing agency that has served over 100 small businesses over the years, this conversation comes up a lot with our clients. And the truth is that most people consider marketing to be in a silo of its own, generating traffic, leads, and discovery calls. What happens after is seen as sales: we answer objections, give quotes and pricing, and elaborate on operational details like how onboarding will work or shipping times.  

But the truth is, magic happens when you think of sales as an extension of your marketing. From a customer experience perspective – they’re one and the same. It’s a journey. Customers continue to transfer departments as they transition from marketing to sales. So why do we abruptly change the tune?   

To illustrate this point, we’re going to share our experience using Better Proposals, our agency’s proposal software. We began using this tool a few years ago and have not looked back. It’s supported our growth, and we often recommend it to our service-based clients because it can solve the problem of disjointed customer experiences and reduced conversion. 

In our experience, Better Proposals is a stand out sales (and marketing) tool and can improve your customer experience and business operations (it’s a total win-win!).

#1: When you have a more robust sales proposal, your marketing becomes more straightforward and effective

Five years ago, we were trapped in the trap that every single expertise-based business is in. We want to explain everything you can do to anyone who visits your website. 

I’ve done it; clients have done it, and everyone makes this mistake. 

We’re so excited to tell you everything we know. Still, we need to remember how overwhelming it can be for potential customers to just browse. 

What we learned was that by developing a better sales proposal process, we mean something more than a price sheet shared via email. Something that can explain the services, the problems we’re solving for clients, the pricing, the team, the onboarding process, and any specific questions a client might have about working with us on their particular project. By creating that, we realized that our website could be more straightforward. And simpler is more effective. 

Suddenly, we don’t need to explain everything we can do and every scenario we can support; we just need to explain the results we can achieve and for whom so potential customers can contact us to learn more. 

I wish I had a screengrab of our previous websites, but I don’t. But it had many more technical details and explanations than our current one. 

Now, don’t get me wrong. That’s not to say there’s no place for a robust FAQ page, testimonials, or solutions in marketing materials and content. But when you try to answer every question, you polarize visitors. Every time you say, “Look how we can migrate you from Mailchimp,” you’re saying, “We work with MailChimp clients. Are you not on Mailchimp? Then maybe we’re not for you.” 

#2: Templating Our Proposals Makes It Easy as 1-2-3.

The way we’ve set up our Better Proposals is to have a few pages, which include an introduction, about our team, about our services, case studies, pricing, testimonials, a statement of work, and finally, next steps. 

Using this templated approach, we can have a discovery call with a client and work on adapting a sales proposal specifically for them. We can make sure we are plugging in content that applies to them, speaks to their pain points, speaks to the services we are recommending, and overall speaks to them personally. 

We have a 75% conversion rate after discovery calls (based on 2022-2023 data when we recorded this systematically). Why? We believe the tailored and professional nature of our proposals (as well as the strength of our results) plays a role. To be fair, we also don’t always send proposals after discovery calls—sometimes, the client doesn’t really need our services, and we point them in the right direction. 

#3: Transparent Pricing Builds Trust

From the beginning of starting our agency, I wanted to always be transparent with our clients about pricing. However, it’s not always easy to do that. With any service-based business, there are variables and options, and not every project is scoped the same way. 

With Better Proposals, we can create advanced pricing tables and specify what a one-time fee, a recurring monthly fee, and an option are for each part of the proposal. The ability to add options means a client can read the proposal, choose Option A or Option B, see the differences in totals live, and sign for that specific level of service. That immediately gives our clients flexibility and, as a bonus, avoids some extra time modifying and fine-tuning proposals before signing.  

Bonus: Using Better Proposals also means we can set expiry dates for proposals. For example, sharing the prices we’ll honor for the next two months isn’t possible with an Excel spreadsheet. 

#4: Integrates with your CRM

A bonus for us with Better Proposals is that it integrates seamlessly with our CRM. Once we’ve sent a proposal, it can sync with our open deals in our CRM, send a little message to Slack to inform us that the proposal has been sent (further to which the team can start dropping supportive emojis), and even automate a little bit of our initial client onboarding.

In our experience, anything that helps with visibility and communication in a team setting is a win. 

With Hubspot’s chat widget, we can even integrate livechat in our proposals, which I think is pretty cool. What’s better than being available for quick clarification on details as a client walks through your proposal? Having clients understand proposals is vital to expectations and successful long-term relationships, and Better Proposals has a number of smart features to enable just that. 

Bonus: Because Better Proposals has an integrated signing tool, we were also able to eliminate and simplify some other tools in our business. For this reason, we also started using it for team contracts. 

Could Better Proposals Increase Your Conversion Rate?

If you need help with conversion in your business and are still creating proposals in Word, PowerPoint, Google Docs, or Google Sheets, it’s time to consider stepping up your game! 

Better Proposals allows you to create professional-looking proposals that convert. The biggest takeaway is that developing a strong sales closing tool will simplify and enhance your marketing, too. 

Saving time and having operational efficiency is cool. But closing more sales is cooler. 

Want to try Better Proposals in your business? Here’s a link to give you your first free month.

About Centric Squared

At Centric Squared, we redefine marketing with a CRM-driven approach. We believe that growth stems from attentively listening to and learning from your customers. Our customized marketing campaigns are designed to drive real, bottom line results. 

We are more than just another agency. We are your dedicated growth partner. Ready to level up your proposal game and close more sales with Better Proposals? Try out with your first month on us.

If you’re interested in getting support developing your proposals, let us know. Our experienced team of marketing professionals can help you make the most of it. Let’s talk. 

Disclosure:  This blog post includes an affiliate link, meaning at no additional cost to you we may earn a commission if you become a long term Better Proposals customer. If you choose to sign up using our link, we thank you!