Sales Proposal: What is it & How to Create a Perfect One?

Learn how to create a sales proposal that no prospect can turn down!

While creating a product, a lot of time and energy is spent. If summed in one line, an ideal product creation involves finding a pain point of your target audience and solving it through your product or service.

But, is that enough?

The answer is no! All this hard work of yours could go to the drain if the product is not marketed correctly. That’s where a sales proposal comes to play. It helps you explain to your prospects the value your product will bring.

Despite that, very few companies prioritize proposal development as a sales enablement strategy.

According to a study, sales proposals are not being used to their full potential. In fact, only 47% of sales proposals result in an actual sale!

People often make the mistake of making it too long, too vague, or too crowded.

But don’t worry, we have compiled everything you need to know about creating a sales proposal that will not only set the right tone but also convince your client to buy your product.

Let’s get right into it.

What is a Sales Proposal? (Definition)

A sales proposal is a document created by a sales representative to illustrate the value of a new product or service.

A sales proposal is used by sales representatives, sales teams, agencies, consultants, or an individual looking to present a product with efficiency.

The proposal shows how the product will benefit the customer by including three crucial elements:

• The ‘about’ of the product answers questions like what is it, how does it work, its USP, etc.
• A convincing argument to establish the customer’s need. It means making potential customers realize why they need your product.
• A ‘Return on Investment’ for the client. It shows what the customer will get in return if they choose to put their money in your product.

So, what makes a proposal stand out?

An ideal sales proposal recognizes the needs of the target audience and prioritizes solving a problem rather than selling a product. It makes them realize the challenges they face, thus establishing a need for your product.

A good sales proposal takes the reader on a visual journey wherein they can imagine the challenges and how your product will solve them.

Further, it inspires the prospect to take action after reading the proposal. This step is more than just asking them to make a purchase right away or shoving a huge SALE option.

An excellent sales proposal drives action by giving the client all the details they need to make a purchase. This includes budget clarity, different options the client can take to pay such as an EMI, what exactly will they get with the stated price, and the actual steps leading them from the proposal to a purchase!

But, why do I need a sales proposal?

Isn’t marketing, operations, and hundred other things in between that, not enough?

So read on as we unveil four compelling reasons why you absolutely need to create a sales proposal.

Read more: Marketing Proposal: What is it & How to Create an Effective One?

How Creating a Sales Proposal is Beneficial?

Apart from the obvious that sales proposals help drives more sales, here are some others why creating one benefits you:

1. Makes the Prospect Feel Valued

When you carefully draft a pitch detailing all the elements of the sale and provide value to the customer, they feel important.

For instance, a customer contacted four companies for the same job. The other three directly presented their deals and plans while you presented an excellent sales proposal.

This shows who really made an effort in bagging that client.

So guess who wins that deal? You, because of the amazing proposal you kept on the table!

2. Align All things in One Place

While pitching a product or service, there are a dozen things you need to include.

From the basic details of the product to payment options, after-sale services, and establishing a client-company relationship.

A sales proposal helps you align all of that in a single document so that your intentions are clear to the prospect and there are no hidden costs or details.

3. Drives Better Results

A sales proposal is a comprehensively drafted document aimed at getting action by the reader. It moves and proceeds in a way that a customer goes through the 5 stages of awareness namely

• The unaware state wherein you introduce the product from scratch.
• The problem awareness state in which you make the prospect aware of the existing problems or challenges.
• The solution aware phase in which you introduce your product or service as a solution for the existing problem.
• The product aware stage wherein the prospect now understands there is a problem and knows there are various solutions for it. The comparison with your competitor begins at this stage.
• And finally, the most aware stage comes in which the prospect not only becomes a customer but also shows loyalty to your company.

A single piece of content covering the entire process of the customer journey. Sounds exhausting, doesn’t it?

Well, it’s not as complicated as it sounds. This is why we have created the exact steps you need to take in order to prepare a sales proposal! Let’s go.

How to Create a Sales Proposal? Follow these Steps!

Take these 5 steps to create an excellent sales proposal:

Step #1: Understand Your Prospect

The first and more crucial step is to understand the needs of your prospect. What is he/she looking to achieve and how your product can help them?

There are three ways of understanding the needs and wants of your prospect:

• Through an RFP (Request for Proposal) wherein a client demands a sales proposal and clearly states their needs, expectations, budget, time, etc.
• Through a one-on-one conversation with the prospect
• Through target audience research. With a general target audience research, you can determine their needs and pain points.

Step #2: Delve Deeper

In the first stage, you acquired everything that a prospect told you. In the second step, you will find out everything they didn’t.

It includes a comprehensive research of the prospect’s company and getting insights such as what is their latest activity? What kind of marketing channels do they use? What kind of content do they put up? Who is the decision-maker, the social media groups they are a part of?

Knowing all this establishes a base to create an amazing sales proposal. It lets you create personalized sales proposals aimed directly at the prospect’s needs.

Step #3: Form the Building Blocks of your Sales Proposal

This is where all the work gets done. Here are all the important elements that should be present in your sales proposal:

• Title page
• About us (basic details of the company)
• Industry challenges that the target audience is facing
• Proposed solution i.e details about your product
• Pricing of your product/services
• Timeline of completing the task
• Case studies of your previous work in the same field
• Client testimonials
• Any other terms and conditions of your work and finally,
• Next steps

Pick the ones that suit your and your prospect’s needs and draft an amazing document!

Read more: 11 Proposal Software You Must Try Out!

Step #4: Draft your Proposal According to the Outline

Now that you have all the subheadings, the outline of your sales proposal is done. Start filling in the text in the headers by drawing material from your research.

Don’t make it too long. Stick to the important stuff.

A lengthy proposal has the risk of boring the reader out and we definitely do not want that!

So, don’t beat around the bush, frame short crips sentences, and cover all the subheads in the least possible words.

Step #5: Edit and Proofread

The final step is to look back at the document you created and start proofreading it.

However, don’t do this last step immediately after completing the previous four steps. It is best advised to leave your document for some hours or maybe a day, to freshen up your mind.

This way, while proofreading you will be able to point out faults in your previous work and strategize any new adding.

Here are some editing guidelines you can use:

• Set your pricing from low to high in the proposal.
• Eliminate any complex words and jargon.
• Edit out any long and difficult-to-read sentences.
• Look for suitable areas to add visuals.
• Make sure the tone of the entire pitch remains the same i.e it shouldn’t go from too formal to too casual or vice versa. It should be consistent.
• Assure that the entire content looks like a storyline i.e connecting to each other. All the sections should flow freely.

And finally, run it through grammar and spell-check tools to have a final view.

Your sales proposal is now ready to be pitched!

Now that we have walked through the entire process of creating a winning sales proposal, the question is where to start. For this, we have an amazing tool that will cater to all your needs and make your proposal writing faster and smarter.

Bit.ai: The Ultimate Tool for Creating a Sales Proposal

Sales proposal writing is a tricky business. From brainstorming about the prospect to forming the correct guidelines, there is a lot you need to take care of. Bit makes this process easier than ever!

Bit automates all your operations so that you can focus entirely on creating a pitch that sells. With bit, you create smart, interactive, and media-rich sales proposals that stand out in the room.

Usually, when you create a sales proposal or any other document for that matter, you juggle with a varied set of tools. From a document creator to team collaboration tools and finally mailing. Because of this, your time is wasted and distraction might occur.

Bit solves this problem by bringing all the features you need under one virtual roof.

Don’t believe us? Check out these awesome features of Bit:

1. Smart Workspaces: A sales proposal is custom-made for every company. You cant just use the same proposal on different companies.

Storing all these different documents may get confusing! With Bit, you can create unique documents for every client and store them in different workspaces and even give them attractive colors. Professionals use it to organize different teams of people as well.

2. Fully responsive templates: Bit offers its users a set of 70+ professionally designed templates for various purposes ranging from academic reports to sales pitches and brainstorming or goal setting. These templates are also fully responsive on any device you open them. thus you can access your proposal on the go!

3. Real-time Collaboration: The difference between average and excellent work is a good team. Creating a sales proposal is not a one-person job. Different professional opinions are taken into consideration before finalizing a proposal.

Bit facilitates seamless collaboration with your team. Different people can work on the same document together, comment to exchange ideas, and chat on the side.

4. Interactive documents: Bit differentiates itself from other document creators by offering media-rich interactive document creation. From photos to GIFs, videos to excel sheets, and math calculations, you can add almost every type of multimedia in a bit of document.

It is integrated with 100+ popular tools such as Ms-word, Google drive, Spotify, tableau, Airtable, and much more. With Bit, you can be sure that your document will engage the reader!

5. Sleek Editor: Your sales proposal is a crucial document for you and your company. Thus, it should be created with minimum distraction. For this purpose, Bit offers a sleek and minimalist document creator.

6. Content Management- While creating a sales proposal, a lot of digital media might come to use or for inspiration. Bit has a designated space for storing and organizing all that media. It is called the Content library. Here, you can store links, images, videos, and much more.

7. Sharing and Permissions: When you create your sales proposal on Bit, you get a unique link for it. You can send this link to the audience.

This is password-protected to make sure your proposal does not land in the wrong hands. You can also export your documents to .doc, PDF, markdown, and other rich text formats directly from Bit.

8. Real-time Insights- What if you could know how your proposal performed with the prospects, who read it, how often did they come back to it, and how far they scrolled? With bit, you can! Bit’s link tracking gives you very useful insights into your sales proposal.

Conclusion

The right sales proposal can get you to reach more clients, have more authority and generate increased revenue for your company.

Make sure you’re using this element at its best and leveraging your sales by creating amazing proposals that catch the eye of the reader.

Start creating one now by using Bit’s templates!

Let us know how you liked it by tagging @bit_docs on Twitter!

Further reads:

Sales Report: What is it and How to Create One?

Sponsorship Proposal: What is it & How to Create it?

Purchase Orders: What are they & How to Create them?

Social Media Proposal: What is it & How to Create it?

Social Proof: 8 Ways to Use it to Get More Sales!

Consulting Proposal: What is it & How to Create it? (Steps Included)

Proposal Letter: What is it & How to Write it?

How to Write a Business Proposal: Step by Step