What makes an exceptional proposal? One that closes deals faster or the one which looks the best?

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For businesses including MSPs, creating proposals that increase the deal closure rate can be a daunting task. No matter if you’ve created dozens of proposals in your career, but could you really answer the question with utmost confidence: what belongs in a killer proposal? 

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Some larger businesses spent years in figuring out an answer to this question, leading to an array of templates that their teams use. As experts in business proposals (we built an entire software for it, called Zomentum!), we get such questions almost every day.

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To answer these questions and to help customers like you, we thought it made sense to package our research (proprietary information that you won’t get elsewhere) into a blog and free downloadable report. 

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So, let’s dive in!

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What day of the week is your proposal likely to close?

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Nobody is asking you to stop sending proposals every day! In fact, the best practice is to send proposals as and when you have a confirmation to send the documents over. It’s only as per our research that most of the proposals close either on Fridays or over the weekend, more than any other days of the week. 

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Lucky Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays for MSPs!

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Should you include images or videos?

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While the choice of the images or videos in your proposals depends on your industries, data shows that sales proposals with interactive content are 32 percent more likely to close. 

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MSPs, it’s time that you don’t hold back and try something different with your sales proposals. Just make sure that your winning proposal is well-structured and looks neat with clear headers. 

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Should you create proposals from templates? 

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If you are a salesperson who struggles with creating sales proposals almost every day, you understand how easy it is to create proposals using templates. Because it is timesaving! You’d be shocked to know that roughly 20 documents can be created from just 1 template. Calculate the time you can save on creating proposals, quotes, and contracts for various clients! 

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What is the average time to close?

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For proposals that have  an e-signature block, we analyzed that nearly 21 percent of these proposals closed in the first 5 minutes. However, it is not the same for all the proposals with signature blocks. You can see the detailed statistics below,

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What is the ideal length of an MSP sales proposal?

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The ideal length of a sales proposal depends on the industries, however, as per the detailed study, we found that most of the closing proposals are 6 to 8 pages. Try not to exceed the number and if you see your proposals filling your accounts soon, then you know that we are right! 

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How often should you send follow-up reminders?

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Follow-ups are to remind your prospects to look at your sales proposals and acknowledge the terms and conditions. That doesn’t mean you would annoy your prospects! Also, it shouldn’t be the case that you have never followed up with your prospects just to be sober. 

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You are 30 percent more likely to close a deal if you implement a follow-up strategy and stick to it. Don’t get excited about the deal, unless you have it signed!

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Takeaways

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The #1 takeaway is that your sales proposals must be attractive and be able to talk to the prospects. It doesn’t matter even if you follow the above steps and not have content as per the standard. Depict through your content that you will address the pain points of the prospects and provide a solution that fits better. 

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Create highly customized proposals for your prospects that explain the customer’s problems and your willingness to serve the community. Hopefully, with the data points, you’ll be on your way to closing more deals faster and in record time. 

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