The Need:
In the spring of 2017 Montreal-based event technology company, Showcare, was in a key moment of business growth. They needed to deploy several dozen service proposals to key prospects and current customers to solidify business for the upcoming fall event season. However, due to their sales processes, they faced several unique challenges. Many of their prospects were not familiar with their breadth of services, they had to build proposals that fit the exacting requirements of each client's RFP, and they needed to fine tune their message in the proposal content to appropriately address key client decision makers.
When I came on to the project each proposal was taking 100+ man hours across multiple departments and many were barely meeting their deadlines. I knew there had to be a more efficient way to leverage the great reputation of the company into new growth, so I got to work.
The Remedy:
The proposal cover page, ready for content.
First page of the template? This handy how-to.
Given their challenges I set out to create a PDF-based proposal template that would allow any member of the Showcare team to develop a customized proposal that would win business. When I began, Showcare had already developed reams of great, persuasive content for their proposals that covered a good portion of their services; however, much of it was scattered or simply inaccessible. First step, I took the best parts of all their developed content and created a central proposal design (with InDesign) then took inspiration from their best pieces and created new sections for all of their latest offerings. All in this template was a monster, hundreds of pages elucidated every feature, operating process, and customer testimonial they could possibly want to include in a proposal. All of it formatted and organized on the company server for easy access and customization.
The proposal was built to both digital and print formats flawlessly.
Once all the proposal materials were collected, laid-out and organized I then wanted to make sure that every member of the Showcare team could create a customized proposal that would help them win business on their own. So, I went through the template and inserted feature call out sections, testimonials from their most well-respected clients, and countless trust factor graphics that could be customized to have the most impact on their target audience. Finally, I created a clear and concise how-to guide that enabled Showcare sales staff to create their own proposals. The real trick here lay in making sure technology wouldn't get in the way. With that in mind, I developed the template to be editable for those with simple PDF editors as well as those with the latest InDesign.
The final piece of the proposal puzzle was undoubtedly the most critical. With such a wide breadth of services and multiple pricing schemes, each proposal had to contain detailed pricing tables that outlined services rendered and prices offered in a compelling manner. I worked hand in hand with the Showcare sales team, who had already developed a great Excel-based pricing tool, to create template tables that could easily be edited to each client's requirements and most importantly illustrated the value the client would get from each service.
Due to the sensitive nature of this project, I'm unable to share with you much of the proposal; however, you can check out these introductory pages to see how I set up the template for customization by any team member.
The Results:
“All told, the average proposal development time dropped by 80%.”
The changes felt with this new proposal strategy were immediate and acute. A 40 page proposal could go from start to finish in under 6 hours instead of costing multiple team members weeks of unproductive time sourcing, editing, and polishing proposals from scratch. All told, the average proposal development time dropped by 80%. Additionally, the exchange between the Showcare pricing tool, and my pricing table templates allowed us to eliminate pricing discrepancies that had plagued the company previously. This newfound efficiency allowed Showcare to bid new prospects and freed up sales staff to work hands-on with clients to ensure their satisfaction. At the end of the spring "proposal rush" Showcare had won six new, high-value clients and retained each of their existing clients for the forseeable future.
