Business Markets Group

Peak Systems’ Proposal Tool Delivers for the Business Markets Group 

Peak Systems provided the Business Markets Group of a Fortune 200 client with a Proposal Tool that completely automated their proposal process. The Business Markets Group is the portion of the client company tasked with selling to large businesses. As is the case with most sales departments, sales representatives in the Business Markets Group are frequently writing and sending proposals to potential clients. Creating proposals, even with word processor templates, is a time-consuming, labor-intensive process.

Services Provided

Application Development, Hosting

Solution

Peak developed a robust application that automates the proposal process from start to finish. To create a new proposal, a user first enters contact information about the recipient. Then, the user’s own contact information is automatically generated by the application. Optional fields allow a user to add the contact information of up to three teammates to the cover sheet of a proposal.

Next, the user selects the products that will appear in the proposal, pricing, the duration of service, savings compared to a competitor, etc. A text field allows sales representatives to add a personalized message to each proposal. Next, an automatically generated list of pre-approved sales collateral appears, based upon which services the user chose to include in the proposal. Some, all or none of these may be appended to a proposal with the click of a checkbox. Then, a preview of the proposal is generated featuring all of the user’s customizations. Users can create a PDF of the proposal with one click or continue editing. The final generated PDF has the appropriate logos, layout and fonts, and includes only legally approved language.

Once the proposal is completed, the user has numerous options. They can use the tool to e-mail the proposal directly to the client, mark each proposal as “won” or “lost,” clone proposals to create new ones, add milestones such as reminders to call or e-mail, add personal notes to a proposal diary or upload supporting documents to aid in sales tracking. The application keeps track of users’ stats, documenting how many of their proposals are incomplete, pending, won or lost. Sales managers have a Manager View to display the aggregated stats of their direct reports with the options to drill down to individual sales statistics.

Results

The Proposal Tool did more than just increase the productivity of the Business Markets Group. It provided BMG’s sales managers with pertinent information like the number of proposals their subordinates sent out and the percentage of them that resulted in sales. It also ensures that the format and content of the Business Markets Group’s proposals are consistent, accurate and contain current, pre-approved collateral. The result is a proposal process with a faster turnaround time, more transparency and more consistency than was possible before. Since it’s launch in October 2008, over 4,600 proposals totaling approximately $39 million have been created using the new tool.