How often do you send a proposal to a client? We want to think you always send one, but the bigger question is: how often do you get a positive response? 

Many factors can influence your client’s decision to accept your Proposal and work with you, and in this article, we’re going to share five ways to help you increase your conversion and book more happy clients. 

1. Asking all the Right Questions at the Beginning

What you say and ask during your initial meeting or call with your client will greatly impact the decision your client will make. Make sure you research beforehand, so you know exactly what to discuss, what questions to ask, and what information you need to collect to create a high-converting proposal.

Quick pro tip – listen more than you talk. Asking questions is good, but the really useful information will come when your client starts to talk about their project, their needs, and, most importantly, their goals. 

So don’t just have a checklist of questions that you’ll sprint through like an interrogation – use your pre-researched questions to guide the conversation and help your client open up and tell you exactly what they need. You can then use the exact terminology in your Proposal, making your client feel like you genuinely listened to them, understood their problems, and built a tailored solution. 

2. Follow up with the client immediately after your call

Once you’re done with your initial client consultation, take a couple of minutes to follow up and recap what you discussed. This doesn’t need to be a long email, just a couple of lines to thank your client for their time, to express how excited you are to be potentially working with them, reinstate the projects’ goals, and tell them when they can hear from you next. 

The sooner you send this email after the call, the better. This shows your professionalism and communication skills and helps to build trust with your client, so they know you value their time and can be trusted to deliver on your project. 

3. Deliver the Proposal within 12-24h after your call

Now that you collected all the required information from your client, it’s time to deliver. And the sooner you deliver, the better. The key is to strike while the iron is hot – sending the Proposal as soon as possible to ensure your clients aren’t too busy to look at it when you contact them back. You should also bear in mind that your client is probably “shopping around” and spoke to a couple of other experts requesting their quotes. You want to be amongst the first proposals to land in their inbox to make a good first impression. 

But remember – quick doesn’t mean poor quality. You want to ensure your Proposal covers all the information your client needs to make the right decision. More on that later! 

A quick tip: if you want to land extra points with your future client, deliver the Proposal sooner than they expect it to be! 

4. Use templates to create a professional Proposal

If you’re spending hours crafting the “perfect” Proposal for each project lead that comes your way, you’re wasting a lot of time! We highly recommend using templates to streamline the process and avoid repeating the same content each time you need to write a Proposal. Put together a “Master Template” that includes all the different sections you could potentially need for any type of project like: 

• An introduction
• Explanation of project goals
• Your process
• Timeline
• Deliverables/Packages
• Investment
• Payment Plan
• Add-ons
• Specific Terms
• Next Steps 

Once you have your Master Template, you can quickly select the pages/sections needed, edit it with your client’s personal information (don’t forget to include their name), and send it off. While you can do this by hand, using a template can save you a lot of time and ensure all your Proposal documents look consistent and professional. 

There are also many great tools available today – like Yocory – to help you create beautiful and professional on-brand proposals quickly and efficiently. In fact, we even have Proposal templates to help you get started. With just a few tweaks, you can save time and create professional-looking Proposals in just a few minutes! Head over to www.yocory.com for more information and start your free trial.

5. Use tools to improve your approval process

A pretty big and important part of the Proposal process is getting it approved (obviously!). Whatever your approval process, you want to make it as simple, quick, and straightforward as possible. A great way to do this is to use tools like Yocory to automate approvals and streamline the approval workflow. For example, you can create an approval workflow that allows your clients to log in to view a proposal and then approve it with just a click of a button. Once the Proposal is approved, you can continue your client onboarding by sending them a contract and setting up their invoice. 

Using a tool like Yocory will save time and headaches by reducing back-and-forth emails and multiple steps in the approval process. Plus, with our Project Workflow feature, you can track the status of each project in your pipeline from the moment you click “send” all the way to the final payment. Smooth as butter! 

Make the process simple and enjoyable – your pre-project flow is just as crucial as nitty-gritty details when it comes to nailing a client over the finish line. Happy clients = happy life!

In conclusion

Proposals don’t need to be scary. It’s an essential document in your process, of course, but once you clearly outline your client’s goals, what problems they’re experiencing, and how you could help them – it’s all in the process and presentation! 

That’s why templates can be so incredibly beneficial, so you don’t waste time on the Proposal creation and, instead, invest the extra time into improving and streamlining your client experience and communication. 

Sign up for our 30-day free trial and create a smooth project experience for your clients!