The Difference Between Winning and Losing New Business

You may think you've optimized your business to be most effective, but have you evaluated how your SugarCRM document processes affect productivity? If not, you may want to. IDC estimates that employees spend almost half their workweek dealing with document challenges and issues. (1) That translates into a lot of lost time and the potential to lag behind competitors or lose business.

Here we will look at the typical steps you would take when working with a proposal. You may not realize it, but how long it takes you to get a proposal to a client can have a direct impact on success. In fact, Bidsketch research found that winning proposals took an average of 2.7 days to get out to a client versus 3.4 days for losing proposals. (2) Adding PrizmDoc to Sugar could be the difference between winning and losing.

That is not a lot of wiggle room. Take a look at how integrating electronic document management into SugarCRM can be the difference between winning and losing clients.

Documenting Initial Client Contact

Client calls and meetings can involve participants from various departments, such as sales, business development, technology, and executive leadership. Because attendees are focused on the discussion, they often fail to capture meeting notes and follow-up items. This results in different accounts of what occurred at the meeting or was said based on individual perception.

Instead, structure your client meetings so they seamlessly drive the client relationship to the next stage. Designate one person to take notes and immediately attach them to the client record in SugarCRM. Once attached, have all attendees review and comment on the notes while the information is still fresh. This will create consensus, avoid misunderstandings, and ensure next steps are completed in a timely manner by the right people.

Creating a Draft Proposal

Creating a proposal requires documentation and input from a number of sources who may provide files in a variety of formats. Each proposal could contain any combination of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF, OpenOffice, AutoCAD, JPG, PNG, TIFF, and GIF images and documents.

Having the team members upload their parts of the proposal to the client's record provides at-a-glance confirmation whether all of the required documentation has been provided or which pieces are still needed. Anyone can also quickly view each piece within Sugar, regardless of file type, without having to open additional programs or download the file to their computer. No extra licenses are required to view those documents.

Reviewing and Approving the Proposal Internally

After the proposal package is created, it is generally reviewed internally by stakeholders prior to being sent out to the client. If you have ever routed a hard copy of anything for approval, you know how many ways it can go wrong. Once it leaves your hands, you completely lose visibility to it. Often, files sit on people's desks or can get lost in the process. As mentioned above, a faster proposal has a greater chance of being accepted. So any time spent trafficking or sitting on a proposal has a cost.

Reviewing and providing feedback on proposal drafts within Sugar allows everyone along the approval process to view the same version and allows others to monitor progress. Signature options provide immediate confirmation whether a reviewer has approved the proposal or not.

Once approved internally, you are now ready to send the proposal to the client. As you can see, integrating a document workflow module such as PrizmDoc into your SugarCRM installation can streamline many of the document challenges that bog down businesses today. It can even mean the difference between winning and losing new business.

(1) Bridging the Information Worker Productivity Gap, IDC. (2) Land More Clients With Your Proposals, Bidsketch.