Emil Dyrvig is the Chief Revenue Officer at Templafy, the leader in next gen document generation.
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One hallmark of any truly successful sales organization is its ability to scale. Every organization aims to grow its revenue, success and influence while ensuring compliance and quality, but the path to this isn’t always clear.
So, how can sales leaders begin to scale their teams? The first place to start is with documents. Documents are the lifeblood of business: They track the health and well-being of your organization and are ultimately a huge component in getting deals done. This is especially true for proposals, which are very high-stakes, high-value documents helping organizations secure new business agreements using the power of persuasion to sell their product or service. As a disclosure, my company Templafy is a provider of document generation solutions.
As we prepare for a potential recession, it’s more critical than ever that revenue teams are efficiently protecting existing client relationships and laying the foundation for new opportunities. Since this must start with documents, let’s take a look at the current state of the business proposal, flaws in the creation process and how your organization can optimize your processes at scale.
The State Of The Business Proposal
Given today’s ever-increasing regulatory standards, enterprises place a high value on compliance efforts; but they don’t always consider proposals, which are arguably the most valuable documents enterprises produce. Misguided content can cost businesses revenue, which you simply can’t afford while scaling your business. If mistakes happen often enough, they can cause irreparable harm in a down economy.
Sales and revenue teams work on hundreds of proposals every year, which on average take up to 24 hours to create—that’s about three business days per proposal. A good proposal includes the latest company branding, legal disclaimers and detailed information on your products or services—all addressed through the personalized lens of the customer in mind.
However, this vital information typically lives within disparate data sources across an organization. Recent U.S. data from a report by my company Templafy reveals that 51% of employees don’t have access to a common database of approved content, making the proposal creation process inefficient, inaccurate and potentially detrimental to business. The same study shows that 82% of employees said inaccurate or outdated information could harm sales, and 93% agreed that even small errors in final content could damage client trust. This echoes findings from IBM that 59% of businesses reported that that the effects of Covid-19 have accelerated their plans for such digital transformation.
As your business scales, creating as many proposals as possible without sacrificing quality or efficiency is crucial. But getting the fine details right currently includes a lot of manual steps, leaving the door open for human error. The Templafy study found that incorrect data or information about a prospect is regularly included: 70% of respondents in our study said their team often pulls out-of-date information in sales pitches and content.
You must meet your employees where they work instead of making them track down information themselves. You can streamline the creation process and eliminate quality loss by integrating brand-approved assets directly into your global systems, making them easily accessible within any creation platform. You need to be able to continuously deliver best practices without having to rely on IT or manually creating each document.
Flaws In The Proposal Pipeline
If proposals are so vital to success, why are they ending up in clients’ hands with errors 96% of the time? Because manual tasks that take serious time and effort to complete often leave employees looking for the easiest way to get them done—one that doesn’t involve searching in the right places for company-approved, up-to-date content. Without a solid content infrastructure in place, this leads to poor creation practices and, ultimately, mistakes.
When asked how their teams typically create sales materials like proposals, 36% of respondents in our study said they don’t start from company-approved templates. Some other shocking stats? Eighty-seven percent of respondents said they’d used Google to find a company image or logo to include in a piece of content, and 32% said they ask colleagues and/or search for information to add to content every day. Nineteen percent said they do this multiple times a day. These poor content habits result in inaccurate, off-brand documents that negatively impact revenue.
But mistakes aren’t just a threat to your brand. Inconsistencies in content can pose legal issues as well. Flaws in the proposal pipeline now come with legal concerns, with 88% of employees stating regulatory requirements are increasing and upholding them has never been more important. When employees are responsible for ensuring compliance with the latest guidelines on top of their everyday tasks, important details slip through the cracks and pose both financial and legal risks, which scaling businesses cannot afford.
Harvard Business Review estimates that such “bad data” created by human error costs businesses a staggering $3 trillion a year (subscription required).
The Case For Automation
Employees aren’t against being on brand and legally compliant, but they also don’t want to spend valuable time researching the latest standards and brand updates. To ensure fast, high-quality, error-free proposal generation, savvy companies are automating as much of the creation process as possible. And employees in our study agree: 52% said their company would prioritize document creation automation in the next year.
While fines are never in the budget for an enterprise, during an economic downturn, hefty non-compliance fees are even more critical to avoid. Automating content like proposals doesn’t just protect your brand—it can protect your budget from costly legal fees.
The most effective proposal is highly personalized, but when employees are constantly tracking down information, customized touches fall by the wayside. Automation guarantees your sales team imports data from the right sources and gives employees tools to finalize those custom touch areas.
Automation saves your team valuable billable hours, giving them more time to focus on individual customer needs and opportunities. Prioritizing content efficiency and productivity now is the best way to set your business up for success as you scale.
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