3 Effective Document Templates To Scale Sales

Partners 05 Dec 2019

No matter what you’re selling, you’re guaranteed to encounter these three stages of the sales process. You’ll need your proposals, quotes, and contracts to work just as hard as you do.

Propose a deal
Agree on a price
Send a contract to be signed

Using templates to create your sales collateral can slash your creation time, but it’s what happens after you send it to potential customers that matters. You can crank out a zillion docs per day, but if they aren’t closing deals, what’s the point?

To ensure that the document template you’re using is effective, ask yourself:

Does it look professional?
Does it accelerate your sales cycle?
Does it yield a higher close rate?

If you’re looking at your current templates, struggling to answer “yes” to even one of the questions above, don’t worry. We’re here to help you hack your sales pipeline with three effective document templates that tick all the boxes and will accelerate every stage of your sales cycle.

Stage 1: The Proposal

While prospecting is technically your initial contact with potential clients, sending a proposal is your chance to make a lasting impression. Look your best with a new customer by using a template that employs the essential elements of design like style, theme, and custom CSS. Give your sales team the tools to build aesthetically pleasing, on-brand proposals that your marketing team will approve of and will shorten the length of your sales cycle. Take your proposals a step further by embedding videos and images that speak directly to your qualified leads.

Check out the examples of proposals like these below, do they look professional to you?

All of them have a clear message and employ the design elements of emphasis, balance, and scale.

Box = checked.

Take advantage of the in-document redlining and commenting features of your effective proposal template. You’ll cut down on the back-and-forth negotiations with clients, and reply to any comments or questions immediately when you receive real-time email notifications.

Sales cycle = accelerated.

The final test of document template effectiveness is to tackle that close rate. While you can’t control whether your client will sign on the dotted line, you can control the dotted line. Make it easier than ever for your clients to seal the deal (and increase your close rate) when your proposal template includes eSignatures. Most document template software should provide the option to include legally binding, UETA and ESIGN compliant eSignatures within your docs. Your clients will increase your close rate for you once you’ve enabled them to sign your proposal from their desk, mobile device, or even in-person.

Stage 2: The Quote

Once you’ve moved past the proposal stage of the sales cycle, it’s time to start talking in dollars and cents. That’s right, you can even quote us on that.

Any sales rep worth their salt knows that the way you introduce the subject of price can make or break a deal. But when you use an effective document template to send your quotes, you’ll present accurate pricing information in such a way that it practically does the selling for you. Be completely transparent with your clients by including pricing tables with optional items, line item discounts, editable quantities, and multiple-choice options that trigger error-free totals (including taxes).

Flawless calculations and intuitive pricing table? Talk about professional. Go ahead and check off that first box.

Time is money, and this cliche rings more true than ever when it comes to accelerating deals with an effective quote template. The most effective document template will include real-time analytics on client activity within your quote. Gain insight into opens, views, and time spent analyzing certain pages of your quote by clients, so you’re prepared to accelerate your sales cycle with a well-informed nudge if need be.

Strike while the iron’s hot!

Once your client chooses the right price for their budget, it’s essential that your quote template includes not only pricing options for your clients but a place for them to pay! The most effective document templates offer the option for clients to pay via their preferred payment gateway as soon as they sign.

Close rate = increased.

Stage 3: The Contract

Similar to proposal and quote templates, the most effective contract templates offer total customization, leave little room for error, and keep you looking professional. Pricing mistakes or insufficient legal clauses in your contracts can tank a sale, and potentially your reputation. Fortunately for sales reps, effective contract templates offer content libraries filled with pre-approved legal information for you to pull into your contracts, prevent inaccuracies, and legally cover all of your bases.

The contract lifecycle can be time-consuming, not to mention a major pain. Accelerate your sales cycle by combining contract creation, negotiation, and management into one workflow within your document template. The most effective contract templates include automated approval workflows and integrations with your CRM software and storage apps to shorten your sales cycle length.

Once your close rate has increased, you’ll need a place to neatly store your signed contracts. Say goodbye to printing dozens of pages and hand filing documents. Since your contract creation has gone paperless, the way you store them needs to be, too. On the same platforms where you download your document templates, easily store and access them using our robust document search functions and organizational features.

Ready to start looking more professional, shortening your sales cycle, and increasing your close rate?

Start the First Stage of Your Cycle for Free: PandaDoc Proposal Template

Emily Roberts
Emily Roberts is a Content Associate at PandaDoc. If she’s not busy creating content in the office, she’s getting creative in the kitchen to the sound of her favorite a true crime podcast.