In any line of business, the ability to win new clients is crucial to success. There are many different skills involved, starting with a flair for marketing what you do and a nose for identifying the right opportunities.
But arguably the most essential of all those skills is the ability to convert leads into signed contracts. And much of that rests on presentation - on how well you know the product or service you are offering, and how well you can frame its strengths and benefits to suit the needs of each prospective clients, particularly in terms of the quality and value it offers.
As anyone who has ever written a business pitch knows only too well, to do it right requires a lot of research, a watertight grasp of the figures, and a little creative inspiration to grab attention.
Wouldn’t it be great if there was some kind of software tool which could do all that hard work for you?
Well, for telecoms resellers, there is. Porrima’s Proposal Manager does just what the name suggests - it generates high quality pitches from scratch, tracks the deals through the funnel, calculates sales performance and even prioritises new business activity based on the most profitable leads. And all from simply inputting your prospect’s core business details.
In the following review, we will unpick how the Porrima Proposal Manager combines powerful financial calculation tools and automated updates of products and services from the leading industry vendors with fully customisable reporting templates to create professional quality proposals, contracts and purchase orders in minutes.
Please remember, the views in this report are those of the author only. UC Today is an independent news and opinions resource for the UC industry and does not play any role in promoting or marketing any particular products.
What Can It Do?
Proposal Manager is a licensed software service designed to reduce the admin burden for sales teams at telecoms resellers and service providers. It operates on a subscription basis, with monthly license fees per user providing 24 hour access to the platform, plus support, automatic updates and training.
To get started, all clients need to do is to provide their latest up-to-date price list, whether that be hardware they sell or tariffs and commercial details from distributors. Proposal Manager is set up to work for mobile and fixed line telephone service providers, hosted comms services, IT solutions and more.
Clients can provide a template of their choosing for all proposals, POs and contracts generated, including any company branding and images. There are no limits on this, the client retains complete control over how the final product looks.
Aside from that, the only other details required initially are those of someone to act as an administrator for the account.
To compile a proposal, the user selects the plans and bolt-ons available from the list of stored tariffs/bolt-ons provided by the administrator. The process is very quick as by selecting the tariffs and adding them to the basket, a comprehensive package can be put together to suit the prospect’s needs. As products are added to the basket, the line rental charge for the customer and revenue total for the dealer is updated.
A key function the application performs is automatically calculating profit and gross profit from any proposed deal. This gives clients immediate feedback about whether a prospect is worth pursuing or not, and which leads to prioritise, without having to spend hours on research before realising that it’s a dead end.
Once a client provides information about their distributors, they don’t have to worry about keeping product and tariff information up to date. Porrima takes care of that as part of the service, updating the Proposal Manager account automatically with any price and information changes, be it to the main service plan or any additional bolt-ons. This ensures that any pitches or purchase orders are always accurate according to the latest information, and there is no having to back-track or make corrections at a later date.
