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.
There is a clever quality control element built into Proposal Manager; for example, if a user puts together a deal that does not meet the dealer’s specific criteria, e.g. a minimum GP target, then the user will not be able to proceed and produce a proposal for this customer. Instead a manager is emailed asking whether they want to authorise the deal as it currently stands. This provides feedback to the salesperson who can then proceed if authorised, or can amend the deal to satisfy the criteria, e.g. by increasing the GP before proceeding.
What do we like?
The big attraction to what Proposal Manager offers is sheer reduction in administration time. As important as getting proposals right is, they are just a means to an end, and anything which can be done to reduce the time and effort required to actually create the paperwork while achieving the same outcome is a big bonus. Proposal Manager can generate documents in minutes, so it certainly ticks that box.
The fact that the platform updates product information from vendors automatically, and calculates profit and GP for each proposal, are also key USPs. The former again helps to reduce workload while maintaining high standards of accuracy, while the latter is a very useful intelligence tool helping businesses to make decisions on who to target.
From an oversight point of view, managers & directors can monitor the sales activity of their sales teams by checking how many proposals are being put together by users on an individual and team basis. They can also check the value of these proposals and monitor how many are being converted into sales. Very useful.
Who is it for?
Proposal Manager is for any telecoms and/or IT service provider looking to save time and money on client proposals, purchase orders and internal contracts.
What is it compatible with?
Proposal Manager is fully compatible with Adobe Sign, allowing it to be used to generate documents which require authentication such as purchase orders. It is also compatible with its stablemate, Porrima Tariff Analyser – the output from analysed tariffs can be imported into the Proposal and provide more info/justification in the final proposal.
Where to buy and for how much?
Proposal Manager licenses are purchased direct from Porrima. There is an initial sign-up fee for each account, but after that prices vary according to the number of users, length of the agreement and number of network modules. Contact Porrima directly for a quote.
Visit the Porrima Proposal Manager product page to find the answers to some commonly asked questions, arrange a demo and for contact details.
UC Today Opinion
There are all sorts of reasons why reducing the amount of time spent putting together proposals and other kinds of paperwork make great business sense. For one, it’s hard to imagine any company not wanting to free its sales people up so they can be out there finding more leads and finalising more contracts. Secondly, the less time it takes to create and send out proposals, the more you can do. Like most aspects of business, winning new clients benefits from the economies of scale.
Not that you can afford to turn the search for new business into a matter of quantity over quality. It is much too important for that, and the quality of your proposals cannot suffer. Porrima has that covered too, helping to maintain accuracy with its automatic tariff and call plan updates, and helping businesses to only focus their attention on the most worthwhile causes with its automatic gross profit calculations.
Are you a Porrima Proposal Manager client? What have your experiences been with it? How did it change your approach to new business and associated admin? If you have an opinion to share, please feel free to post it in the comments section below. And if you think your colleagues and contacts would be interested in this article, please share it on social media.
