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Communication is key to any business’ success. Well, effective communication is. 

As easy as it may sound, ensuring that there are no gaps in communication among team members could get challenging even with on-site working practice in place. However, nowadays with over 16% of companies working fully remote, communicating can get even harder. 

Let’s face it, the remote work culture is not slowing down anytime soon rather it’s only bound to ramp up in the coming years.  

While remote work ensures that employees remain in the pink of their health, and can work flexible hours, it may deter the company’s health revenue-wise.  To not let miscommunication take a hit on your sales quota, it is important to formulate and follow some practices for effective communication. 

Now, when we take the term communication, it covers an array of things–internal communication among team members, communication with upper management, etc. In this article, we want to cover how to communicate proposals whilst working from home. So whether you are a freelancer looking forward to pitching to a client, or an employee, read on to know a few tips on communicating your proposal effectively. 

 Without further ado, let us look at five simple ways to communicate proposals whilst working from home.

5 Ways to communicate your proposal to clients 

As mentioned earlier, proposals could be from a freelancer, an employee or your sales team. Communicating it effectively with the stakeholder is crucial as proposals are a blueprint of your idea. Below-mentioned is five ways to communicate them with your clients. 

1. Use appealing proposal templates 

If you have a team working remotely, it can leave you feeling as if you have so less control over things. From branding logos to the flow of the proposal, every little thing counts. After all, the business proposal isn’t simply an idea or a plan, but rather a vision. So it is obvious to want to create and communicate it as perfectly as possible. 

While you need to make sure your proposal consists of to-the-point content but you also need to ensure that it is visually appealing. Fortunately, there are many free proposal templates available to cover the visual aspect of the proposal. With Pitch’s beautiful proposal templates, you can create your business proposal the way you intend to. It offers many free templates that you can customize depending on your requirements. 

Proposals play a significant role in increasing revenue through consistent branding and templates help you achieve that. In fact, a robust and reusable template can save you a lot of time as you don’t need to start building a template from scratch the next time you are asked to create a project proposal. 

2. Create a content management hub 

When a team works remotely, you need to have a content management strategy in place for their proposals. It ensures that there are no errors and that all proposals are accurate. You can create a google drive folder and store all the proposals and proposal templates in an organized manner or you can also explore some proposal development tools available in the market. 

Ask your team members or someone who might be using proposal development tools for recommendations. There are many tools including Dropbox, SharePoint, Microsoft Teams, and several other third-party tools. Whichever tool or platform you end up using, make sure it at least offers the following features: 

  • It offers file sharing feature
  • Should have a space to make announcements to the team members and send invites for events 
  • There should be a permission control access at the folder level 
  • Should help in enhancing the workflow of the proposal 
  • Should maintain file version control 
  • Should have an automatic backup facility for all content 
  • Collaboration with other team members and clients or companies should be easy

The main benefit of having a central hub is all team members can find up-to-date information including pricing, images, etc. No matter the tool or platform you use, make sure that you don’t simply dump all the documents in a folder. Each folder should have specific roles and permissions defined so that everyone can access what they need.

If you can easily have all the points mentioned above, then you are using the right tool. Plus, the right tool will allow collaborating seamlessly with your team members and clients. Make sure to go through different tools available in the market and go for the one that fits your budget and business requirements. 

3. Don’t go the extra mile 

Whether you are presenting a proposal IRL or virtually, adding unnecessary information is a no-no. It will bore the client and the participants. So, it is important that you don’t overdo any of your pitches in any manner. You should also avoid stressing about things like the number of experiences you have, your age, etc. as these things do not concern your client. 

The point is not to oversell yourself in any case. Doing so will either show that you are too self-centred or very insecure and we don’t want the client to think either of the two about you. It can ruin what could have been a great proposal otherwise. So try and stick to the point of the proposal. 

Well, this is not to say that you should not highlight some important aspects of the proposal or even yourself. If the client seems curious to know about your experience or skill, go ahead and answer their questions. 

The key is to know your client while pitching the proposal and go ahead accordingly. If they seem interested in knowing about your career history or about the project proposal, feel free to answer those. However, keeping it simple, short and relevant always works. You need to know which point needs to be emphasized and which does not. Essentially, setting boundaries is important.

4. Consider electronic signatures

phone in hand

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Electronic signatures have been around for over two decades now. However, they aren’t much in practice even today. Many teams/clients stiff prefer signing a proposal off physically. While there is no harm in signing off physical copies of the proposal, isn’t it better to use technology to save time? Not to mention, technological advances have upscaled the marketing game for many businesses. 

The difference between the turn-around time between signing physical copies and signing digitally is clearly. So, choose to go digital. This will make it easy for your team as well. All concerned team members will receive the signed documents in their individual email boxes. Some benefits of e-signature are mentioned below: 

  • As per a report, 61%of managers stated that using e-signatures cut down on document-related costs 
  • Saves time since you don’t have to print and scan documents for signature 
  • Since the signature is done digitally, it minimizes human errors 
  • It doesn’t just make the process simpler but also increases customer loyalty and satisfaction 
  • Speeds up the overall internal approval processes as well 
  • Positive ROI (Return on investment) 
  • They are often more secure than physical/hand-written signatures 

So, it is wise to consider the benefits of e-signatures and use a tool that offers this functionality. 

5. Leave room for feedback 

Feedback is one of the most important steps in any process. Especially, technical staff/clients who have domain knowledge would definitely have some insight into the proposal. This is why it is important to conduct a feedback session at the end of the proposal meeting. You can conduct it over a video call where you can even screen-share to foster a productive discussion.

Begin the meeting by making them understand the purpose of the meeting, then ask for their input once you review the images. You can take feedback over other medium as well. However, instead of sending an email or using other means to get feedback, you can ask the following open-ended questions during the video call meeting itself: 

  • Do you think the proposed solution solves your/the client’s issues?
  • Do you have a better suggestion?
  • Does the solution address the pain points? 

Fostering such questions will make the client/s think out of the box and may provide some valuable insights into your proposal. 

Wrapping up 5 ways to effectively communicate proposals whilst working from home 

Hopefully, the article helped you understand ways to communicate your business/project proposals remotely. The tips mentioned in the article are generic. So, it applies to a small business, an employee or a freelancer. While working remotely comes with its own challenges, this is also the time to make the best use of technology. 

Simply because you are working remotely does not drastically change the proposal process. You can create proposals sticking to the best templates and practices and benefit from technology to communicate it efficiently. You can even consider some proposal tools that come with in-built content management hub and custom templates. 

Try these tips and see how it works for you! 

Author Bio: 

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Parita Pandya is an Engineer turned Writer. She usually finds herself writing for businesses.  When she is not writing, she is either strumming her guitar or penning her thoughts down on paritapandya.com.