Introduction
Choosing the right proposal software is a big moment for a growing business. Many mid-market teams find themselves in a tough spot: the simple document tools they started with are now slowing them down, but big, complex software feels too complicated and expensive. The key is finding a tool that can handle more complex work while deeply integrating with your CRM. This guide will break down what mid-market teams should look for.
Key Takeaways
- Why Simple Tools Fail: As your business grows, it is harder to train larger sales teams to follow the rules. You also need to manage complex pricing and quoting, like tiered or bundled packages. Simple document tools can’t handle this, leading to manual errors and lost time, revenue, and profit.
- Why CRM Integration Is Important: It’s more than just syncing names. A good integration automates tasks, eliminates manual data entry, and lets your sales team work from one main hub while providing deep pipeline data to help your business grow.
- The Best Solution: The right software for mid-market teams combines a powerful quoting system with a deep CRM connection.
Why Mid-Market Teams Need More Than a Simple Proposal Tool
The Breaking Point: When Your Pricing Gets Too Complex
When you’re a small startup, a simple proposal tool works great. But as you grow into the mid-market, your business needs become more advanced. You are no longer selling one thing at one price.
Growing companies often use tiered pricing to offer different packages to a wider range of customers. You might start using usage-based billing or create product bundles. This is where simple document tools stop being helpful. They can’t enforce your new pricing rules, forcing your team back into using risky spreadsheets and doing manual work. As you hire more sales staff they wont know your products and services as well as seasoned reps. You may need guided selling tools to generate the perfect quotes and proposals for your prospects.
Why CRM Integration Is Important
The second big challenge is integration. Many simple tools say they have a “CRM integration“, but it often just syncs basic info. That is not enough for a successful mid-market team.
A stronger CRM integration automates tasks. This means your team can:
- Build quotes without leaving the CRM, using the latest data.
- Stop entering data by hand, which is slow and often leads to errors.
- Create one main hub for information, making sure your quotes always match your customer data.
Without this deep connection, your CRM becomes just another place to store data, not the powerful tool it should be.
Finding the Ideal Solution
What should a mid-market team look for? The best software is a tool that solves both problems at once. It should have a powerful and flexible quoting system that can handle your complex pricing. At the same time, it needs to connect deeply with your CRM to automate the entire process from start to finish. This combination is what allows a sales team to be both fast and accurate.
seProposals, by salesElement, is a full proposal and CPQ platform. It enforces complex pricing rules such as authorized discount control and tiered or bundled offerings. It delivers built-in, line-item integration with leading CRMs so reps can generate accurate, branded proposals directly from the opportunity record.
Frequently Asked Questions
- What is CPQ software, and how is it different from a basic proposal tool? CPQ stands for Configure, Price, Quote. While a basic proposal tool helps you create a document, CPQ software helps you build an accurate solution. It guides reps to Configure the right products, automatically applies the correct Price using your business rules, and then generates the final Quote. It’s designed specifically to handle complex sales.
- What are the signs that my team has outgrown our current proposal tool? Some common signs include: your team uses spreadsheets on the side to calculate final pricing; every proposal needs to be manually checked for accuracy; different reps send proposals that look completely different; or it takes days, not hours, to get a complex quote out the door. If you see these signs, it’s a strong signal you’re ready for a more advanced platform like seProposals.
- Is powerful quoting software difficult to implement? It’s a common concern, as old enterprise software was known for being complicated. However, modern, cloud-based CPQ tools are designed for a much more streamlined setup. Good providers, like salesElement, focus on a guided implementation process to ensure your team is up and running quickly without a long, expensive project.
Conclusion
For mid-market teams that have outgrown their simple tools, the best proposal software solves their two biggest challenges: complex quoting and a disconnected workflow. The right solution must have a strong rules system for pricing and a truly deep integration with your CRM. seProposals solves both problems for growing teams.