5 Ways HubSpot Proposal Tools Improve Sales

The sales proposal is a major inflection point in the sales cycle. Get it right, you’re on your way to closing a deal. Get it wrong, and you’ve frustrated your customer, eroded their trust, and potentially lost the opportunity.

To prevent that from happening, you need three things:

• Speed
• Accuracy
• Transparency

If you’re already a HubSpot CRM user, you’re halfway there. It’s one of the best platforms for managing customer interactions and providing accurate data for forecasting. And if you integrate it with your proposal software, you can build, send, and track the status of sales proposals within the HubSpot UI.

Can HubSpot create sales proposals?

HubSpot CPQ doesn’t offer a full-featured proposal generator. This is where a HubSpot proposal tool comes in. By integrating the CRM with dedicated proposal software, sales teams can create, send, and track professional sales proposals directly within the HubSpot interface. This integration bridges the gap between simple quotes and rich, interactive proposals, helping teams close deals faster without switching between multiple platforms.

HubSpot integrates with several proposal software platforms, including:

• Better Proposals
• DealHub
• GetAccept
• Qwilr
• PandaDoc
• Proposify

If you use one of these, your sales team will no longer have to leave HubSpot to create proposals. With a few clicks, they can generate and send professional-looking proposals, and every action will automatically be updated in your CRM.

5 ways proposal tools improve sales efforts in HubSpot

Now, let’s take a look at exactly how you can integrate your proposal software with HubSpot to optimize your sales process:

1. Streamlining the proposal generation process

Manually creating proposals in a spreadsheet or switching between multiple systems to submit them creates significant operational friction. HubSpot proposal tool integration eliminates this by pulling product details, pricing, and client data directly from your CRM. It auto-populates that info into the proposal, without your reps having to lift a finger.

2. Enhancing sales team productivity

Manually drafting quotes, chasing approvals, and nudging clients to sign contracts all waste time your reps could be spending on revenue-driving activities like prospecting and getting on sales calls. The typical sales rep only spends 28% of their time actually selling, and excessive admin work is a major reason why.

Compared to manual processes, CPQ software, which automates proposal generation, enables you to increase your sales proposal volume by 49% per rep, per month. That’s because your software will automatically create proposals based on the customer data in your CRM — name/contact info, business type, customer segment, you name it. You can have it generate from one template over another based on those inputs, too.

In addition, this means you can track the status of each proposal in real time and receive updates whenever someone views it or completes a task (e.g., an approval or signature). If there hasn’t been any activity on a particular proposal for too long, it’ll send you a reminder so your sales team stays on top of it.

3. Improving the customer experience

Today’s buyers care about three things when they’re dealing with vendors and service providers: personalization, efficiency, and transparency. If you’re giving them a hard-to-read quote (and taking days to do it), they’re going to be dissatisfied when they receive it.

35-50% of deals go to the vendor who respons first, and 88% of buyers say they only buy when they see their sales rep as a “trusted advisor.”

• Easy-to-read branded proposals
• Fast proposal generation and response time
• Digital signatures for a simplified buying process
• Adjustable proposal templates for added personalization
• Automated proposal status tracking and notifications/updates
• Customizable options/pricing based on customer data from CRM
• Real-time visibility into customer engagement (with some platforms)

All of these factors contribute to a more frictionless buying experience for your customers. They eliminate the guesswork and get the right info in front of them in a professional and approachable way. And they’re only possible when you integrate HubSpot with your proposal software.

4. Increasing deal velocity and close rates

Making it easier for customers to buy not only improves their experience, it also accelerates your sales process. When sales reps spend less time creating proposals and responding to prospects, they can focus on managing deals.

Automated reminders help move deals forward by prompting prospects and preventing opportunities from stalling. Proposal tracking within HubSpot CRM gives sellers actionable insights, showing exactly what needs to happen to advance each prospect through the pipeline. Streamlined approvals and faster contract execution save days of time that might otherwise be lost due to busy managers or decision-makers.

For example, if a prospect viewed a proposal three days ago but hasn’t responded, the rep can see this information in their pipeline tracking and follow up at the right moment. Without a HubSpot proposal tool or similar tracking features, reps wouldn’t know whether—or when—the prospect opened the proposal.The results speak for themselves: companies using CPQ tools see nearly a 50% increase in proposal capacity, a 28% reduction in sales cycle time, and a 105% higher average deal size.

5. Ensuring sales and revenue alignment

When proposals are created in systems that aren’t integrated with your CRM, operational and data silos quickly form. Finance and legal teams may lack visibility into the latest proposal versions, making collaboration difficult. Sales reps end up chasing approvals, updates, or clarifications, and there’s often no clear accountability or audit trail.

Proposal software that integrates seamlessly with HubSpot creates a single source of truth without duplicating effort across multiple systems. This alignment streamlines approvals and contract reviews, reducing miscommunication and keeping teams on the same page regarding pricing and contract terms.

On the backend, proposal software enforces pre-configured pricing rules on every proposal. Some platforms, such as DealHub or Conga, offer dynamic pricing features that automatically account for discounts, promotions, and pricing tiers, ensuring consistent and compliant pricing.

Once a deal is closed, proposal automation helps align sales with revenue recognition standards like ASC 606 (for US companies) or IFRS 15 (for international companies), automatically allocating transaction prices based on product or service delivery. Integrated proposal data also improves sales forecasting. HubSpot’s forecasting tools leverage this data to analyze projections by deal stage, category, or other parameters, helping finance and sales teams make more accurate revenue predictions and optimize resource planning.

Explore proposal software that integrates with HubSpot

To achieve the sales efficiency, deal velocity, and customer experience improvements we’re talking about here, you need to choose the right proposal software. Not all are created equal.

For instance:

• Better Proposals’ simple UI and features for milestone signoffs make it great for web, graphic design, and marketing agencies.
• DealHub CPQ, combined with its DealRoom, enables sales teams and buyers to collaborate on proposals and contracts in real time.
• Qwilr’s dynamic proposals and extensible templates make it flexible for industries like real estate, where multimedia content and custom branding are crucial.
• Proposify’s visual project plans make it a solid choice for local professional services businesses that need to incorporate blueprints, plans, and project timelines into their proposals.

To find the platform that’s right for you, carefully evaluate its features, user-friendliness, and scalability for your future needs. Consider your industry and workflows, and how the proposal software will fit into your current processes.

Looking for a proposal software that integrates with HubSpot? Get started with our HubSpot CRM overview page, and check out our CPQ and proposal software reviews.