As a solo bookkeeper serving 40-plus clients, I was indeed doubtful whether proposal software for bookkeepers would make a difference in client decisions. Soon I found myself losing out on several promising leads to competitors that had more professional presentations and finally had to admit that client psychology played a very significant role in decision-making. The way we present our services matters just as much as the services themselves.
It all started with taking a close look at our acceptance patterns of proposals, which revealed that PDF proposals traditionally went unopened for days while clarification requests came in from clients who wanted to understand what services were offered at what prices. Something had to give in the way we conveyed our value propositions.
The implementation of the Figsflow digital proposal model opened up amazing insights about client behaviour just with the analytics. The analytics showed that, on the whole, prospective clients spent more time with pricing pages rather than after going through the service descriptions and case studies. The data hence was used to readjust our proposals for adding in value before bringing in costs.
Interactive elements were a major player. When clients were able to toggle between service packages while watching real-time price changes, they were instantly deemed more engaged. Our statistics showed that prospects who played with pricing calculators were 60% more likely to sign on the dotted line.
The psychology of social proof made an impact here. Digital proposals allowed us to embed client success stories and metrics at strategic touchpoints in the proposal. We observed that prospects took a considerable amount of time to review these elements, especially when cited in their own industry.
One revelation from our study that stood out was phone optimisation. Over 70% of the proposals were first opened with a mobile device, usually after hours. Including this piece of intelligence, we made refinements to our mobile proposal; this change resulted in a 45% decrease in response time.
The metrics show that our proposal acceptance rate has risen from 35% to 68%, yet the time from submission to decision has decreased from six days to merely two. More importantly, there has been a significant reduction in price negotiations since clients can gain insights into our value proposition well before reaching the pricing section.
