Automatic proposal sending one click after the call
After the call the rep ticks the line items in the CRM and clicks once. The workflow takes the client record, prices it from the current price list, fills the template and emails the PDF in minutes rather than in two days. When the client opens the proposal, the rep gets a notification and calls while the interest is still there.
- 1 clickall that is left on the rep's side for a proposal after a call. For a standard proposal coming from a website form: none, the document goes out on its own
- 42 hoursthe average time a company took to make first contact with an inbound web enquiry, in an audit of 2,241 companies published by Harvard Business Review. The proposal is the client's second wait, and usually the longer one
- 2 to 4 weeksfrom workshop to the first proposal sent by the workflow, compared line by line against the proposals your team wrote by hand
The problem
Why does a client wait two days for a proposal after a half-hour call?
The call went well and the client wants a price. The rep gets back to the office, opens a Word file or a spreadsheet template, copies the company details out of the CRM, checks whether the price list in the file is still current, works out the discount, exports a PDF and writes the email. Except there are three more meetings that day, so Tuesday's proposal goes out on Thursday. By then the client has spoken to two other suppliers.
At a few proposals a day that is several hours a week per rep, and every one of them is the kind of work where mistakes are easiest: an old price, a typo in the company name, a discount nobody approved. On top of that nobody knows whether the client opened the document at all, so the follow-up goes out blind, or never.
The cost of waiting is countable. In an audit of 2,241 companies published in Harvard Business Review the average time to first contact with an inbound web enquiry was 42 hours, and 23 percent of companies never replied at all. Companies that responded within an hour qualified a lead nearly 7 times more often than those that waited an hour longer. The study measured first contact rather than sending a proposal, but the clock is the same one: the client compares speed before comparing prices.
- The proposal goes out two days after the call, when the client is already comparing other quotes
- A price taken from an outdated price list, then corrected by email
- A discount given without approval, visible only on the invoice
- Nobody knows which proposals the client opened, so the follow-up goes out blind
Why now
What changed, so that this takes weeks rather than a quarter?
Every part of a proposal now has an interface. Client details and line items sit in a CRM with an API, the price list in a spreadsheet, a product library or the ERP, the template in Google Docs, PandaDoc or your own HTML that can be filled with fields and saved as a PDF. Nothing needs retyping. It needs connecting in one order.
Native quoting inside a CRM, such as Quotes in HubSpot or Smart Docs in Pipedrive, handles a list of products from a single library well. It handles the rest less well: when the price depends on rules outside the CRM, when a discount above a threshold has to wait for approval, when the document has its own layout, or when a form is supposed to send the proposal with no rep involved. Then the logic moves to n8n, Make or a custom integration over the API, which is public and documented, as the HubSpot developer documentation shows, and the CRM stays the place where the proposal is stored and visible.
The third change is the AI agent. A workflow will send the proposal, but it will not answer a manager asking how many proposals from this month the client opened and never replied to. BOND, our company AI agent, answers that in a plain sentence, from CRM data, in 5 to 10 seconds.
What changes
What does the sales team get?
The proposal goes out in minutes, not in days
After the call the rep confirms the line items in the CRM, and the workflow builds the document from the template, prices it from the price list and emails the PDF. The client reads it while the conversation is still fresh.
One click on the rep's side, none at all for a standard proposal from a form
The price always comes from the current price list
The workflow reads prices and discounts from one source: a spreadsheet, the product library in the CRM or the ERP. The old price list sitting on somebody's desktop stops mattering.
A discount above the threshold agreed in the workshop waits for approval before the proposal leaves
You know when the client opened the proposal
Opening the document sends a notification to Slack, Teams or email, with the client name and the proposal number. The rep calls at the moment of highest interest, not three days later asking whether it arrived.
A notification within seconds of the open, with the time elapsed since sending
No typos in the client name or the VAT number
Company, contact and address details enter the template from the CRM record, not from the rep's memory. A missing field blocks the send and comes back as a list of gaps instead of reaching the client with a blank in it.
One source of client data: the record in HubSpot, Pipedrive or Salesforce
Every proposal on the deal in the CRM, numbered and versioned
The workflow attaches the PDF to the opportunity, assigns a number and a version, and every correction stays in the history. A month later you know exactly what the client received and at what price.
Proposal status (sent, opened, accepted, expired) visible in the pipeline without moving cards by hand
Questions about proposals in a plain sentence
How many proposals have been waiting longer than 7 days. Which proposals from this month did the client open and never answer. What discount did the team give on average last month. The AI agent answers from the CRM.
BOND answers from company data in 5 to 10 seconds, in English or in Polish
And in your company
What if every proposal we send is different?
Four sentences we hear most often about quoting, and how we answer them. We write with B2B companies of 10 to 200 people in mind, the ones that already run a CRM and send at least a few proposals a week.
Every proposal we send is different, this cannot be automated.
In the workshop we take the proposals from the last quarter and check what genuinely changes between them. Usually it is the line items, the quantities and the discount. The header, the client details, the commercial terms and the footer are the same every time. We automate the fixed part and leave the variable part to the rep, in CRM fields they fill in anyway.
Our price list lives in a spreadsheet and changes every month.
That is a starting point rather than an obstacle. The spreadsheet stays the source of prices, the workflow reads it on every proposal, so a price changed in the sheet is in the next document straight away. All we agree is who is allowed to change it, and every change stays in the history with a date and an author.
HubSpot has a quotes module, why add anything?
If a proposal is a list of products from the library in the CRM, the native module is enough and we will tell you so. An outside workflow earns its place when the price depends on rules outside the CRM, for example a price list in the ERP, when a discount has to wait for approval, when the document has its own layout, or when a form is supposed to send the proposal with no rep involved.
We are afraid the automation will send a client the wrong price.
That is why the workflow runs in parallel before the first real send: it generates proposals for the same deals your team wrote by hand, and we compare the documents line by line. It goes into production when the price differences are zero. A discount above the threshold and a value above the amount agreed in the workshop always wait for a person.
- CRM
- HubSpot, Pipedrive, Salesforce, Zoho
- Templates and documents
- Google Docs, PandaDoc, Microsoft 365, your own HTML exported to PDF
- Prices and products
- Google Sheets, the product library in the CRM, an ERP such as Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central or SAP Business One, SQL databases
- Electronic signature
- DocuSign, Adobe Acrobat Sign, PandaDoc
- Sending and notifications
- Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Slack, Microsoft Teams
- Automation layer
- n8n, Make, Zapier, custom API integrations
What a proposal is made of and where the workflow takes the data from
The elements that most often go into an automated proposal. The order and the thresholds are agreed in the workshop, because they decide when the document goes out on its own and when it waits for a person.
| Part of the proposal | Where the data comes from | What the rule watches |
|---|---|---|
| Client details | the company and contact record in the CRM: legal name, address, VAT number, contact person | a missing field blocks the send and comes back to the rep as a list of gaps |
| Line items and quantities | items ticked on the opportunity, a website form or a configurator | an item outside the price list goes into the manual queue |
| Prices and discounts | a price list in Google Sheets, the product library in the CRM or the ERP | a discount above the threshold waits for a manager to approve it |
| Template, language and currency | the client's segment and market held in the CRM | an EN, DE or FR version built from the same set of fields |
| Valid until | a rule agreed in the workshop, for example 14 days from sending | a reminder to the rep before it expires, a status change after |
| Number and version | a counter in the CRM, every correction becomes a new version | the old version stays on the deal, the client only ever gets the current one |
| Attachments | catalogue, references and commercial terms from Google Drive or SharePoint | a set matched to the product category, not picked off a drive by hand |
These rows are a starting point. For most clients a first rollout covers client details, line items, prices and numbering, and the rest goes in when it turns out to be needed.
How we work
Five steps from a proposal in Word to a proposal in one click
Process first. Tools second. Every step ends with something you can judge before you decide on the next one.
Workshop
We take the proposals from the last quarter and split them into the fixed part and the variable part. We measure how long it runs from call to send and where it gets stuck: in the price list, in a discount approval, in the rep's queue. We check where the price list and the template actually live today, the file on somebody's desktop included.
Template and rule design
One template with fields from the CRM (Google Docs, PandaDoc or your own HTML), the pricing and discount rules, the approval threshold, the validity period, numbering and versions. Then the choice of tool: the quoting module in the CRM, n8n, Make or an API integration. We agree which proposals may go out with no rep involved.
Build and parallel test
The workflow generates proposals for the same deals your team wrote by hand over the past few weeks, and we compare the documents line by line. It goes into production when the price differences are zero and every gap in the data lands in the manual queue rather than with the client.
Switch-over and training
The reps send their first proposals from the workflow, with error monitoring. The sales manager learns to change the price list, the discount threshold and the template alone: a new item, a quarterly promotion, a different validity period during a campaign. With no ticket raised with us.
Measurement
After 30 days we look at the time from call to send, the share of proposals opened and the number sitting in the manual queue. After 90 days we look at the result: how many proposals turned into orders against the quarter before the rollout. We retune the rules against what actually arrives, not against what we predicted.
Before and after
How a rep's day changes
Before
- After the call they open Word, copy client details out of the CRM and check whether the price list in the file is current
- Tuesday's proposal goes out on Thursday, because Wednesday held three meetings
- They have no idea whether the client opened the PDF, so they call blind or not at all
- They dig through sent items to find which version and which price went out a month ago
After
- After the call they tick the line items in the CRM and click once, the proposal goes out in minutes
- The price is calculated from one price list, a discount above the threshold waits for approval, the rest goes straight out
- They get a notification the moment the client opens the proposal, and call there and then
- Every version sits on the deal in the CRM with a number, a date and a status
The first proposal from the workflow goes out on switch-over day. The time from call to send and the share of proposals opened we judge after 30 days, the sales result after 90.
For the person signing this off
What a head of sales gets out of it
The time from call to proposal becomes a number in the CRM that you see on Monday morning, rather than an impression from the quarterly review. Questions like whether that proposal has gone out yet, and corrections to prices sent by email, stop landing on your desk, because the price list and the discount threshold sit in one place and you approved them yourself.
The second thing matters more in front of the board. You know how many proposals went out this month, how many the client opened, how many turned into orders and what discount the team gave on average. That is an argument in the conversation about the sales plan and about margin that you do not have today, because the proposals are sitting in sent items across a dozen mailboxes.
- Template, price list and discount thresholds in one place, under your control
- Time from call to proposal measured automatically, not declared
- The workflow runs in parallel, so the old way holds until the tests are done
- A new rep sends a correct proposal on day one, because the rules are in the system rather than in a senior's head
What it costs
The workshop has a published price, the rollout is quoted after it
The process workshop costs EUR 3,500 net per week, and runs from 1 to 7 weeks. Quoting usually takes one week, and two when the price list carries many discount rules or proposals go out in several languages and currencies. We quote the rollout after the workshop, once it is clear how many templates, price sources and sending channels are in scope and what state the CRM is in.
You pay the cost of running the workflow directly to the tool provider, that is n8n, Make, PandaDoc or DocuSign, or you pay nothing at all when it sits on your own infrastructure. No margin from us. The same goes for model costs when an AI agent is part of the setup, where a single query costs the provider roughly EUR 0.005 to 0.07.
Process workshop
EUR 3,500 net
per week, and quoting is usually one week
A self-contained piece of work. It ends with the quoting process written down, a template with its list of fields and pricing rules you could put in place without us.
- A map of how you quote today, with the time from call to send measured
- The proposal template split into a fixed part and fields from the CRM
- Pricing rules, discounts and the approval threshold written down with the exceptions
- A tool recommendation: the quoting module in the CRM, n8n, Make or the API
- The metrics to measure at 30 days
- Most popular
Workshop and quoting rollout
Quoted after the workshop
scope follows from the number of templates and price sources
The option most companies choose. Working quoting 2 to 4 weeks after the workshop, compared against the proposals your team wrote by hand.
- Everything in the workshop
- A workflow in n8n, Make or over the API, wired into the CRM, the price list and the template
- PDF generation, email sending, numbering and versions, saved on the deal in the CRM
- An open notification and approval for discounts above the threshold
- A parallel test on recent proposals and a switch-over with monitoring
- Training for the sales manager on changing the price list, the threshold and the template
Quoting and an AI agent for sales
Quoted after the workshop
for teams that ask about proposals a dozen times a day
Everything in the rollout plus BOND, which answers questions about the state of your proposals in a plain sentence.
- Everything in the quoting rollout
- An AI agent wired into the CRM: how many proposals are waiting, which were opened, what the average discount is
- Alerts on proposals with no reply after 7 days and on validity periods running out
- Access for the reps and for the manager, in English and in Polish
If the workshop shows that the quoting module already sitting in your CRM covers your proposals, we say so and show you how to set it up. The workshop still ends with the quoting process written down, a template and pricing rules that hold up without us.
Frequently asked questions
What is automatic proposal sending?
It is a workflow that, once the line items are confirmed in the CRM, takes the client details, prices the proposal from the current price list, fills the template, saves a PDF and emails it within minutes of the call. On the way it assigns a number and a version, attaches the document to the opportunity and watches the discount threshold. The rep clicks once, and for a standard proposal from a form does not click at all.
How long does a rollout of automatic proposal sending take?
One week of workshop and 2 to 4 weeks of rollout with one CRM, one template and one price source. Add an electronic signature, several languages and currencies, or a price list held in the ERP, and we count up to 6 weeks. The first proposal from the workflow goes out on switch-over day, after the test on recent proposals.
Do we need PandaDoc or n8n if we already have HubSpot?
Not always. If a proposal is a list of products from the library in the CRM, Quotes in HubSpot or Smart Docs in Pipedrive is enough and we will tell you so. An outside workflow earns its place when the price depends on rules outside the CRM, when a discount has to wait for approval, when the document has its own layout, or when a form is supposed to send the proposal with no rep involved.
Where does the workflow take the current price list from?
From one source, agreed in the workshop: a Google Sheets file, the product library in the CRM, or the ERP. The workflow reads the price list on every proposal, so a price change is in the next document straight away. We agree who is allowed to change the price list, and every change stays in the history with a date and an author.
What about a proposal that cannot be priced from the price list?
It goes into the manual queue with a note saying what was missing: an item outside the price list, a missing VAT number, a discount above the threshold. The rep fills in one field and clicks, and the rest follows the same path. A proposal never goes out with a blank in it or with a price nobody approved.
How does the open notification work?
The proposal goes out as a link to a document with the PDF to download, or through PandaDoc, because opens of an email attachment cannot be measured. An open sends a notification to Slack, Teams or email, with the client name, the proposal number and the time since sending. The rep calls there and then, rather than three days later asking whether it arrived.
Can the client sign the proposal electronically?
Yes. A proposal that doubles as an order goes out through DocuSign, Adobe Acrobat Sign or PandaDoc, and the signature comes back to the CRM as the opportunity moving to won. Without a signature an email reply is enough, and the workflow attaches it to the proposal. Which one you need depends on whether your proposals are binding, and we settle that in the workshop.
Can a proposal go out with no rep involved?
It can, for standard proposals: the client fills in a website form or a configurator, the workflow prices it from the price list and sends the document within minutes, and the rep gets a copy and a notification. In the workshop we agree which products and what value can go out on their own. Above that threshold a person always looks first.
Let us measure how long it takes you today, from call to proposal
The free consultation takes 30 minutes. You tell us how a proposal is put together in your company today: where the price list lives, who works out the discount, how many proposals go out a week and how many come back for correction. We show you which part can be turned into a workflow straight away, and which needs the price list or the CRM sorted out first. You do not have to share any systems at this stage. You write directly to Pawel, not to a reception desk.
We run at most two rollouts at a time, so that someone is genuinely sitting on each of them.
Book a free consultationPS. If anyone in your team sent a proposal a day after the date they promised the client this week, that is exactly the problem. A proposal built in Word from a price list in a file is only as fast as the rep's day is free. Measuring that time is where the workshop starts.