5 Reasons not to use a PDF for sales proposals

As a growing company, you probably send a lot of sales proposals to potential new customers.

But if you’re still sending them as PDF, Word documents, or large file size PowerPoint presentations, it might be hurting your ability to close deals. And that’s never a good thing.

Imagine if there was a way to send proposals to potential customers that were so impressive and engaging that the prospect read every word?

In this post, we’ll show you why sending proposals as PDFs doesn’t cut it in this day and age, and what you should be doing instead to win more business.

Why PDF sales proposals don’t work anymore

The PDF was invented in the early 90’s, the same decade as the Palm Pilot came into popularity.

Quick question: Do you still use a Palm Pilot to manage your work life? Chances are you don’t, because they’re outdated and there are better ways of doing things.

The same is true across all technology. As another example, you likely don’t use Windows 95 anymore, yet you still use PDFs from 1993?

Here are five reasons a PDF often doesn’t cut it for your sales proposal and in modern business.

1. PDFs aren’t responsive

According to Litmus, more and more emails are being opened on mobile devices. In fact, emails are now opened more on a mobile device than on a desktop. But despite the majority of emails being opened on mobile devices, viewing PDFs on a mobile device remains a terrible experience.

Unlike the web, PDF documents aren’t responsive and don’t scale up and down to suit the device they’re being viewed on, meaning the text is small and the user has to constantly zoom and swipe across to read the content.

Because PDFs aren’t responsive, sales proposals are virtually impossible to read on mobile devices, making it harder for you to communicate the value of your product or service and ultimately resulting in fewer deals closed.

2. PDFs aren’t secure

Once you send a PDF sales proposal to a potential customer, the document is in their hands forever. It can be forwarded, shared, made public— even leveraged with a competitor to get a better price.

Sure, you can password-protect a PDF, but the password can be easily passed to third parties along with the document or removed completely.

PDF sales proposals can be problematic for sales and marketing pros in a number of ways, including:

Negotiations — If someone can take your proposal (including the pricing you’ve offered them) and just send it on to a competitor for them to counter offer, you end up in a discounting war, which reduces the value of the deal to your business (not to mention the reduction in commission for the sales rep).

Pricing — If you’re the kind of company that provides customized pricing based on prospects’ unique needs, having the details of pricing you’ve offered Prospect A made public can present challenges when trying to close Prospect B at a different price.

Competitive positioning — If you’re like most companies, your sales proposals contain information on your company, why it’s superior to competitors, etc. If that information got into the hands of competitors, then they could use it to develop sales scripts, collateral, etc. that counters your competitive positioning and hurts your brand.

Particularly when sending confidential documents like sales proposals, you need more security than PDFs can offer. You need to not only be able to add passwords but time limits, limits on the number of views, or even the ability to force people to log in using their work email address before viewing it. Otherwise, your sales document could fall in the wrong hands and hinder your ability to win the business.

3. PDFs aren’t interactive

PDFs are generally flat, static documents with pictures and text. Unlike the web, you can’t embed interactive content like videos, pricing calculators, spreadsheets, maps, etc.

The content limitations hurt your ability to communicate the value your product or services bring. Imagine if you could include that latest video the marketing team created that shows how your product works? Or that awesome case study video with your big-name customer?

Similarly, the lack of interactivity makes it difficult to personalize a sales proposal. Imagine if you could include an interactive quote in your proposal that allows the prospect to see what the pricing would look like if they added that extra upsell?

The lack of interactivity of PDFs makes all of these amazing ideas impossible and again hurts your ability to close deals.

For more ideas on leveraging interactive features in your sales proposal, download our free Proposal Look Book.

4. PDFs are not trackable

There are a number of tools that allow you to track whether the email you sent your proposal in was opened, which is a great start.

But imagine if, on top of that, you could also get notified when someone views the proposal you sent, and you could see exactly which parts of the proposal they interacted with, how long they read it, etc.

Unfortunately, PDFs (or Word documents and PowerPoint presentations) have no ability to track reading time or interactions, so this kind of advanced insight about when your prospects are viewing your proposal and what content they’re engaging with isn’t available to you.

5. PDFs are not accessible

Research shows that over 50 million Americans have some form of disability that could impact their ability to read and interact with content on a computer.

Fortunately, there are accessibility tools to help, but their inability to properly read PDFs is well documented. In fact, in order to make a PDF readable by accessibility tools like screen readers, you need to add an extra layer of content via XML markup just so the accessibility tool knows what’s in your PDF.

A better way to send sales proposals

Now that you understand why the PDF is a bad format to use for sales proposals, quotes, and other sales documents, you’re probably wondering what to do instead.

The answer is to create your proposals and documents as web pages.

By doing this, you get all the benefits of the web, including:

Responsive — Web pages are responsive, meaning they look great on all desktop, tablet, and mobile devices. With the majority of emails being opened on mobile devices, you’re ensuring your leads have a great experience with your proposal— and your brand.

Secure — Web pages can not only be password protected but you can also add time limits that ensure your proposals can’t be viewed after a certain date, as well as view limits so they can only be viewed a certain number of times. You can even require prospects to log in using their work email address before viewing the page to ensure that only the right people see it.

Interactive — Web pages can have interactive content like video, audio, maps, forms, spreadsheets, and more embedded in them. You can even add things like pricing calculators that allow prospects to see what the pricing would look like when they add features and services.

Trackable — Every interaction your leads have with a web page can be tracked, so you can see when they view your proposal, for how long, what content they view, where they’re viewing from, and more.

Accessible — Because web pages use clear HTML markup, accessibility tools like screen readers are able to figure out what content is on the page, meaning the 50 million Americans who have a disability will have no trouble accessing your sales proposals and documents.

Editable — Unlike a PDF, web pages can be edited at any time, even after you’ve sent them to the prospect. So if you discover you’ve made a typo, you can quickly go in and change it before anyone notices.

How to create sales proposals as Web pages

There are essentially a few ways to create your proposals and sales documents as web pages.

You could hand-code them as web pages using programming languages like HTML and CSS, but few sales & business development know those languages. You could use website building tools like Squarespace and Wix, but they lack key features like price/quoting tools and deal accelerators like e-signatures and payments, plus they charge per ‘site’ so you’d be paying upwards of $20 every time you create a proposal. You also can’t save the page as a proposal template and reuse it, so you’d be starting from scratch every time.

Alternatively, you can use a dedicated proposal tool like Qwilr.

Qwilr gives you an easy-to-use editor (not too dissimilar to what you see in Microsoft Word or Google Docs) that you can use to write your proposal, as well as tools to add interactive content like videos, images, interactive pricing tables, tables, spreadsheets, maps, and more.

However, unlike Word or Google Docs, which will typically output a PDF or .doc file, Qwilr will automatically create it as a responsive web page that looks great on any device.

Once you’ve finished creating a document, you share it using a simple link and don’t have to worry about file types, sizes, spam filters, etc. You’ll get notified when people view your document and get detailed analytics on what content they viewed, how long for, and more.

Your prospects will even be able to accept and sign your proposal online, meaning they don’t have to print it, sign it, scan it, etc. reducing the turnaround time.

Setting your sales team up for success

Sending your proposals and other sales and marketing documents as PDFs, Word documents, or large PowerPoint files just doesn’t cut it in modern-day business. They don’t work on mobile, you can’t add interactive content like video or dynamic pricing tables, and you have no idea whether a buyer has viewed it or what content they looked at. Outdated communication methods have built-in blind spots and hinder your sales success— it’s time to update your sales processes and practices.

A proposal tool like Qwilr makes sending your sales proposals as beautiful, responsive web pages easy and cost-effective. Thousands of businesses large and small have already made the switch and they’re winning more business in less time as a result.

To learn more about Qwilr and see the impact web-based proposals can have on your business, book a demo now.