There’s a problem with sending compelling proposals.
You're forced to choose. Send something quickly, and it's generic and forgettable. Or take the time to tailor it properly, but waste hours doing so. Most reps opt for speed, and buyers can tell.
Today we're launching a new way to build proposals: the Smart Proposal Engine.
The goal? Help sellers create impressive proposals, in minutes, that are accurate, specific to their deal and stick to your sales rules.
Why proposal creation doesn't scale
For most sales teams, proposal creation looks something like this: find last quarter's template, swap out the company name, update the pricing (hopefully), delete the bits that don't apply, and hit send. It's manual, it's messy, and it doesn't scale.
The bigger the team, the worse it gets. Reps copy and paste from old proposals, introduce pricing errors, include content that's irrelevant to the buyer, or skip personalisation altogether because there simply isn't time. Meanwhile, RevOps and sales leaders have no visibility into what's going out the door.
This is the proposal problem that automation was built to solve.
What is proposal automation software?
Proposal automation software streamlines and accelerates the creation of sales proposals, reducing or eliminating the manual work involved in building, personalising, and sending documents to buyers.
Rather than starting from scratch or relying on copy-paste workflows, these tools use rules, templates, CRM data and AI to generate tailored proposals automatically - reflecting the specific deal, buyer and context, without a rep having to build it manually each time.
The result: consistent output, fewer errors, and confidence that every proposal leaving the team reflects your process and positioning.
Here’s how it works
The Smart Proposal Engine helps your reps create the right proposal for every buyer, without having to edit the proposal themselves or think about what content to include.
What used to take hours of manual work becomes a few minutes of simple inputs.
When a seller wants to build a proposal, they go through a guided proposal creation flow.
They’re presented with a form where they fill out various drop-downs and/or text fields with the specifics of their deal.
They can connect sources of deal info (like your CRM) to fill this out for them, and even use AI to pull out relevant details from less structured data sources (like those meeting notes or call transcripts).
As they fill out this info, deal-specific content populates the page and the proposal automatically configures itself based on their answers.
Behind the scenes, a RevOps manager, sales leader, or someone else from your team, has set this workflow up for them, defining what data sources they’re allowed to connect, which form fields they must complete and determining which content dynamically changes based on their answers.
This is easily configurable and allows you to embed your process directly within the proposal creation flow, ensuring that all your sellers are following the same repeatable approach.
Connected to your CRM, built for your workflow
One of the biggest sources of proposal inefficiency is the gap between your CRM and your documents. Deal data lives in one place; proposals get built in another.
The result is manual re-entry, outdated information and the kind of avoidable errors that erode buyer trust.
The Smart Proposal Engine closes that gap. By connecting directly to your CRM, it pulls deal-specific data into your proposal automatically.
For teams using Pipedrive or Zoho CRM, that connection is available today, with HubSpot and Salesforce integrations coming soon.
Why it matters
Buyers expect an offer that’s specific to them and their needs but, when you’re working at scale, reps simply don’t have the time to spend hours tailoring each proposal to every buyer.
In fact, a survey from Pipedrive found that 27% of sellers said that adoption of proposal and quote automation would have the biggest positive impact on their work.
Personalisation at scale has always been the hard part, and this is how the Smart Proposal Engine solves that…
- Sellers spend less time on each proposal and more time selling
- Buyers only see what's relevant to them, making purchase decisions easier
- Reps can't accidentally send the wrong pricing or content to the buyer
- Deal intelligence captured in your sales cycle actually makes it into the proposal
- Guardrails are built into the process and reps can't go off-book
- You have fewer templates to manage as one adaptable template replaces many
| Traditional Process | Smart Proposal Engine | |
|---|---|---|
Creation time | Hours of manual work | Minutes via guided flow |
Personalisation | Manual copy/paste | Automated from CRM + deal data |
Pricing accuracy | Prone to human error | Rules-based, enforced by system |
Content governance | Inconsistent across reps | Controlled by RevOps/sales leaders |
CRM integration | Manual re-entry | Direct connection to Pipedrive, Zoho (HubSpot + Salesforce coming soon) |
Buyer experience | Generic, templated feel | Tailored to each deal and buyer |
Post-send visibility | None | Real-time tracking and engagement analytics |
A few things to note
This is the first iteration of the Smart Proposal Engine, with more exciting features on the way soon.
This first version of the Smart Proposal Engine will work with Pipedrive and Zoho, with connections to HubSpot and our new Salesforce integration coming soon.
The Smart Proposal Engine is available on our new Scale plan and automating the creation of proposals may require the use of paid credits.
Learn more about how credits work in Qwilr.
About the author
Guy Hall|Head of Product Marketing at Qwilr
Guy leads product marketing at Qwilr – tackling things like positioning, messaging, sales enablement and more. Guy has a background in content and communications, and has worked across a variety of industries including tourism, telecoms and tech.
Frequently asked questions
Reps complete a guided creation flow with deal-specific inputs. Predefined rules and connected data sources configure the proposal automatically, populating the right content, pricing and structure for each buyer.
Yes. Qwilr connects directly to Pipedrive and Zoho today, with HubSpot and Salesforce coming soon. Deal data populates the proposal automatically.
Faster creation, fewer errors, consistent messaging, better buyer personalisation and improved post-send visibility. Reps spend less time on documents and more time selling.
By using a rules-based proposal engine that adapts content, pricing and structure based on deal-specific inputs, so every proposal feels tailored without hours of manual work.
AI proposal software uses artificial intelligence to extract relevant details from unstructured data like call transcripts and meeting notes, helping reps complete proposals faster.
Qwilr's Smart Proposal Engine uses AI alongside CRM data and predefined rules to make the whole process faster and more accurate.
