How Referral Program Pros turned a two-step payment process into a single flow and saw conversion climb

Tom Oakes runs Referral Program Pros, a consulting practice that helps businesses design and grow their referral programs. His work moves through proposals - scoping engagements, outlining deliverables, and turning interested prospects into paying clients. In a solo practice, the distance between a signed proposal and a paid invoice is one of the most important numbers in the business.

Before QwilrPay, that distance was longer than it needed to be, and more work to close.

The challenges

When a client accepted a proposal, the job wasn't done. Tom still had to send a separate Stripe payment link, or route them to a Kajabi checkout page, as a follow-up step. Proposal and payment lived in two different places, which meant two separate moments where a client could go quiet.

That disconnect had predictable consequences. Payment timelines stretched from days to weeks, and in some cases, months. Clients who'd verbally said yes still needed to be nudged back to a link they'd lost in their inbox. The follow-up wasn't just annoying; it was a recurring drain on Tom's time at the point in the sales process where the deal should already be done.

Beyond the chasing, the workflow itself was slow. Each proposal required roughly 20 extra minutes to prepare and send: customizing the document, generating the payment link, sending them as separate items. At 10-plus proposals a month, that was a consistent overhead that compounded across the year.

The solution

QwilrPay brought the payment step inside the proposal itself. When a client is ready to accept now, payment is right there - same screen, same moment. Tom clones an existing proposal, makes quick adjustments, and shares it. There's nothing to follow up with separately.

The whole workflow collapsed into a single touchpoint for the client: proposal, terms, and payment in one uninterrupted flow.

The results

A measurable lift in conversions

The result Tom leads with isn't payment speed, it's conversion. With proposal, terms, and payment in a single flow, clients can see exactly what they're agreeing to at the moment they're ready to commit. Tom estimates 15–20% more proposals now convert compared to the old workflow.

Payment at the moment of acceptance

What used to stretch across days or weeks now often happens in the same session. Clients who are ready to say yes don't have to wait for a separate link to arrive, find it in their inbox, and remember to act on it. The gap between proposal accepted and payment received - one that previously stretched to months in some cases - has effectively closed for clients who pay at acceptance.

Hours recovered every month

With the proposal and payment workflow unified, the overhead of sending deals dropped significantly. Tom saves around 20 minutes per proposal compared to before. At roughly 10 proposals a month, that's more than three hours of admin time recovered every month, time previously spent generating payment links, customizing documents, and sending them as separate steps.

An experience clients notice

The change wasn't lost on the people receiving the proposals. Several of Tom's existing clients who had experienced the old process commented on it directly when the new experience arrived in their inbox.

The impact

For Tom, QwilrPay didn't just speed up payment collection, it also changed the conversion economics of his practice. Clients who encounter a proposal with everything in one flow are more likely to say yes, and more likely to pay in the same session when they do. That shift from a two-step process that introduced friction at the worst possible moment to a single seamless flow is what moved the number.