How to Create Proposals in 1-2 Hours

If saving time equals more money, Brian Pantle of Encore Sight and Sound in Wellington, Colo. might soon be a rich man.

Pantle recently started using the SmartOffice proposal writing software from Simply Reliable Software (SRS) and has seen the time it takes to create a quality sales presentation for clients decrease exponentially. Pantle estimates he saves $1,500 on every proposal.

“I used to spend two days trying to make my proposals look good,” admits Pantle, who now says his average proposal takes just one to two hours to create vs. one to two days. When he adds up the cost of his time vs. the cost of the software, it’s a $1,500 savings for every proposal.

Encore is just a three-man integration company, and Pantle is the only one doing sales. For a whole-house system proposal, he estimates it would have previously taken him $1,650 worth of manhours to create a custom proposal vs. the $150 per proposal he estimates it costs him now using the SRS SmartOffice suite.



“That’s not literally money out of my pocket, but I can now use that time to do other stuff,” he says. “The most important feature [of the software] is the ability to create a proposal which looks professional, is clear, and allows us to be sure that we have not missed important components in a project. In addition, since we are a Control4 dealer, and use Simply Reliable, the ability to build a Control4 project from the proposal is key. This and their new Design Machine feature are great time savers for us."

“I did three proposals in three days,” he said. And those were not small projects; each one included multiroom audio, video, IP security cameras, whole house control, lighting control and more.

“One client actually told me the fact that I was able to turn the proposal around so fast made a difference in his decision to use me for the installation,” says Pantle. “Two other clients told me they bought from me because of the quality of the proposal.”