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Proposal Automation: Create and Send Proposals Automatically With Proposeful + Zapier

learn how to connect Proposeful to Hubspot, Pipedrive and thousands of other sales tools with Zapier and create seamless proposal automation routines

A proposal automation software is a powerful tool for sales team that want to save time, respond to leads faster and keep data from different tools synced.

In this short tutorial, you’ll learn how to use Zapier to create and customize proposals automatically in Proposeful with data from your CRM (Hubspot, Pipedrive, Zoho CRM, etc.) and thousands of other tools.

What Can I Expect Of Proposal Automation With Proposeful?

Proposeful is the perfect tool for proposal automation. You can create proposals automatically from activity in tools you use, like Salesforce, Hubspot CRM, Pipedrive, Asana, Slack and many others.

Proposal automation also lets you update those tools with activity on your proposals. Proposeful tracks every visit to your proposals and can send this data to your other tools. When clients accept your proposals, you can also notify your other tools and automate several manual processes.

This makes proposal automation an incredible tool in saving time and responding to leads faster.

What is Zapier? Is it Free?

Zapier is a tool that helps you connect different applications to automate tasks. Zapier is free for simple integrations and small volumes.

Here are a few examples of proposal automation tasks what you can do with a free Zapier account and Proposeful:

  1. Automatically create a proposal and customize it with data from your CRM when a proposal reaches a certain stage;
  2. Add products to a proposal when a deal gets updated on your CRM;
  3. Mark a deal as Won on your CRM when a proposal gets accept;

How do I connect Proposeful to Zapier?

First, log in to your Proposeful account. Select the “Integrations” menu and you’ll see a box dedicated to integrating your account with Zapier.

Connect Proposeful to Zapier to start your proposal automation
Click “Connect to Zapier” to start.

Click the “Connect to Zapier” button and you’ll be taken to Zapier where you’ll need to be logged in to your Zapier account. Scroll down a bit and you’ll see the “Accept Invite and Build a Zap” button. Click it to add Proposeful to your list of apps on Zapier.

Accept invite on Zapier to start your proposal automation
Click the button to add Proposeful to your apps on Zapier.

You’ll see the following screen where you can build your integration in a few simple steps. Don’t worry if this is new to you, we’ll guide you through the process.

Learn how to create a proposal automation zap with Proposeful
Let’s build your first integration!

How Does Proposal Automation on Zapier Work?

Zapier has two types of connections:

  1. Triggers are events that happen on apps, like when a new deal is created on your CRM or you receive a new email on Gmail. These triggers call Zapier and pass data to them you can send to other apps;
  2. Actions are things you want to happen in your app, like creating a new proposal on Proposeful or marking a deal as won on your CRM.

To make things as intuitive as possible, let’s build a sample integration together.

Example: How to Create new Proposals When a Deal Reaches a Stage on Hubspot CRM

This is a very common proposal automation scenario that lets you create and customize proposals on Proposeful with data from your CRM automatically whenever a deal reaches a certain stage.

If you don’t use Hubspot CRM, don’t worry. You can follow along and use the same concepts to build your integrations.

For this example we have a trigger when a deal reaches a stage on Hubspot CRM and then we have an action to create a proposal on Proposeful. You can build an integration like this with a free Zapier account.

First, the “Choose App” select box and search for Hubspot.

Proposal automation is made of several steps
Select Hubspot for the first step.

Now select the appropriate trigger, “New Deal in Stage”:

This trigger is called when a deal reaches a certain stage.

Click “Continue” and then you’ll need to authorize Zapier to access your Hubspot account on the next step. Just click the select box and click “Add new account”. A window will pop up where you’ll need to log in to Hubspot. After that is done, click Continue to go to the next step.

After logging in to Hubspot, click Continue.

Now you need to select a Pipeline and Deal Stage. When a deal (a card) reaches this stage, Zapier will be called within 30 minutes and receive the data from the card (deal name, deal owner, etc.). We will then be able to use this data to customize a proposal on Proposeful.

Select the pipeline and deal stage you want to trigger the integration.

After clicking “Continue”, Zapier will invite you to test this step. You need to have a deal on the specific stage you selected so Zapier can pull data from it to use as an example. Click “Test & Continue” to connect and pull the data.

Click “Test & Continue” to pull data for testing the integration.

If you see an error message like this, it means Zapier couldn’t find any deals on that specific pipeline and stage:

If the test fails, move a deal to the stage you selected and try again.

To solve that, go to your Hubspot account and move a deal to the stage you selected as trigger. Even if there are deals there, you can try moving them to another stage and then moving them back.

Move a deal to the selected stage on Hubspot so Zapier can get the test data from it.

Click “Retest & Continue” on Zapier and it should work.

You first step is done! You successfully created a trigger that will call Zapier every time a deal reaches a certain stage. Now, we need to tell Zapier to do something when that happens.

To continue our example, we’ll need to add the second step and tell Proposeful to create a new proposal. To start, click the blue + icon below Step 1 in Zapier:

Click the + icon to add new steps to your integration.

Search for Proposeful and click it on the app list:

Find Proposeful and select it to start creating step 2.

Select the “Clone and Publish a Proposal” action. This will let you select an existing proposal, clone it, customize it and publish it so it’s ready for your client to access it. You can optionally send the proposal to your client by email automatically.

Select the “Clone and Publish a Proposal” action.

Click “Continue”. You’ll now need to connect Zapier to your Proposeful account. Click the select box and then “Add new account”. A window will pop-up asking for your Proposeful API Key.

Zapier needs your Proposeful API Key, which can be found here.

Your Proposeful API Key can be found in the Integrations menu. Log in to Proposeful and click “Integrations” on the left menu. You’ll see your API Key right away.

Your API Key allows Zapier to do proposal automation tasks
Copy your API Key from Proposeful.

Copy your API Key and paste it in Zapier. This will authenticate you and let you proceed to the next step.

You’ll need to select the proposal you want to use as base for your new proposals. Click the select box and Zapier will show you a list of your recent proposals:

Select the proposal you want to use as template for your new proposals.

If you don’t see the proposal you want on the list, go to Proposeful and duplicate the proposal. This will make it show up on the list of recent proposals. You might have to go to the previous step to refresh the list.

After selecting the proposal, you can customize the new Proposal title and other data. You can use data from previous step (in our example, from the deal on Hubspot) to customize your proposal, like this:

You can use data from previous steps on Zapier, like client name or email address, to customize your proposals.

Next, you can customize any variables you added to your base proposal so they’re replaced with values from the deal on Hubspot. Just type the variable name on the right (keep the %! !% tags intact) and add the value you want to replace it for on the right, like this:

Proposal automation lets you customize proposals for each new client automatically
You can automatically replace variables from your proposals with data from your deal on Hubspot.

Next, you can add products to your new proposal. If you mark “Copy Products to New Proposal?” as “True”, the products from the original proposal will be copied to the new proposal.

If you prefer to add products manually, you can use the “Insert Products” list and add products manually. On the left, type the name of the product. If a product with that name doesn’t exist on your Proposeful account, it will be created. On the right, you can add the amount for each product or get this information from the previous steps, like shown below.

You can choose to copy the products from the base proposal or add products manually like shown above.

Next, you can select a “Folder Name” to add the new proposal to that folder on Proposeful. If a folder doesn’t exist with that name, one will be created.

The “Client Identifier” field should be filled with your client name or email.

Set folder name and client identifier to keep your proposals organized. Both are optional.

Finally, to complete our proposal automation you can choose to send the proposal automatically by email to your client or to the sales person responsible for it. That’s useful when you need someone in your company to approve a proposal before sending it out.

As an example, we’re sending the proposal by email to someone on the sales team to be reviewed. The %PROPOSAL_URL% tag will be replaced with the link of the proposal that will be created.

Proposal automation lets you send proposals automatically by email
You can optionally send proposals by email directly to the client or to someone in your organization that needs to review them.

Click “Continue” to complete the step. Click “Test & Continue” to test the integration. This will create a new proposal on your Proposeful account with the test data so you can see if all is working.

Click Test & Continue to complete this step.

That’s it! You can now turn your integration on by clicking the button at the bottom of the screen.

Click to turn your integration on!

That’s it! Zapier will now automatically create, customize and send your proposals every time a deal reaches the selected stage on Hubspot CRM.

You now know all you need to in order to use Zapier and Proposeful to automate your proposals. You can add more steps to your integrations if you have a paid plan on Zapier and use the same ideas to integrate Proposeful to other tools you use.

Ready To Start Your Proposal Automation?

Our Zapier integration is available to all Proposeful clients. If you need help building your integration, you can create a support ticket in the Support menu of your Proposeful account.

If you’re still not using Proposeful to create your business proposals, you can start today clicking the buttons below.

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