Sell your products, sell your services, but never your brand identity

“Everyone writes their own stuff in their own font, their own style, using their own colors and layouts. Information about products and services gets missed..."

At a recent conference, I spoke with a sales director who expressed a frustration I see all the time.

“The information and documents we send to our clients are inconsistent in layout and messaging,” he said. “Everyone writes their own stuff in their own font, their own style, using their own colors and layouts. Information about products and services gets missed. Plus, pricing info sometimes gets changed when it shouldn't.”

Does your company also struggle with this issue? If so, then this article is for you. I'll show you how easy it is for everyone across your company to deliver memorable, on-brand sales documents that amplify your brand identity and close the deal.

Sales documents: pitfalls to avoid

In sales, brand consistency helps your business stand out and build trust. By staying consistent, you avoid misrepresentation, confusion, and miscommunication, while increasing brand awareness that can drive more leads.

Yet, brand inconsistency in sales information and documents remains a challenge for sales and commercial teams. By design, sales teams move very quickly, and finding and following layout and style guidelines is not always top of mind. They know that connecting the customer to the brand will help them demonstrate value, but they also know that time is of the essence. 

By nature, salespeople are also independent-minded, and might feel that their own personal “flair” helps them sell. Unfortunately, this can result in a number of issues for sales:

• Repetition. Sales reps spend a lot of time writing the same thing over and over again, in different ways. When everyone on the sales team works in this manner, brand identity and messaging, and the credibility they create, is lost. That impacts the building of trust, which every quote you deliver should be trying to achieve.  
• Discrepancies. Each member of the team writes their own content in a format that doesn't adhere to the company's brand guidelines. Client information may be distorted or missing crucial details, creating discrepancies. Each customer receives different information about the product or service. Ultimately, the company's brand identity becomes diluted and inconsistent across documents, weakening its impact.
• Attention. A lack of consistency across sales documents sends a powerful message; poor planning, hasty writing, and a lack of attention to customer and prospect needs. Inconsistencies can also lead to ambiguity and confusion, which can reflect poorly on your organization and quickly erode the value you are trying to communicate.  
• Control. Without guidelines, it’s easy to lose control over what your sales team actually sells. The result can confuse potential buyers about your products and services, hurting sales. In addition, positioning a product or service incorrectly impacts delivery, potentially reducing success and satisfaction. 

Can you avoid these issues? Yes, with the right tool in-hand. A proposal creation tool with a built-in graphic layout and content library that guides document creation and automatically formats your sales documents to reflect the benefits of your corporate brand.

XaitProposal does exactly this.

How XaitProposal ensures brand consistency in your sales documents (and helps you win more business)

An essential part of XaitProposal is a Multiple Choice Questionnaire (MCQ). Think of this "intelligent" questionnaire as a checklist of the content and images you should include in your proposal.

Let's imagine you’re writing a quote or proposal using XaitProposal. To be clear, various details about your product or service need to be included. Using the bespoke questionnaire as a guide, you select relevant bits of product or service info, without having to search and filter content for relevancy. The software takes care of that.

Additionally, you don’t have to rewrite any information. Just check the boxes of what to include and that product/service text is dropped into the proposal template. Need to make a change? You can still tailor your content. Meanwhile, XaitProposal automatically lays out and formats your document so your export is fast, on-brand, and formatted automatically.  

Respond quickly with sales documents that back your value proposition with your brand

Depending on the product, service, use case, or client, different divisions within your business have different needs. One might be writing up a quote, while another is responding with a comprehensive proposal. Either way, they look to the standard shared drive or content repository for information. 

Unfortunately, it takes time to find something relevant, and the results are often inconsistent and outdated. More time is spent editing or rewriting content, and in some cases, it can take days for your quote or proposal to reach a prospective client. That means less time is spent on brand guidelines or a longer wait that can quickly erode trust. 

With XaitProposal, you eliminate multiple time-consuming steps, like searching for relevant information and formatting. In just a few short minutes, you can deliver a highly professional, on-brand and value-driven sales document. Your response is quick, with all of the necessary information, presented in an easy-to-read, easy-to-understand document. Not only does this put you in a good light in the eyes of decision makers, it keeps the conversation flowing forward. 

In other words, there's no need for your sales team to reinvent the wheel for each sales document they deliver.

Related article: Why Guided Proposal Creation Is the Key to Standing Out in a Competitive Market

3 international companies that rely on XaitProposal for branding consistency

1. Ginger CEBTP

By using XaitProposal, Ginger CEBTP, a specification engineering company, has saved time, improved the quality of their proposals, and maintained their brand identity.

According to Coralie Herrmann, the company’s Project Manager, Business Development Department, using XaitProposal has helped them create visually consistent proposals that both employees and customers love:

“It makes us stand out! The cover page, in particular, is very attractive. Our proposals are immediately recognized thanks to the cover.”

Find out more in the customer success story.


2. Colas

Construction and maintenance company Colas has been able to produce documents that follow the company's brand guidelines across all divisions by using XaitProposal. They now have harmonious proposals from one division to another, says Jennifer Flahaut, Engineering Department:

“Our proposals are more uniform, and the layout is similar from division to division. That’s a real plus for the company image.” 

Find out more in the customer success story.

3. Samsic

Samsic, a global services company, has strengthened its local brand identity with XaitProposal. Each country has local proposal templates with group content available. Additionally, Samsic's clients find its proposals easy to read and understand due to its strong anchor points and refined graphics.

Find out more in the customer success story.

Make your brand identity outshine your competition

Maintaining a consistent brand identity across all of your sales documents is crucial in today's competitive business environment. It evokes intent, communicates loyalty and builds trust, while differentiating your offer. 

When you use a proposal creation tool like XaitProposal, your company quickly delivers consistency in what you pitch, solve, and deliver. You'll impress existing clients and gain new ones and win more business.

Don't let inconsistent brand identity hold you back from reaching your full potential with your sales documents. Embrace guided proposal creation and create on-brand sales documents at scale across your organization. 

Related article: Version Control Nightmares in Proposal Creation