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lauren dentremont

Lauren d'Entremont

Blog manager and writer at Proposify. Formerly a magazine editor, forever a writer, and always curious. Ardent fan of trivia, true crime podcasts, cheese, and '90s figure skating.

A Canadian Business Media Awards winner, Lauren has spent 10+ years writing for and editing business and trade publications, including FranchiseCanada, FranchiseVoice, and Atlantic Books Today. In 2017, she took a detour into web development, which reinforced her love for writing, tech, and helping people in business find success.

Read more from Lauren d'Entremont:

Motivate your sales team

How to Motivate Your Sales Team Without Money

Sales team motivation is not all self-help gurus and cheesy inspirational quotes. It isn't even about fame and fortune. No, really. To maintain effort, drive, and results, your sales reps need to find and optimize motivators beyond money that work for them, especially if they’re working from home. Here's how to find the non-cash incentives that will take your sales team to the next level.

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2021 future outlook for business proposals

How To Future-Proof Your Proposals: 3 Things Your Sales Docs Need Now (and Always)

Even in a weird year like 2020, more than half of all sales teams still hit quota. What were they doing that those other teams weren’t? According to sales leaders from LinkedIn, HubSpot, and Gong, the teams that won more deals embraced three vital things in their sales process. Here’s how to use them in your proposals to reach your revenue goals in 2021 and beyond.
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a waste of time and money

How to Solve Your “Proposal Creation Takes Too Much Time” Problem Without Spending Money

Creating proposals can take too long. But does it feel like reimagining the process will take even MORE time (and possibly money)? It doesn’t have to be that way. Here’s how to get to the root of what’s slowing down the most important part of your sales cycle—the close—and fix your proposal creation workflow woes once and for all.
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coaching a sales team to the top

The Story of the Sale: How to Use Proposals in Sales Call Coaching

What do most sales calls look like? They’re a back-and-forth of questions, answers, tangents, and discovery. What do most sales call coaching sessions look like? Linear, do-this-then-that checklists that don’t fully prepare sales reps for the messy reality of a successful sales call. Here’s how Proposify’s VP of Sales uses proposals to train his salespeople on the practical skills that help them tell the story of the sale and win with it.
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a sales team making successful calls for ROI

What’s An Optimization Call and How Can It Increase Your Proposal Software ROI?

What’s the best way to get the most out of your proposal software? Having an expert to guide you through the tougher stuff, like improving your workflow, updating your template strategy, or simply customizing your settings, can make all the difference. Here’s how an optimization call with a customer success specialist can improve your proposal software ROI, plus a simple 4-step guide to what to expect on the call and what you can do to maximize the value you get from it.
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onboarding a remote client

The 3 Words Driving Our Pivot to Remote Onboarding for New Sales Hires

Like many organizations and events, Proposify is a fully remote company for the time being. But we’re also a growing company, which means that our new hire training and onboarding is now virtual too. In this post, our HR Advisor Emily weighs in on translating in-person into online and our Director of Sales Daniel talks about how he’s onboarding within a rapidly changing sales landscape, the analog tool he misses most, and what’s been working so well remotely that we’re keeping it even once we’re all back in the office together.
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sales leader with social proofs

Beyond Case Studies: How to Use More Social Proof in Your Business Proposals

What do Jennifer Aniston, McDonald’s, and chewing gum have in common? They’re all in this post. Oh, and they’re great examples of how to use social proof. Social proof builds trust. It’s why we check product reviews or ask for recommendations from our friends. So, how can you capture that crowdsourced feeling in your proposals? I’m sharing 8 ways to kindle more confidence and persuade your prospects by adding some of these 5-star examples of B2B social proof to your proposals.
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saying thank you in business

How to Say ‘Thank You’ in Business

Gracias. Merci. Danke. Obrigado. Grazie. However you say it, ‘thank you’ is one of the most important phrases in your vocabulary and an effective tool for your sales team to build relationships AND revenue. In this post, I’m expressing why you should tell your clients and customers how much you appreciate them and showing you how with a simple message formula and 8 example thank-you notes. (Including some proposal- and RFP-specific ones.)
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a remote sales teams working on proposal content

What’s the Best Proposal Content Management Strategy for Remote Sales Teams?

How can you improve collaboration in your remote sales team’s proposal creation process—without creating a free-for-all? How can you increase productivity without losing control of the end product? I’m outlining the three most common proposal content management strategies for remote teams and franchises and how to implement the only one that offers organization, scalability, and insight.
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in-person business proposal presentation

The Future of Sales Proposals is Interactive. Here's How to Do It Right

It’s a new decade. Do you know where your proposals are? They might be totally stuck in the ‘90s. And annoying your customers more than your Discman skipping while you do the Macarena. In this post, I’ll show you the five interactive tactics you need to move your sales team’s proposals firmly into the 2020s and impress today’s prospects. Plus a look at the tech that got us here and where Proposify co-founder and CEO Kyle Racki thinks proposals are headed next.
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sales staying out of the dark

Deals Going Dark? 6 Reasons Why Your Sales Proposals Don’t Get the Job Done and How to Fix Them

Are your proposals an afterthought? Are they a bland, one-page chock full of pricing details designed to just ‘get the job done’? A bloated sales document so copied and pasted together that no one actually knows what’s supposed to be in it anymore? Or are more subtle issues with your sales team’s proposals causing deals to go dark? Here are six signs your proposals might be the weak link in your sales cycle and what you can do about it.
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linkedin guide for sales

The Busy Sales Team’s Guide to Optimized LinkedIn Content [Infographic]

LinkedIn is 2.7x more effective for generating leads than other social media channels. But if your LinkedIn social selling strategy stops at Navigator and InMail, your sales team might be wasting their time. In this infographic guide, Team Proposify shares the tips and tricks we used to increase our total LinkedIn engagement 3000% by quickly creating and promoting more optimized content and building more real connections.
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how to create proposals that both sales and marketing love

How to Create Business Proposals Your Sales AND Marketing Teams Love [Infographic]

Can your proposal process really have it all? You could produce a gorgeous, fully designed proposal—that takes forever to create. Okay, so you send out quick, generic proposals—but they don’t have the power to persuade prospects. And insight into where proposals are in your pipeline? Forget it. But it’s easier than you think to put together proposals that your whole team AND your prospects love. This infographic shows you what you need.
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how to create digital electronic signatures online

Why & How You Should Use Electronic Signatures to Close Proposals Faster

Customer expectations are changing. Have your proposals? If your sales team’s close rate still counts on every client printing, signing, scanning, and sending back your proposals, your proposal sign-off process is stuck in the ‘90s. Here’s why creating and using online signatures is the simple, modern way to close deals faster, plus I take a look at the top electronic signature apps available today.
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the sales discovery call that goes beyond data and beats ai

The Discovery Call Skill That Goes Beyond Data and Beats AI

Discovery calls are crucial to sales success. They’re a first impression, a qualification conversation, and a fact-finding mission all rolled into one. And there is a lot of machine learning and data out there on how to conduct a great sales discovery call: talk time and question cadence and all that. But that’s the quantitative side. What about the quality of the call? How can you help your team to improve it? This post dials into the human aspect of conducting productive prospect interviews.
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hidden benefits of proposal software

8 Hidden Benefits of Proposal Software

Online business proposal software is the fastest way to get your clients to say yes to your proposals. Then there are the metrics, the pipeline views, the interactive fee tables, the in-proposal chat… but you probably know about these big, overarching features that make using proposal software to create and send your proposals great. So, how else does it improve the sales process for thousands of world-class closers around the world? Here are eight additional positive effects of using proposal software that you might not have considered.
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sales operations questions

11 Key Questions Every Successful Sales Ops Leader Must Answer

In sales operations, all the data in the world isn’t going to help if you never take action on it. It’s easy to get caught up in analysis paralysis when you chase facts and figures and insight down every line of questioning. Like tracking hundreds KPIs, there’s no way that any of your questions can be considered ‘key’ when all of them are. Here’s how to optimize your sales operations questions so you can keep implementing, not just investigating.
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b2b online customer reviews

8 Things Almost Everyone Gets Wrong About B2B Online Customer Reviews

“Oh, that company? I used their product a year ago. It was…” If you’re on the edge of your seat waiting for the payoff of that last sentence, you’re not alone. Customer reviews are one of the most popular ways for prospects to gain insight about what it’s like to work with your business. But how can you make sure your reviews are working in your favour—even negative ones? Here are eight common mistakes sales organizations make with online reviews and how you can turn them into the star of your sales process.
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the hidden cost of sales collaboration

The Hidden Costs of Collaboration: Proposals, Productivity, and Slack

Slack is a powerful business collaboration tool. If used incorrectly, however, dangers lurk within its emoji-filled channels that can take your sales team from :rocket: :dart: :champagne: to :chart_with_downwards_trend: :person_facepalming:‍♀️ :shit:. Here’s how to keep Slack from killing your close rate AND strengthen your proposal collaboration process at the same time.
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Unlimited Vacation Policies Don’t Work. Here’s What to Do Instead

People don’t take enough vacation time. Salespeople want unlimited vacation, but that type of policy doesn’t work either. How can you encourage a good amount of rest and relaxation for your busy, goal-driven sales team? Here’s what we learned from implementing and then scrapping an unlimited vacation policy here at Proposify and how you can create a sales team culture that respects the value of a little R&R.
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how can sales managers reinforce ethical behaviour

What does a sleazy sales rep look like in 2019? [Infographic]

Is 2019 the year of the scammer? It sure feels like it, with real-time unravelings including author Dan Mallory and the college admissions scandal, and documentaries deep-diving into past deceptions like Fyre Festival, boy band impresarios, and Elizabeth Holmes’ Theranos. Even phone swindles and internet phishing are making a comeback. What does this mean for sales teams? Building trust with prospects is more important than ever.
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delinquent invoices and overdue receivables

Should Sales Reps Be Responsible For Overdue Receivables?

It’s a scene everyone wants to avoid: your sales reps work hard to close deals but when it’s time to pay up the customer goes MIA. Should your sales reps ever get involved in collecting on these delinquent accounts? How can your team help keep your company’s cash flow moving? Here’s how to handle delinquent accounts, plus 6 ways to prevent them in the first place.
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demos that convert

Steal This TV Show Trick to Design Sales Demos That Convert

If you want your sales team’s product demos to be a must-see for prospects, look no further than your television. Yes, I’m serious—the telly, the boob tube, the idiot box, the small screen, your streaming device. Whatever you want to call it, it’s the inspiration your demos need to tell your product’s story, make your prospects the hero, and close more deals.
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