Proposals

Proposal Settings

In the Control Panel in ServiceMinder a section labeled Proposal Settings can be found. Herein you can tailor Proposal behavior to meet your organizations needs.

Under Payments and Deposits select the Payment Plan Default. This will include your default payment plans on each new proposal.

For the Mosquito Squad workflow, you will mostly want to alter the section labeled Communications whereby you can use these settings as a guide. Note, the FAQ labeled Communications has some thoughts on how frequently to send email reminders on open Proposals.

At the very bottom of the settings is a table that allows for a list of reasons proposals are not accepted by your potential customers. Some of these are added by the brand.

Creating Proposals

Creating an individual proposal, and bulk proposals are quite different processes. 

Individual Proposals

From Contact details, select the box Proposal. From there, you may choose from a variety of options based on what you are selling.

• The notes boxes are covered in a separate FAQ.
• Below the blue Option bar are where you choose the service to offer. Select a template or service.
  • A template is a pre-defined set of a Service and Parts/Add On(s). These are managed in Parts/Add Ons in a button on the top right.
  • A service is the main and only reason for going to the property. You may select any active service. The pencil to the right of the description offers the ability to change the price. This should be infrequently used.
  • After choosing a service, you may add part(s). Typing in the part field will produce a list of valid parts for that service. This can be additional items to add to the service, with prices, or can be for discounts.
  • At Mosquito Squad, we always require a payment plan. This keeps proposals from being scheduled but never paid. Proposals may be accepted by internal staff without a payment plan (check payers), but remember to set a task up to make sure the consumer pays.
  • Complete the balance of the options below.
  • Dates may be moved by dragging with the mouse. Holding the shift key down when you drag drags the series.
• Options once done: Send—email and save, Print—print and save, Schedule—go to invoice directly, Save—save but don’t send, Cancel—back out and do not save.

Bulk Proposals

The generation of Bulk proposals is similar to working with one contact, but it is for groups of contacts and has many options. Working in “reverse” order works well—begin from the end of the process.

1. Set the proposal options in the control panel. Sometimes, when renewing a season you may lengthen the Expires After time.
2. Insure your geozones are balanced by the days in your cycle (usually 3 weeks). It is these geozones that will be used to assign the dates in this process, so make any tweaks here before you begin.
3. Verify any services and parts you plan on using in the proposals are set as you wish. 
4. Confirm your route schedule properly links your services to a calendar. If you are creating proposals for a new season, create that season.
5. Create a template for each bundle of service and part(s) you wish to offer. Remember, if you use the Option field it makes that part opt-out unless the customer selects it, and if you don't use it is is opt-in. Make the Option field, if using it, descriptive, e.g., tick tube option.
6. Prepare your payment options, taking special note to update any future dates for plans to begin. Likewise, review any offer codes you plan on using, checking expiration dates carefully.
7. Prepare your ad hoc email template of type proposal. This is the creative and offer code a customer sees. Keep it graphical and responsive on a mobile device by copying one that works well with current branding and changing the body. Marketing might help you if you need something specific. Note: Ad Hoc templates are available for use ONLY under the type. For instance, if you are working on a list of Proposals, the type of template should be Proposal, if you are working from a list of Contacts, it should be of type Contact. 
8. Generate the tags you will need to create your list. For instance, if you are sending to All-Natural customers, have a Tag called All-Natural and attach it to the desired contacts. Typical groups created with tags are service group (all-natural), geographic groups (lake customers), short season (vs full), exclude from bulk quotes (special pricing and other exceptions). Use the category Cancelled Customer to permanently mark someone from not receiving a proposal or marketing material ever. This part of the process should be ongoing in your office and take the most time. 
9. From the Contacts grid (list), use the Tag(s) to filter your list of contacts. Then, from the far top right, in the Actions dropdown select Generate Proposals. 
10. From the Generate screen, you will not need to touch the Criteria if your filters are done well. Select the template (from the ones created above in the parts section. Select the route schedule. Optionally, repeat this process for a second proposal to be bundled with the first. 
11. Select a payment plan. In the Mosquito Squad model, it is recommend that you require a payment plan for the customer to select online. Check payers must contact you for a proposal to be accepted without a payment.
12. You may use the Deliver option to launch an email campaign, but generally many rounds of bulk proposals are created (using tags and filtering) and then launched as a common email campaign at the end of the process, e.g., Fall 2020 campaign which includes all proposals created. To launch a common email campaign from groups of proposals, filter in the proposals grid for all the proposals to include in a campaign (by date(s)), and then from the Actions dropdown, choose Launch Email Campaign.
13. Test, test, test. Create a group of three contacts with your real email and phone. Generate a bulk proposal for them, and actually send it as an email campaign. Pro tip: before launching proposals, sort them by PRICE, and review each price-group. This is an easy way to catch mistakes, e.g, zero prices for a property out of range on a pricing band. This is usually a tag error that is easily fixed. Should you find that a set of proposals is improper/wrong, via the proposal grid sort for that group (date?), and then via the top right Actions dropdown select update and pick today. This will decline all proposals for that date and you can start over.

From the bulk generate list, folks are excluded who has an open proposal or an invoice on the same route schedule for the same service. The intent is to minimize the chances that contacts will get multiple proposals for the exact same services in order to have more accurate close rates.

Bulk declining proposals may be completed by listing from the proposal grid all proposals you wish to decline, e.g., by date, type of service, etc. Select the dropdown in the top right and Update. From there you select the date to decline them and apply. 

Bulk Accepting or Invoicing of proposals may be done in a similar manner as bulk declining. Use the proposal grid to select the invoices to accept (convert to an invoice). Note, you may adjust the invoice date in this step, e.g., to a future date.  Bulk accepting proposals will NOT accept any optional Add Ons, even if the checkbox on the proposal top is check "accept options".

Test, test, test. Use the Limit field to try a few before converting your entire database.

Undo a Declined Proposal

At times, a proposal might be declined by mistake, or a customer might change their mind. You can use this little-know 'clear' button to return a proposal from declined to open.

Printing Bulk Proposals that have not been viewed online.

New sales can be created by sending a printed open proposal to folks that have not viewed them.

To do this, go to one of your test contacts with an open proposal and print it. Verify the format of the printed form is to you liking, and that it fits in your window envelopes. If not, go to https://serviceminder.io/PrintMessages, select the Proposal template and modify it.

Next, go to the Open Proposals grid (list) in the left menu. It should default to the Open and un-filtered list. Click the Create Filter button below the grid, Filter Builder will pop up. Click the grey +, then Accepted Date and drop down to “Last Viewed”. Click Equals, and select “Is Blank”. This will list all Proposals that have never been viewed.

Finally, from the top right select the Actions box, and from the dropdown, select Print, and Print from .pdf. You may then output the file to your printer (if less than 500), or save it and have a printing company print them for you. Stuff and mail.

See the Reminders FAQ for information on reminders in SM for proposals.