[Video Walkthrough] All about Proposals

INTRO: WHAT IS A PRICING PAGE AND WHAT IS A PROPOSAL?

Pricing Pages allow people to see what packages and a la carte items you offer which can either be made available for anyone to see or password protected if you want people to inquire first before being able to see pricing.  Your Client (or a prospective Lead surfing your website) could then choose what they want from those pages and then fill out their information which will create a Lead and a Proposal from this Pricing Page based on what they’ve chosen.  So let’s show you how this works.

PRICING PAGE (00:44)  

We’ll start by showing you my already built Wedding Pricing Page.  You’ll see here that I have added Packages from my Package Templates we created in Class 201: Products and Packages, as well as any Add-Ons I have made available for people to choose from, which are also being pulled in from Product Templates.  I have added a header image to my Pricing Page by clicking on the [Edit] button at the top and where you see Header URL I clicked select upload and uploaded the image I wanted to use.  You’ll see if you hover over the help icon there will be tips on how to size your image before you upload for optimal viewing.  

So, right now I’m going to click on this “View Pricing Page" link to show you what this looks like from my Clients perspective.  I have a link on my website that takes my prospective Leads to this Pricing Page where they will be able to view the Packages offered and select items of interest.  Then on the next page they will see Add-Ons where they can select a la carte items.  Next they will be taken to the details step which looks similar to an Invoice but gives them an overview of all the items they have selected and how much it costs.  The last step is where they would submit their information if they haven’t been sent to this Pricing Page by you as an existing Lead or Client, which we will show you how to do now too.  We’re going to go into a Lead’s profile and pretend they have asked to see my Pricing.  I’m going to click on this [Actions] button at the top here and click on “Share Pricing" where I can choose which recipient to send my pricing to, and hopefully if we have taught you well, you can select from an existing email template which will auto fill your subject line and message with all the things you want it to show your Client when they receive it!  Just select the Pricing Page you want the link to send them to and click this little [Insert Link] button wherever you want to have their custom link injected into the email to your Client.

PROPOSALS (02:34)

For the purpose of clearly explaining the following two scenarios where you can use Proposals differently, we are going to qualify a Lead as an actual Lead record in your Pixifi account, and a prospective Lead is someone who is basically just sniffing around on your site and may or may not become an actual Lead in your system.  Just as a Lead is essentially a prospective Client, these perspective LeadS aren’t even officially LeadS in your system yet.

Now let’s imagine that one of these prospective Leads viewing your Pricing Page selected all the items they wanted and the system has now generated a Proposal for you to review to ensure that you are available and willing to accept this prospective Event.  Once they have successfully filled out the Pricing Page form and submitted it, Pixifi will create a Lead record for this person and within that new Lead, you will be able to click on their Proposals tab and see their Proposal.  So let’s click on it and take a closer look:

From this screen you can view the Proposal your Client put together when they selected the items they wanted from the Pricing Page and decide whether you are willing to book that Event or fulfil that order or not.  If you decide to move forward with booking, you can send the Lead another email with a link to their unique Proposal.  Before you send this Proposal back to them, you can set an expiration date, add a Contract Template for them to sign, add staff to the perspective Event, add a coupon code for them to use, etc.  From their perspective, when they click the link you have attached to their most recent email, they will land on the details page of their unique Proposal and they can either continue with booking/Contract signing or make changes to their order before moving forward.  Next they will select [Continue to Review Page] and they will be taken to the next screen where they can complete or verify their information, add locations if you want, apply coupons if applicable, and then click [Continue to Sign Contract].  A pop-up will ask them if they are, indeed, ready to sign their Contract because they cannot make any more changes after the Contract is signed.  If they click on yes, it will convert them to a Client, create their Event in your system, and then generate an Invoice based on everything they have chosen and use the new Client, Event, and Invoice to populate a Contract it creates from your Contract Template and finally, make a payment as long as you have set up your payment terms beforehand so they will be prompted to pay online.  

For the next scenario let’s just imagine your prospective Lead first submitted a contact form that created an official Lead record within Pixifi and now after a few correspondence emails back and forth, they are ready to book.  Instead of sending them to the Pricing Page to make them choose what they want twice, you can skip the Pricing Page and simply create and send a Proposal with all the options you want them to choose from.  To do this, go to the Lead, click on the Proposal tab and click [+ Create New Proposal].  From here you can select one of your Proposal Templates which will auto-fill all of the fields and auto-apply all of the specific settings you set up when you created your Proposal Templates (which we will get to next).  Click [√ Save] after you give it a name and you’ll see that the Contract you have attached to that Proposal Template is included, any Staff you have assigned are listed, and your Workflow has been set to auto-apply upon booking.  Payment Term Template is selected and any Event Reminders or Invoice Reminders are also selected.  Below all this information you will see all of the Packages and Add-Ons you have applied to that Proposal Template.  Since this is essentially a copy of your original Proposal Template, you can make any changes, additions, deletions, etc that you want from this screen that will dictate what displays to your Lead’s Proposal and it will not affect your original Proposal Template.  

When this Lead receives this Proposal email from you, they will be able to make whichever choices they want based on what you have decided to allow them to choose from.  Once they do this, since you have already done the work on your end to pre-approve their Event date and all their details, the rest of their user experience will be handled by the steps that they walk through on their Proposal page.  Once they submit all necessary information and the booking is complete, Pixifi will convert them to a Client, create their Event in your system, and then generate an Invoice based on everything they have chosen and you’ll see your new Client’s signed Contract under their Contracts tab.

PROPOSAL TEMPLATES: Speed it up! (06:57)

Now that you’ve seen Proposals in action, let’s create a Proposal Template so we can create Proposals for Leads on the fly instead of having to manually edit everything on the fly.  Go to TEMPLATES, PROPOSAL TEMPLATES, and then click [+ Add New Proposal Template].  The first thing you need to do is set your “Object Type (Upon Booking)" to “Event" or “Project" so that Pixifi knows whether to create a Project or an Event for your Client upon booking.  Obviously select the brand from which you will be sending this Proposal (the system will default to your primary brand) and give your Proposal Template a name.  You can use this “Visibility" toggle button to alter the visibility and if it’s private you can also set a password.  From here you can also decide whether packages are shown, whether your viewer is required to choose certain items or not, etc.  You can choose whether Add-Ons will appear, whether the user can create Locations that populate the Locations tab on their Event, add a Header Image to make it look pretty, and adjust how your Packages and Add-Ons will display to your user. There are a lot more settings that you can tweak after you create your Proposal Template so for now we’ll just hit [√ Save].  

Now you are viewing our newly created Proposal Template and at any time we can toggle the [VIEW/EDIT] button to change our settings.  Now we can set up which Contract Template we want to be populated when they decide to sign, choose from one of our Contract Templates, or we can create a brand new one on the fly by typing into the text editor and using {variables} just like you did with all of your E-mail Templates.  Hit [√ Save].  Next you can see that you are able to add Staff members that will be assigned to the newly created Event.  You can also automatically apply a Workflow Template to the Event over here and then assign Payment Terms to this Proposal so that when the Invoice is generated their Invoice balance will be split up into Payments and they will be prompted to pay whichever Payment is due first.  If you don’t use Workflow Templates you can also have it automatically send Event Reminders and Invoice Reminders manually from here.  If you do use Workflow Templates, you can skip this step because, ideally, you will have already assigned Event Reminders and Invoice Reminders within your Workflow Template, which you learned how to do in Class 301: Tasks and Workflows.

PROPOSAL FIELD SETTINGS (09:15)

On the “Review" step of the Proposal where it asks your Client to review their selections, you can also set which fields are optional and which are required.  So, if you have some holes in your Client record, you can make sure to gather that information during this step without having to take the extra step of sending a Questionnaire.  To adjust those field settings go to SETTINGS, BRANDS, and select the Proposal Fields tab.  These large toggles will collapse an entire selection if you don’t want to enable those fields to be visible to your Client.  Click [√ Update Settings] at the very bottom to save it and you’re done!

COUPON CODES (09:52)

There are times where you may want to offer a coupon code or a discount as an incentive and possibly even include an expiration date to motivate your Clients to book quickly.  If you scroll down all the way past the “Packages" and “Add-Ons" sections of your Proposal you will see where you can customize your “Coupons/Discounts."  Just click on the [+ Add Coupon] button and a pop-up window will emerge where you can name the Coupon (your Client can’t see this) and then the Coupon Code which is what you want your Client to see and type into the coupon field available on their checkout form.  We recommend you use ALL CAPS for coupon codes so that it’s easier to see and use than a mixture of upper and lower case characters.  Choose the “Type" of discount that will apply to your Client’s Invoice, whether it’s a fixed amount or a percentage of their total.  By entering the “Amount," you will use only numbers and Pixifi will automatically convert whatever you enter into a negative fixed amount or a percentage, based on the type of discount you chose above.  In this example, because it’s a Proposal, setting a maximum use amount isn’t necessary because you’re typically only sending this Proposal to one Client, but when we get into coupon codes for booking pages where many people can make purchases, this is when setting a maximum number of uses is advantageous.  

CLOSING REMARKS (11:12)

Class dismissed!  Thank you for taking the time to learn all about Pricing PageS and ProposalS.  In this video, we covered how to create and customize Pricing Pages and Proposals, send Proposals to your Leads, create Proposal Templates to speed up your entire process as well as how to customize Proposal fields and use our coupon codes feature.  In the next video, we will be showing how to use Booking Pages for time-slot based Events which could include consultations, portraits, mini-sessions, etc!