# Proposal & Quote Generation: done-for-you AI automation by BufferSol

> A done-for-you proposal and quote generation automation is an AI agent that drafts proposals, statements of work and quotes from what was agreed with the buyer. It reads the deal in your CRM, call notes and requirements, picks the right template, products and price book entries, writes the scope, and routes discounts or custom terms for approval before sending for e-signature. BufferSol builds it on your own CRM, documents and pricing.

- Canonical: https://buffersoltech.com/done-for-you/automations/proposal-quote-generation
- Industries: Manufacturing & Distribution (Manufacturers)
- Provider: BufferSol Technologies (New York; serving the US, UK, Ireland, Canada and the EU)
- Timeline: live in 3 to 6 weeks
- Pricing: quoted after a short scoping call

## Accurate proposals and quotes drafted from the call, not rebuilt from scratch

**Who it is for:** For B2B sales teams, agencies, IT and engineering services firms and manufacturers that send dozens of proposals or quotes a month, each pieced together from old documents, spreadsheets and price lists.

### Signs you need it
- Reps start each proposal by copying the last one and hunting for things to change.
- Quotes go out with old prices, wrong product codes or a previous client's name.
- Discount approvals happen in Slack threads and nobody can find them later.
- Proposals take days to send after a good call.
- Templates in your proposal tool break or drift, and each rep keeps a private version.

## Business outcomes
- **Faster turnaround after the call.** A complete first draft is ready shortly after the meeting, built from the deal, the call and your approved content.
- **Correct prices and terms.** Line items, prices and terms come from your price book and contract library, and anything outside policy is flagged before it reaches the buyer.
- **Approvals on record.** Discounts, custom terms and non-standard scope go through a clear approval path, with every decision stored on the deal.

## How it works today
1. After a good call, the rep finds a similar past proposal in Google Drive or SharePoint and makes a copy.
2. They rewrite the scope from their notes, swap names and logos, and paste in case studies.
3. They build the pricing table from a spreadsheet or the CRM price book, adjusting discounts by hand.
4. They ask a manager or finance in Slack or email to approve the discount or terms.
5. They load the final document into PandaDoc, DocuSign or a PDF and send it, then update the CRM.

Hidden costs:
- Days pass between the buyer saying yes in principle and seeing a proposal.
- Errors in prices, scope or names reach buyers and lead to rework or lost margin.
- Approvals are informal, so leaders cannot see which discounts were given or why.

## How it works done for you
1. When a deal reaches the proposal stage, the agent reads the CRM opportunity, contacts, products discussed, call transcripts and any RFP or requirements documents.
2. It picks the right template for the product, region and deal size, and drafts the executive summary, scope, deliverables, timeline and assumptions in your house style.
3. It builds the quote from your price book in HubSpot, Salesforce CPQ or your ERP, applies standard discounts and taxes, and checks margins and product rules.
4. It adds matching case studies, security answers and legal terms from an approved content library, and marks anything it could not source for the rep.
5. Discounts above policy, custom terms or unusual scope are routed to the right approver in Slack, Teams or the CRM with the reason; nothing is sent until approved.
6. The rep reviews the draft, makes final edits and sends it through PandaDoc or DocuSign. The agent tracks opens and signatures, and nudges the rep when follow-up is due.
7. Each version, approval and price change is logged on the opportunity.

## What changes for the team
- **Account executive.** Today: Rebuilds proposals from old copies and waits on informal approvals. Done for you: Reviews a complete draft, adjusts the story for the buyer and sends it the same day.
- **Sales manager or deal desk.** Today: Approves discounts in chat threads with little context. Done for you: Approves exceptions with the deal, margin and reason in one place, and sees patterns across deals.
- **Finance or legal.** Today: Finds non-standard terms after the contract is signed. Done for you: Sees and approves every non-standard term before it reaches the buyer.

## KPIs we measure
- **Time to proposal:** Hours from the deal reaching the proposal stage to the proposal being sent, from CRM and e-signature timestamps.
- **Quote errors:** Proposals revised after sending because of wrong prices, items or names, tracked monthly.
- **Discount approval time:** Time from approval request to decision, from the approval log.
- **Discount levels:** Average discount by product, rep and segment, compared before and after launch.
- **Proposal win rate:** Signed proposals divided by proposals sent, tracked by segment and template.

## Industry data
- 62%: of survey respondents struggle with too much time spent searching for information in their workday (Microsoft Work Trend Index, 2023) ([Microsoft WorkLab](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/worklab/work-trend-index/will-ai-fix-work))

## Systems it connects to
Salesforce CPQ, HubSpot, PandaDoc, DocuSign, Google Drive, SharePoint, NetSuite, QuickBooks Online, Gong, Slack

## Guardrails
- Prices come only from your price book; manual price overrides and discounts above policy need a named approver.
- Legal terms come from your approved clause library, and any edited clause is flagged to legal.
- The agent never sends a proposal to a buyer; the rep sends it after review.
- Every version, price change and approval is logged on the opportunity and stored with the document.
- Client information from one deal is never reused in another client's draft.

## What teams say about this work
- Users of a popular proposal tool say platform updates broke many of their saved templates and that editing documents before sending for signature is harder than it should be. ([Trustpilot](https://www.trustpilot.com/review/pandadoc.com))
- Reviewers of another proposal platform report that a change to one template can alter others, that the system is often slow, and that it ended up costing more time than it saved. ([Trustpilot](https://www.trustpilot.com/review/proposify.com))
- Salesforce found that reps spend most of their week on tasks other than selling, such as deal management and data entry. ([Salesforce](https://www.salesforce.com/news/stories/sales-research-2023/))
- Workers report spending too much of their day searching for information, such as the latest price list, case study or contract clause. ([Microsoft WorkLab](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/worklab/work-trend-index/will-ai-fix-work))

## Delivery: live in 3 to 6 weeks
1. Week 1: discovery, access and a baseline of today's numbers.
2. Weeks 2–3: build the agents and connect your systems, with your rules and approvals.
3. Weeks 3–5: test on your real history, then pilot on live work with your team reviewing.
4. Weeks 4–6: staged go-live, training, dashboards and handover.

## Executive Ask questions for this workflow
- Which proposals sent this month are still unsigned, and what discounts did they include?
- What is our average discount by product this quarter, and who approved the largest ones?
- How long does it take us to send a proposal after the first call?

## Frequently asked questions
### Does this replace PandaDoc, DocuSign or our CPQ?
No. Those tools handle document hosting, signatures and pricing rules well. The agent does the work around them: reading the deal and the call, writing the scope, pulling the right content, building the quote from your price book and routing approvals. The final document still goes out through the tools your buyers already know.

### How do you stop it from making up scope or prices?
Prices come only from your price book or ERP, and scope comes from the CRM, call transcripts and your approved content library. When the agent cannot find a source for something, it leaves a highlighted placeholder for the rep rather than guessing. Every draft is reviewed by the rep, and exceptions go through approval.

### Can it answer RFPs and security questionnaires?
Yes, for the parts you have answered before. The agent matches each question to approved answers in your content library, drafts responses, and flags new or changed questions for the right subject expert. Over time, approved answers are added back to the library so each RFP takes less effort.

### How long does it take to set up?
Most proposal and quote builds go live in 3 to 6 weeks. We gather your best recent proposals, clean up templates and the price book, build the content library and approval rules, connect the CRM and e-signature tool, and test on recent deals before reps start using it.

### What does it cost?
It is quoted after a short scoping call. The price depends on how many proposal types and templates you use, the state of your price book, the CRM, CPQ or ERP involved, and whether RFP answering is included. You get a fixed scope before any build work starts.