Companies purchasing advertising from media outlets expect a custom pitch and price when interacting with any outlet. This puts a lot of pressure on media sales and creative teams to first and foremost, come up with innovative ideas but also pitch them in a unique and creative way. This makes for a complex and time-consuming sales process, one that Quartz knew they could perfect with the right transparency and tracking through DocSend.

Negotiating the deal with a competitive edge

“Trying to remember what I used before DocSend is tough. I came into Quartz using DocSend and at my previous employer for nearly 5 years prior – so I’ve always been an advocate of the tool,’ recalls Ryan Froats, Director of Partnerships at Quartz.

With a focus on selling advertising to financial services and insurance, Ryan’s target customers are big on security. He found that sending attachments via email was not compatible with their heightened security and firewalls. Prior to DocSend, he tended to lean on sending a PDF as an attachment or using a file transfer app for larger files.

“With high security clients, I tended to have to lean on a number of different file transfer services prior to DocSend. Often they were never compatible with their infrastructure, resulting in frustration on both sides of the table,” said Ryan. “But with DocSend, I have no issues. It only requires them to enter an email to view our pitch.”

The world of media sales is very competitive — and it was even more so in 2020. Managing many proposals per quarter, Ryan needs to ensure he puts his time and effort into the most fruitful deals.

“’With the competition we face, we welcome any and all strategic intel we can get our hands on. I love that I can see when a client spends time with our proposal because it allows me to be more strategic in my role — helping to prioritize my time and ensure I’m focusing on the right deals,” said Ryan.

If their pitch shifts or there is an edit made, rather than having to send an updated link or file to a client, DocSend allows Ryan to update the file already out there with no client interruption. This allows for him to be more organized in his pitching approach and strategic in his follow up strategy.

“I love being notified when our proposal is viewed, forwarded on, downloaded, and even clicked back into. DocSend’s insight can help us turn a cold lead into a warm lead or a warm lead into a hot lead,” Ryan shares.

Creative proposal creation without a hiccup

Once pitches are identified by the media sales team, Quartz’s creative team then comes into the fold to create a campaign response to the client’s brief. A lot of time and creativity is put into each client proposal, therefore it’s important that the brief is buttoned up when passed over for review.

“Prior to DocSend, we used a variety of tools in order to share our creative briefs and proposals. But with these proposals there are often last minute changes made, leading us then to have to send a whole new email and link to the client. DocSend allows us to be more streamlined and organized in our client communication,” states Tara Mallen, Senior Creative Strategist at Quartz.

With DocSend, Tara is able to ensure that the client always has the latest and correct version of her campaign response without needing to follow up with additional links. Not only that, but she has insight into who has reviewed it and if they seem to prefer one creative concept over another through DocSend’s page by page analytics.

Tara shares, “I have two favorite DocSend features. First, the ability to update a presentation or document in the backend while keeping the link the same to the end user. If there happens to be an error in what we send, the client will never need to be notified. Secondly, I love that when a presentation is viewed in preview mode within DocSend, GIFs can play so that the client, at a quick glance, can grab the concept of our pitch.”