Proposal template

CRM implementation proposal template

A CRM proposal template for setting up HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive or Zoho for a client, in seven short sections: what they told you, the setup and the data move, what's included, one fixed price and the next steps. For agencies and HubSpot partners. Read it here or get it as a Word file and a PDF.

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Michael Koper
By Michael Koper, founder of Nusii Updated
The CRM implementation proposal template: the cover and the investment page with one fixed price of $7,500
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On this page
  1. What to include
  2. The template
  3. A filled-in example
  4. See it as your client will
  5. What to charge
  6. After you send it
  7. Word and PDF
  8. Questions

What should a CRM implementation proposal include?

A CRM implementation proposal should repeat what the client told you about their leads and their pipeline, the result you'll both measure, how the setup, the data move and the training run, what's included and who owns the account and the data, one clear price and how to say yes. The template below has a section for each.

  1. 1 Introduction
  2. 2 What we heard
  3. 3 How we'll work
  4. 4 Results for teams like yours
  5. 5 What's included
  6. 6 Investment
  7. 7 Next steps

The CRM implementation proposal template, section by section

Copy one section or the whole thing. Under each section: what it's for, and one thing we've learned from the proposals sent with Nusii.

[Yellow] you write [Green] Nusii fills in when you send it

1. Introduction

The whole plan in two sentences, with the time and the price, and who you are. The owner and the sales manager both read it, often without having been on the call. Working on your own? Write "I" instead of "we".

Hi [Client first name],

Thanks for the call on [date of your call]. You told us that [the problem in one sentence, in the client's words, such as "leads from the website end up in three inboxes, and some never get an answer"].

In short: we set up [HubSpot] for your [sales team of six], move your [contacts and open deals] out of [a spreadsheet and Pipedrive], and train the team on their own deals. It takes about [eight] weeks and costs a fixed [$7,500].

[Your agency] is a [HubSpot Solutions Partner] in [city]. We've set up [HubSpot] for [service businesses with small sales teams] since [year].

[Your name]
[Your role], [Your agency]

About a third of first views in Nusii are on a phone (32.7%, July to September 2026), so the time and the price go on the first screen. Agencies' proposals got their first look in a median of 54 minutes (3,782 proposals, November 2025 to October 2026).

2. What we heard

Shows you listened, goes one level deeper than what the client told you, and puts a number on what fixing it is worth. Only you can write this one: replace the examples with your client's words.

Each goal below answers something you told us. If we got anything wrong, tell us before you accept and we'll fix it.

  • You said [leads from the website land in three inboxes, and some never get an answer]. We'll set it up so [every web form, email and phone lead goes into one place, with an owner and a task to call back within one working day].
  • You said [you can't see what's in the pipeline without asking each salesperson]. We'll build [one pipeline with stages that match how you sell, and a dashboard you can open on Monday morning].
  • You said [the team tried a CRM two years ago and stopped using it after a few months]. We'll keep [the fields to the ones the team needs, connect it to the inboxes and calendars they already use, and train them on their own deals].

What we found: [what you saw when you looked further than the client did, with a number, such as "15 of the last 120 web leads never got a reply, and a third of the 4,000 contacts in the spreadsheet are duplicates"].

What stays: [what already works and won't change, such as "your Outlook inboxes and your quoting tool"].

What success looks like: [a result you can both check, with a number and a date, such as "every new lead answered within one working day, and every open deal in the pipeline, by April"], measured in [HubSpot's reports]. We'll go through the numbers together 60 days after launch.

What it's worth: you get about [40] leads a month and win about [one in five]. Answering the [five] a month that slip through today would be about [one] more job a month, at an average of [$5,000]. At your [30%] margin that's about [$1,500] a month, so the setup pays for itself in about [five] months.

If nothing changes: [what the client said happens if this doesn't go ahead, such as "the spreadsheet keeps growing, and when a salesperson leaves, their deals and contacts leave with them"].

Ask what works today. "Don't wreck your client's product or service in the process of building a new one," says our 2015 book on proposals. A CRM the sales team doesn't recognize is a CRM they stop using, so write down what stays the same.

3. How we'll work

The plan in stages, what the client signs off at each one, and honest timing. The first line says why the cheaper route won't do the job. If you didn't talk about one, delete it.

We talked about [setting up HubSpot yourselves with HubSpot's own guides]. It would cost less, but [you told us nobody on the team has time to clean up 4,000 contacts, and that's where the last setup stalled]. So here's the plan. You sign off each stage before the next one starts.

  1. Weeks [1 and 2]: discovery. Two workshops with [the owner and two of your salespeople]: how a lead comes in, who calls it, and how a deal is won or lost. You get a written setup plan: the pipeline stages, the fields, who sees what, and what moves over from [the spreadsheet and Pipedrive].
  2. Weeks [3 and 4]: setup. We set up [HubSpot Sales Hub Professional] to that plan: [one pipeline with six stages], [about 20] fields, permissions for [six] users, their email and calendars, and [your website forms].
  3. Weeks [5 and 6]: moving your data. We clean and de-duplicate [about 4,000 contacts, 900 companies and 60 open deals], move them in, and check [50] of them with you before [Pipedrive] is switched off.
  4. Week [7]: automation and reports. [Each new lead assigned to a salesperson with a task to call back, a reminder for any deal that sits still for two weeks, a sales dashboard and a weekly pipeline email].
  5. Week [8]: training and launch. [Two] recorded sessions where the team works on their own deals, a one-page guide, and the switch on [date]. Then 30 days of help with questions and fixes.

When you'll see results: faster replies to new leads in [the first two weeks] after launch. A pipeline report you can trust takes about [a month] of the team logging their deals.

"Why not do the project internally?" is a question Kai Davis suggests asking the client, in our 2015 book on proposals. For a CRM, the cheaper route is the platform's own setup guides. Name it and its catch in the first line, and the client sees you weighed it.

4. Results for teams like yours

Short proof for the people who weren't on the call: what changed for teams like this one. Use real numbers from a real client, or leave this section out.

  • [Past client], [what they do and how big the team is]: [what changed, with a number and a timeframe, such as "replies to web leads went from three days to the same day"].
  • [Past client], [what they do and how big the team is]: [what changed, with a number and a timeframe].

"[A one-line quote from one of those clients.]" [Name, role, company]

Proposals to a client who had accepted one before were accepted 63% of the time in Nusii, against 47% for a first proposal from the same senders (July to September 2026). A new client hasn't seen your work yet. One result from a team of the same size does more than a list of certifications.

5. What's included

Draws the line between what you'll do and what you won't, says what you need from the client, and what they keep. CRM projects run late on the client's data and the team's time more than on anything else, so both get a date.

Included

  • Two discovery workshops and a written setup plan
  • [HubSpot] set up for [six] users: [one] pipeline, [about 20] fields, permissions, email and calendars
  • [Your website forms] connected, so new leads come in on their own
  • Your data cleaned, de-duplicated and moved from [the spreadsheet and Pipedrive]
  • [Lead assignment, follow-up tasks and stalled-deal reminders]
  • [A sales dashboard and a weekly pipeline email]
  • [Two] recorded training sessions and a one-page guide
  • 30 days of help after launch

Not included

  • Your [HubSpot] subscription, about [$600] a month for [six] users, and any one-time onboarding fee [HubSpot] charges for your plan. You pay [HubSpot] directly.
  • [More pipelines, a second hub or connecting your accounting software], quoted before we start
  • Data from more sources, or more than [5,000] records, at [$150] an hour, quoted first
  • Help after the first 30 days. If you want it, we'll quote a monthly plan at launch, and you decide then, not now.

What we need from you: [an export of the spreadsheet and Pipedrive] by [date], admin access to [HubSpot and your website], one person who can make decisions about the setup, and [two hours] of each salesperson's time for training. The launch date depends on these: for every day they slip, launch slips a day.

What you keep: the [HubSpot] account and all your data are in your name from day one. We work as users you can remove at any time. The setup plan, the guide and the training recordings are yours.

"You will almost never be the only party responsible for the outcome of a project," as Philip Morgan and Jonathan Stark put it in our 2015 book on proposals. On a CRM project, the client's part is the export of their data and two hours of each salesperson's time.

6. Investment

One fixed price in five lines, a way out after the first one, and how it's paid. These are example prices; the table further down shows what others charge.

Discovery and setup plan

$1,500

Two workshops and the written setup plan. If the plan doesn't convince you, tell us within a week of getting it: you pay for discovery, you keep the plan, and the rest doesn't start.

CRM setup

$2,000

[HubSpot] set up for [six] users, with their email, calendars and your website forms.

Moving your data

$1,500

From [the spreadsheet and Pipedrive], cleaned and checked with you. [Nothing to move? Delete this line.]

Automation and reports

$1,500

Lead assignment, follow-up tasks, stalled-deal reminders and the pipeline reports.

Training, launch and 30 days of help

$1,000

Two recorded sessions, a guide, the switch-over and 30 days of help. Paid in three parts: discovery when you accept, half the rest at the setup plan, the rest at launch.

Total: $7,500

Proposals of $5,000 to $15,000 were accepted 50.2% of the time in Nusii, about the same as those of $1,000 to $5,000 (50.9%, July to September 2026). The way out after discovery is for the client who isn't sure yet: they risk $1,500, not $7,500.

7. Next steps

Tells the client exactly what to do to say yes, what happens after, and when you'll call.

  1. If the plan works for you, accept and sign this proposal.
  2. We'll send the first invoice for [$1,500], book the two discovery workshops for [dates within the next two weeks], and send you a short list of what we need: [the exports, admin access and the names of the people in the workshops].

I'll call you on [a day three to five days from now] to answer any questions. If you have any before then, call me on [phone number] or reply to the email this proposal came with.

Agencies' proposals got their yes in a median of 3.9 days in Nusii, and 62.2% of the yeses came within a week (3,782 proposals, November 2025 to October 2026). A call three to five days after you send it lands while most clients are still deciding.

A CRM proposal example, filled in

Two sections of the template above with a client's words in the brackets, so you can see how it reads when it's done. Thistlewood Mechanical, a commercial heating and air conditioning contractor, is made up, and so are its numbers.

No more lost leads at Thistlewood Mechanical by April

What we heard

  • You said leads from the website and the service line land in three inboxes, and some never get an answer. We'll set it up so every web form, email and phone lead goes into HubSpot, with an owner and a task to call back within one working day.
  • You said you can't see which quotes are out without asking each of your four account managers. We'll build one pipeline with stages that match how you quote and win a service contract, and a dashboard you can open on Monday morning.
  • You said the team tried a CRM two years ago and gave up after a few months. We'll keep the fields to the ones the team needs, connect it to their Outlook inboxes and calendars, and train them on their own deals.

What success looks like: every new lead answered within one working day, and every open quote in the pipeline, by April, measured in HubSpot's reports.

What it's worth: you get about 40 leads a month and win about one in five. Answering the five a month that slip through today would be about one more contract a month, at an average of $5,000. At your 30% margin that's about $1,500 a month, so the setup pays for itself in about five months.

If nothing changes: the spreadsheet keeps growing, and when an account manager leaves, their quotes and contacts leave with them.

Investment

Discovery and setup plan

$1,500

CRM setup

$2,000

Moving your data

$1,500

Automation and reports

$1,500

Training, launch and 30 days of help

$1,000

Total: $7,500

See it as your client will

Every page of the PDF, printed by Nusii. Sent as a link, it's one scrolling page on any device: your client accepts with one button and signs with their name.

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Open the live preview

The template in Nusii, the way your client will see it. It opens in a new tab.

What to charge for a CRM implementation

What setting up a CRM costs, from the pages we could check at the source, almost all of them HubSpot partners. The template's example, $7,500 for six users, one pipeline and a data move, sits inside the range one partner gives for a small-business setup and at the bottom of the ranges that include a data migration and training. Your client also pays the CRM itself, and on HubSpot's Professional plans a one-time onboarding fee to HubSpot.

What Price
CRM setup for a small business $2,000 to $10,000 pipelines, fields, permissions, basic automation and dashboards Campaign Creators
Setup with a data migration, workflows and training $10,000 to $30,000 several hubs, as one partner prices it Campaign Creators
A HubSpot implementation by a partner $6,000 to $30,000+ for B2B companies with $10 million or more in revenue Evenbound
Partner hourly rate, setup and migration $150 to $300 an hour from a former HubSpot partner Lynton
Setting up one marketplace app $500 to $2,000 an integration from HubSpot's app marketplace Campaign Creators
HubSpot's own onboarding, Sales Hub Professional $1,500 one-time required by HubSpot on that plan, paid to HubSpot HubSpot
HubSpot's own onboarding, Marketing Hub Professional $3,000 one-time required by HubSpot on that plan, paid to HubSpot HubSpot
Ongoing CRM admin support $2,000 to $8,000 a month for mid-sized companies, and optional Evenbound

Sources: Campaign Creators, a HubSpot partner's cost guide, June 2026; Evenbound, a HubSpot partner's cost guide, March 2026; Lynton, a former HubSpot partner's cost guide, updated November 2026; HubSpot, Sales Hub and Marketing Hub pricing pages, November 2026. Partners sell implementations, so treat their ranges as sellers' figures, and Evenbound's and Lynton's are for bigger companies than most small agencies set up. We didn't find an independent survey of what a CRM setup costs. HubSpot's fees change, so check its pricing page before you write one into a proposal.

How often proposals got a yes, by price

Proposals over $15,000 got a yes about a third of the time. Agencies' accepted proposals had a median value of $4,000 (July to September 2026). From 1,713 proposals first sent with Nusii, July to September 2026.

Under $1,000
67.1%
$1,000 to $5,000
50.7%
$5,000 to $15,000
48.9%
$15,000 to $50,000
36.1%
Over $50,000
33.3%

Share accepted, by the total the client saw. Bigger proposals are bigger decisions, so this shows what happened, not that a lower price would win. Method: The State of Proposals 2026.

What happens after you send it

From 3,782 proposals first sent with Nusii by marketing, web, advertising and video agencies from November 2025 to October 2026.

48.9%
were accepted
54 minutes
median time to the client's first look
3.9 days
median time to a yes
62.2%
of the yeses came within a week

Clients rarely say no. Of all proposals sent with Nusii from July to September 2026, 6.5% were rejected and 45.2% got no answer either way. Silence is the usual no, so a follow-up is worth sending.

Follow up after a week. Most yeses come within seven days. In Nusii you see when the proposal was opened and get an email when it's accepted, so you can follow up when they've read it, not when you guess they have.

More numbers and the method: The State of Proposals 2026.

Get the Word and PDF files

The same template as a Word file you can edit (it opens in Google Docs too) and a PDF printed by Nusii. We'll email you both, plus a few emails with proposal tips. Unsubscribe any time.

Or send it with Nusii

This template is in the gallery of every Nusii account. Send it as a link: you get an email when your client opens it, and they accept and sign online, on any device.

Now we build from reusable sections, so every proposal looks professional and on-brand, and the team spends less time formatting and more time on the actual scope.

Aswin Kumar
Aswin Kumar
Integrator, CRMified

Not only does Nusii make doing quotes easier, I think it helps to close the deals because of the confidence the output from Nusii inspires.

Glenn Lidstone
Glenn Lidstone
President, StoneHouse Marketing Solutions
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Questions about CRM implementation proposals

What is a CRM proposal?

A document that tells a client how you’ll set up a CRM for them, what it costs and how to start. It usually covers what they told you, the goals, the setup, moving their data, training, what’s included and what isn’t, the price and how to say yes. If you’re looking for proposal software that works with your CRM, see Nusii’s HubSpot integration.

What should a CRM implementation proposal include?

What the client told you and the goals that follow from it, your plan in stages (discovery, setup, the data move, automation and training), short proof from similar teams, what’s included and what isn’t, who owns the account and the data, one clear price, and the next steps. That’s seven sections, the same as the template on this page.

How much does a CRM implementation cost?

For a small business, often between $2,000 and $10,000 for the setup alone, and $10,000 to $30,000 with a data migration, workflows and training, according to the HubSpot partner Campaign Creators. The client also pays for the CRM itself. This template uses $7,500 as an example price.

Does the client still pay HubSpot’s onboarding fee?

On some plans, yes. HubSpot’s pricing pages list a required, one-time onboarding fee for its Professional plans: $1,500 for Sales Hub and $3,000 for Marketing Hub in November 2026. The template names it under “Not included”, paid to HubSpot directly. HubSpot’s pages don’t say a partner’s work replaces it, so check with HubSpot before you tell a client it won’t apply.

How long does a CRM implementation take?

This template plans eight weeks for six users, one pipeline and a data move: two for discovery, two for the setup, two for the data, one for automation and one for training and launch. A setup with nothing to move takes less. The client’s data export and the team’s time decide the pace more than anything else.

Can I use this template for Salesforce, Pipedrive or Zoho?

Yes. The CRM and its plan are in brackets wherever they appear, so Salesforce, Pipedrive, Zoho or Dynamics fit. The examples use HubSpot because most of the agencies that set up CRMs for small businesses are HubSpot partners.

Should the proposal cover moving the client’s data?

Yes, as its own line, so the client sees what moves and what it costs: contacts, companies and open deals, cleaned and de-duplicated, with a sample checked together before the old system is switched off. Put the date you need their export by in “What we need from you”.

How do I make sure the team actually uses the new CRM?

Write it into the proposal. The template keeps what already works (“What stays”), limits the fields to the ones the team needs, connects the inboxes and calendars they already use, and trains them on their own deals. Make using it part of what success looks like.

What if the client wants monthly support after launch?

Quote it at launch, once they’ve seen the setup work. The template includes 30 days of help and names a monthly plan under “Not included”. In Nusii, proposals with a recurring fee were accepted less often (39.7% against 54.5% for the same senders, July to September 2026).

Should I offer several packages?

Offer them only if the client asked about choices. In Nusii, proposals where the client could choose between options were accepted less often (40.3% against 51.5% for the same senders, July to September 2026). This template has one clear price; add an optional section for an extra the client asked about.

Does Nusii work with HubSpot?

Yes. With the HubSpot integration you import contacts from HubSpot, link a proposal to a HubSpot deal so the deal stage follows the proposal’s status, and get the signed proposal on the deal as a PDF. How to set it up.

Can I use this template as a freelance CRM consultant?

Yes. Write “I” instead of “we”, describe yourself in the introduction, and set the number of users and the schedule to what you can do on your own. Everything else works the same.

Do I need a contract as well?

Attach your own agreement if you use one. This template covers the scope, the price, who owns what and how the project is paid in plain words, and it isn’t legal advice.

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