- Clarion Events
How Clarion Events scales high-quality proposals across its global sales team
Location
Global
Industry
Events, Exhibitions & Sponsorship
Company size
1K - 5K employees
Key Results:
- A professional proposal experience across multiple portfolios and business units
- Faster proposal creation using templates and reusable blocks
- More engaging, visual proposals that replace long, static documents
- Better insight into buyer engagement to support more informed follow-ups
“We were working with proposals that were pages and pages long. Qwilr lets us lay information out more visually and give clients a much better experience.”
— Hannah Scott, Commercial Operations Technology Manager, Clarion Events
The Challenge
Clarion Events operates a diverse portfolio of events across retail, energy, technology and more, selling everything from exhibition space to bespoke sponsorship packages.
This diversity creates a familiar challenge for sales leaders: how do you maintain quality, consistency, and efficiency when teams are selling different products, across different markets, with different brand identities?
In some parts of the business, proposals had grown long and unwieldy. Teams were relying on static documents, like PowerPoints, that could run to hundreds of slides.
While comprehensive, these documents weren’t always easy for sellers to work with or for buyers to digest.
“There was a Powerpoint with a fair few slides, which reps would pick and choose from,” Hannah explained. “It was a process we knew we wanted to improve.”
As Clarion continued to grow and onboard new teams, the need became clear:
- Proposals needed to look more professional and on-brand
- Sales teams needed a faster, more repeatable way to build proposals
- Buyers needed a more engaging experience, not pages of static content
- Commercial leaders needed better insight into how proposals were being received
The Solution
Clarion chose Qwilr as its proposal platform across multiple business units, integrating it directly into Salesforce to support the existing sales workflow.
Sales and marketing teams collaborate to create on-brand templates and blocks, ensuring proposals reflect each team’s identity while maintaining a consistent structure. Once those foundations are in place, sales teams can quickly tailor proposals by updating only the sections that matter.
“It gives us a faster and more efficient way to create proposals,” James Mullen, Systems Training Lead said. “There are templates there, and it’s just a matter of adapting sections as the salesperson needs.”
Qwilr’s visual flexibility also plays an important role, especially for retail and sponsorship-led events where presentation matters.
Interactive layouts, collapsible sections, embedded media, and motion allow teams to deliver proposals that feel modern and engaging, without overwhelming the buyer.
“The interactive drop-downs allow us to reduce the length of the proposal, while still including all the relevant info for buyers that need the details,” Hannah explained, “This gives our clients a better experience when reviewing the proposal.”
The Results
With Qwilr in place, Clarion Events has created a proposal process that supports scale, consistency, and adoption across its commercial organisation.
Proposals now reflect the quality of Clarion’s events and brand. Visual design, structured layouts, and interactive elements help teams make a stronger first impression, particularly important in competitive sponsorship and exhibition sales.
“Our industry is highly visual, and Qwilr proposals look far more impressive than the static documents we were previously using”, Hannah explained.
Templates and reusable blocks also reduce the effort required to produce proposals, helping teams move faster without reverting to copy-paste documents or over-customised decks.
For sales leaders, this means proposals are no longer a bottleneck, and teams can maintain momentum after conversations with prospects.
On top of this, Qwilr’s engagement analytics give teams insight into when proposals are opened and which sections attract the most attention.
Rather than guessing, reps can shape follow-up conversations around what buyers have already engaged with, making discussions more relevant and productive.
“It makes the sell easier,” James noted, “because you can focus the conversation around what they have or haven’t spent time on.”
Easy onboarding and broad adoption
As Clarion continues to roll Qwilr out across new business units and geographies, ease of use has been critical.
Teams consistently find the platform intuitive, with minimal training required.
“When we first show Qwilr to a team, they just get it,” said James. “But it’s super user-friendly, and we’ve seen teams build content within minutes of being given access.”
Why Qwilr?
For Clarion Events, Qwilr provides a scalable foundation for commercial execution across a complex, global organisation.
It supports:
- Consistent, high-quality proposals across diverse brands
- Faster sales execution without sacrificing presentation quality
- Better insight into buyer engagement
- Easy onboarding as teams and markets expand
“It’s smooth to onboard, easy to use, and well supported,” James concluded.
As Clarion continues to grow and bring more teams onto the platform, Qwilr plays a key role in helping sales teams present, engage, and convert at scale.
Want to scale proposal quality across your sales organisation?
Qwilr helps sales teams deliver engaging, on-brand proposals that are easy to build, easy to personalise, and easy for buyers to engage with - no matter how complex your organisation becomes.
