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How a freelance consultant made over $100k in sales by including Paperform in her workflow
Sara Loretta, Founder of SYSTMS™, uses Paperform as her "digital Swiss army knife" to streamline various aspects of her business. She reduced client onboarding time from six hours to 15 minutes, significantly lowered her client ghosting rate, secured a $9,000 upfront payment from a client, and achieved an impressive 87% acceptance rate on her client proposals. Paperform automated proposal management, client onboarding, lead generation, feedback collection, and contract management, making her workflows more efficient and allowing her to focus on high-value tasks.
Highlights
- Slashed onboarding time from six hours to 15 minutes with Paperform, Notion, and Paperform's Stripe integration.
- Dramatically reduced her client ghosting rate from 66% to just 5% using Paperform's conditional logic features
- A client who completed Sara's qualifying quiz committed to a $9,000 upfront payment for a quarterly retainer.
- Seamlessly integrated Papersign into her tech stack, to speed up the contract process and add an extra level of compliance.
- Sara boasts an impressive 87% acceptance rate on her client proposals by using a Paperform form.
Challenge: Needed a single, cost-effective tool for tasks like client onboarding, workflow automation, feedback, and payment collection.
## About Sara Loretta isn't just any freelancer. She's a creative operations trailblazer. Starting with a strong foundation in design and branding, she led her design agency, 99 & Saint Claire, to collaborate with over 200 brands on their team culture and visual identity. But Sara soon realized that her startup clients needed more—they were facing fundamental operational challenges that a nice logo wasn't going to fix. So, she pivoted, founding *[SYSTMS™](https://systms.club)*, a full-service Creative Operations productized agency. As the 10th Certified [Notion Consultant](https://www.notion.so/consulting-partners/systmstm) in the US, with a decade of creative industry experience, Sara now serves as a fractional Chief Operating Officer (COO) and one-and-done hire to various companies, offering a broad spectrum of services from organizational structuring to tech support. Outside her one-on-one client engagements, Sara is on a mission: to make business education accessible for all freelancers. She’s cultivating a creator community focused on affordable and reachable business education through enriching content and a membership platform. Through strategic process development and workflow design, Sara isn’t just solving operational hiccups; she’s nurturing a global community of small businesses, empowering them to operate efficiently as asynchronous, remote teams. ## The challenge When Sara Loretta founded *SYSTMS™*, her Creative Operations agency, her primary concern was to maximize efficiency in her workflows. Time was her most limited, and important, asset, and the manual, repetitive work involved in client proposals and onboarding was taking up *way* too much of it. Sara would spend upwards of three hours on each proposal. And once a client did sign up, it would take six hours to get them onboarded—time that could have been better spent on high-level strategy or creative work. "I would manually design a proposal in Canva, custom write a proposal email, and when I’d finally send that email off I’d spend the next little bit refreshing my inbox waiting for a response, then follow up again and again and again." This used to infuriate me! Especially the proposal piece of it. I’d spend close to three hours prepping, and shipping off a proposal, to not even receive a simple email saying thanks or no thanks. > I had to come up with a solution or I was going to lose my mind! Just starting out as a freelancer, Sara couldn't afford to invest in multiple software solutions for every piece of the process. Plus, she values a lean tech stack. "Things are different now, but when I first started out I didn't have a tech budget," says Sara. "I couldn't just sit there and spend $700 a month on a tech stack. It doesn't even matter if I could, though. I don't want a thousand subscriptions. I think it's really important to keep things as streamlined as possible. It's what I tell my clients, and it's what I live myself." Sara needed a budget-friendly software solution that could give her back her time, offer automation capabilities, and serve as a multi-purpose tool for *SYSTMS™*. And she found it in Paperform. － Sara Loretta, SYSTMS™
Challenge: Automating proposal management
Sara integrated Notion, Paperform, and Stripe (using Paperform's native Stripe integration) to create a seamless workflow that takes her from proposal creation to client response. Her new, streamlined process takes *minutes* thanks to a simple Notion page, an embedded Paperform, and her templatized process. She kicks off by duplicating a pre-made Notion proposal template (with an embedded Paperform) and filling in the client's details. 1. Next, she clones an email template that links to the proposal, making minor tweaks as needed. 2. Instead of anxiously refreshing her inbox, she moves on to other tasks, letting the system work for her. To make sure she captures every lead's response—whether affirmative or negative—Sara built a Paperform proposal response form. The form uses conditional logic to display relevant questions based on the lead's previous answers. <figure class="kg-card kg-image-card kg-card-hascaption"><img src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/paperform-blog/2023/10/notion-proposal.png" class="kg-image" alt="" loading="lazy" width="880" height="498"><figcaption>(Source: Sara Loretta)</figcaption></figure> "The process is built so I can be completely removed from the process. All I need to do is copy the Notion template, adjust the client details, and share it. The proposal response form takes care of the rest. The secret sauce is the 'no' option. Lots of small businesses and freelancers tend to ghost projects once they see the costs. They realize they can't afford it and they are uncomfortable saying so—the 'no' option lets them decline it guilt-free." For example, if a lead clicks 'yes,' they're directed through the onboarding flow. But, crucially, there's also a 'no' option. If they select 'No', they can easily specify *why,* whether it's budget, hiring another team, just window shopping, etc." This simple form eliminates the awkwardness often associated with declining a proposal and gives Sara valuable insights into how she can improve in the future. It also means she doesn't waste hours refreshing her email and waiting for clients to get back to her. － Sara Loretta, SYSTMS™
Challenge: Making client onboarding more effortless
Paperform also comes into play once clients accept the proposal. "I do all of my onboarding forms for clients and my community through Paperform. It's great." The instant a client fills out the [onboarding form](https://paperform.co/blog/onboarding-form/), a custom client portal springs to life in Notion, all thanks to Paperform's intuitive integration. Keeping her clients accountable has never been easier too. "My process usually starts out with a strategy session, and people tend to lag on providing the info I need. So, I put due dates on the questionnaire—if it's not submitted by this date, we won't have our strategy sessions. Simple. It's so much easier." Gone are the days of chasing clients with email reminders. She sets time-sensitive tasks that dovetail perfectly with her personalized strategy sessions. "It used to take me six hours for client onboarding, costing about a thousand dollars of my time. Now, I've got it down to 15 minutes. It's honestly wild how much you can get done with a Paperform and conditional logic." Paperform even streamlined her deposit collection. "I used to ask for deposits. One-click on Paperform could lock in the $500 deposit, get the contract signed, and shoot out the invoice. All automated, all upfront. I've phased out deposits for that offering, but that functionality was invaluable." With Paperform, Sara has reshaped her onboarding process into a slick, automated machine, letting her focus on what truly matters. － Sara Loretta, SYSTMS™
Challenge: Setting up hands-free lead generation
Paperform doesn't just help with existing clients—it helps bring in new ones. Sara uses a Paperform quiz as a smart lead-generation tool. Embedded right on her website, this quiz acts as a virtual consultant to pre-qualify prospective clients in real time. "For clients considering my [Work Hubs](https://systms.club/workhubs) retainer, I have a quiz that sorts them into different buckets based on their answers," Sara explains. If they meet the criteria, think budget, and readiness to commit, the quiz funnels them straight to a sales call or even to sign up on the spot. <figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"><img src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/paperform-blog/2023/10/Group-10.png" class="kg-image" alt="" loading="lazy" width="880" height="498"></figure> I've just sent this up a few weeks ago and I've already had a client book a quarterly retainer purely from working through this quiz." > I've already had a client book a quarterly retainer purely from working through this quiz. Her quizzes do more than just sift through leads. They guide prospects toward the services that best meet their needs, while supplying them with valuable resources. For example, the final qualifying question asks whether the prospect wants to hire Sara or DIY. If they choose DIY, they're redirected to an action plan landing page that provides resources with no obligation to sign up. <figure class="kg-card kg-image-card kg-card-hascaption"><img src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/paperform-blog/2023/10/Group-7-1.png" class="kg-image" alt="" loading="lazy" width="880" height="498"><figcaption>(Source: Sara Loretta/Paperform)</figcaption></figure> Now Sara can focus on high-value interactions while her automated quiz does the initial legwork, setting the stage for successful, well-matched client relationships. － Sara Loretta, SYSTMS™
Challenge: Needing a more seamless feedback collection
When it comes to staying in tune with her community, Sara has ditched cumbersome survey tools for a more user-friendly solution with Paperform. For monthly feedback, Sara shares a Paperform survey with all her clients. This is part of an automated flow in Flodesk, her email tool of choice. <figure class="kg-card kg-image-card kg-card-hascaption"><img src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/paperform-blog/2023/10/Group-9.png" class="kg-image" alt="" loading="lazy" width="880" height="498"><figcaption>(Source: Sara Loretta)</figcaption></figure> But Sara also wanted a simpler option for her content subscription. She shares two to three pieces of content each week, and while she wants to see what resonates, she doesn't want to inundate everyone with long surveys. So she built a simple [scale quiz](https://paperform.co/blog/semantic-differential-scale/) with Paperform using emojis for the scale. This offers a real-time pulse check on her audience's sentiment. "I can track if the content I'm doing actually works for people. I could send out a survey and ask for detailed feedback, but the beauty is that people can just click an emoji and go on their way." This low-friction approach boosts participation while providing Sara with instant actionable insights. It's a win-win: Sara gets the insights to fine-tune her content, while her community gets to express themselves in the quickest way possible, keeping the feedback loop agile, responsive, and frictionless. － Sara Loretta, SYSTMS™
Challenge: Not having a clear-cut consultant rate data
Sara's ingenuity with Paperform extends beyond her business, impacting the broader Notion consulting community. One of her passion projects is a rate transparency quiz. This Paperform quiz asks consultants about their experience level, services, and pricing to help consultants benchmark their rates. It's then integrated with a live, public-facing Notion available for anyone to view. <figure class="kg-card kg-image-card kg-card-hascaption"><img src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/paperform-blog/2023/10/image-23.png" class="kg-image" alt="" loading="lazy" width="2752" height="1808"><figcaption>(Source: Sara Loretta)</figcaption></figure> "It's so fun," Sara says. "People can submit and then see their answers in real-time, so they're immediately a part of it." The upshot? Consultants get the rate insights they've been looking for, and Sara solidifies her reputation as an industry innovator and thought leader. － Sara Loretta, SYSTMS™
Challenge: Needing a more streamlined contract management
Sara had been using a Paperform form with a Signature field for client contracts. But when Papersign launched, the added layers of security and [specialized eSign functionality](https://paperform.co/blog/esignature-faqs/) made adopting the new product a no-brainer. Papersign took her contract management from functional to exceptional, offering a more secure, compliant solution within the Paperform ecosystem. <figure class="kg-card kg-embed-card"><iframe width="200" height="113" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/NTKcJbJRROc?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" title="(Workshop) How to Setup Papersign for Client Contracts"></iframe></figure> "It's really cool to me because it's affordable and accessible. It's way cheaper than DocuSign, but you can do so many extra things." The seamless transition made her workflows even more efficient. "It's just super seamless. I think I was maybe playing with it for 20 minutes and I had it all set up, ready to go. Especially if you're already using Paperform, adding Papersign is a no-brainer. Contracts are honestly ten times easier with Papersign." － Sara Loretta, SYSTMS™