You sent the proposal. They opened it. Then comes the part most sales workflows handle badly: the response. You're waiting on a reply email, a calendar booking, or a "let me get back to you" that never quite turns into a yes or no. Meanwhile the deal sits in your CRM as "proposal sent, awaiting response," and you have to keep nudging.
Most teams default to one of two bad options. Either they use DocuSign for proposals that don't need a legally binding signature (over-engineered, costly, slow), or they leave the response to email back-and-forth (no audit trail, no clear yes/no/maybe, easy to lose track of). Both leave money on the table.
This post is the third option: an accept / request-changes / decline flow that lives inside the proposal viewer itself. The recipient clicks one of three buttons in the viewer header. You get an instant notification with the engagement context behind the decision. Audit trail in the activity timeline. No separate signing tool.
What you need before you start
Three things, all small:
- A proposal as PDF, PPTX, DOCX, or HTML upload. The viewer renders all four formats; pick whichever your team already produces.
- A HummingDeck account on Pro or above. Decision Capture is a Pro+ feature (pricing for current tiers). On Free or Starter the Proposal tab in the Generate Share Link modal shows as locked.
- A recipient identity (name + email, or an existing contact). The Decision Capture flow needs to attribute the response to someone; the modal will accept a fresh name + email or let you search your existing contacts. Without a recipient, the buttons don't surface (there's nobody to attach the decision to). This is also why the Lead Magnet tab (the public-distribution variant for ungated content) doesn't include Decision Capture: by design, lead magnets don't have a known recipient at send time.
That's it. No separate "approval workflow" to set up; no template provisioning; no signing-order configuration.
The walkthrough (4 steps)
Step 1: Upload the proposal and open Generate Share Link
Upload the file the same way you'd upload any deck. From the deck detail page, click Generate Share Link to open the modal.
Step 2: Pick the Proposal tab
The Generate Share Link modal has three tabs: Personal Link (per-recipient tracked URL, engagement tracking only), Lead Magnet (public-distribution link with optional email gating, no per-recipient attribution), and Proposal (per-recipient tracked URL plus the Accept / Changes / Decline buttons in the viewer). Pick Proposal.
Fill in the recipient. You can either type a fresh name + email (creates a one-off attribution) or search an existing contact. The helper text under the tabs says it explicitly: "Requires a contact or email." Either resolves to a known recipient the response can attribute to.
Step 3: Configure response style and trigger
Two configuration choices, both small:
Response style. Two options:
- 2-state (Accept / Decline): for proposals where there's no middle ground. Quotes, commercial terms, simple SOWs.
- 3-state (Accept / Changes / Decline): for proposals that go through revision rounds. Most sales-led B2B proposals fit here. The middle "Changes" button (request changes) is what makes the flow useful for proposals that aren't purely accept-or-walk; it gives the buyer a structured way to send the deal back without ghosting.
Response trigger. When the buttons appear in the viewer:
- Last page: buttons surface only after the recipient reaches the final page. Good for proposals where you want them to read end-to-end before deciding.
- After 75% completion: buttons appear once they've viewed 75% of the document. Forgiving variant of "last page" for prospects who skip around.
- After 50% completion: earlier surface; useful for shorter proposals where the decision is obvious by the midpoint.
- Any-time: buttons available immediately on the first page. For repeat buyers who already know the structure.
The default for most B2B sales proposals is 3-state + last-page or 3-state + 75% completion. Tune it to your proposal length and buyer behavior.
Step 4: Send the link
Copy the generated link and send it via email, LinkedIn, or whatever channel you use. The link is per-recipient (one URL bound to that one contact); engagement and decision data attribute to them by name.
You don't need to do anything else. The buttons appear automatically when the trigger fires; the response routes back to your engagement view; the audit trail builds itself as the recipient interacts.
What the recipient sees
The buyer clicks the link. They land in a clean branded viewer (no PDF download required). They scroll through the proposal. When the configured trigger fires (they reach the last page, or hit 75% completion, etc.), three buttons appear in the top-right corner of the viewer header.
They click one. After clicking, they can optionally add a note explaining the decision (a sentence on what they want changed, or what they're approving for, or why they're declining). They submit.
That's the entire recipient experience. No account creation, no signing tool installation, no email confirmation loop. The buttons are just there; they click; the decision is captured.
What this captures (and what it doesn't)
What lands in your engagement view the moment they decide:
- The decision itself: Accept, Changes (request changes), or Decline
- The note (if they left one)
- The engagement context: which pages they viewed, how long they spent on each, whether they came back to it before deciding, whether they forwarded the link to a colleague (a previously-unknown viewer opened the same link)
- The audit metadata: timestamp, IP address, device / browser
- An instant notification: email + Slack (if connected) with the response and the engagement summary
This is sufficient documentation for a CRM record, a deal review, or a sales-handoff to your CSM. It is not sufficient documentation for a court of law. There's no signer identity verification, no Certificate of Completion PDF, no cryptographic tamper-evident hash. We've covered the full carve-out of when DocuSign-grade signatures matter: short version: legal contracts (MSAs, employment, regulated industries) need a real e-sign tool, not this.
For a sales proposal, a SOW, a quote, a project change order, or an internal sign-off, this level of audit is usually what you actually need: who saw it, when they decided, what they were looking at when they decided, what they said about it. Decision Capture covers all four.
When to use this vs DocuSign
Decision Capture is the right tool for:
- Sales proposals (scope, pricing, terms)
- SOW and quote acceptance
- Pre-contract proposals at the "yes-let's-move-forward" stage that precedes the legal MSA
- Internal stakeholder sign-off (deck approvals, plan approvals, budget signoff)
- Marketing campaign approvals between agency and client
- Project change orders that are lighter than a contract amendment
DocuSign (or PandaDoc, Adobe Sign, Dropbox Sign) is the right tool for:
- Master Service Agreements
- Employment contracts, NDAs at scale, IP assignments
- Regulated industries (real estate, mortgages, healthcare, government)
- Anything requiring identity verification, multi-party signing chains, or a Certificate of Completion
The comparison post goes deeper on the fit-vs-feature math. The short version: match the tool to the artifact. Don't pay DocuSign-tier prices to send proposals that don't need legal compliance; don't use Decision Capture for contracts that do.
Related:
- When You Don't Need DocuSign: Document Approvals via Tracked Link: the comparison post that walks through when DocuSign earns its cost vs. when a tracked-link approval fits better
- How to Know If Someone Read Your Proposal: the engagement-tracking layer that pairs with Decision Capture
- Proposal Tracking Software Comparison 2026: the broader category landscape
- Proposal Follow-Up Timing: The Data-Backed Playbook: what to do when proposals stall in the silence between send and decision
- Why Your Cold Email Clicks and Deck Views Are Wrong: the bot-filtering layer behind clean engagement data
- Engagement Comes Before the Reply: A Cold Outreach Framework: the upstream cohort logic, Decision Capture is what closes the loop on Hot-cohort prospects who said yes