Friday 4 August - Do your proposals offer compelling good value?

Hello Subscriber,

At the beginning of this week, we introduced our new Proposal Checklist.

Since then, we’ve looked at a range of ways to improve our proposals. Today we’re going to look at the last part of the checklist. It’s a simple question, but hugely important.

Will your proposals convince a busy senior manager or advisor who you may never meet?

You can download a copy of the Sales Reset Proposal Checklist by clicking here.

Different People, Different Priorities

Who do you typically speak with when you’re selling your products and services?

Often, people in selling roles start their conversations with people in their customers who are in operational roles. It’s because the people who are doing things are most aware of the need to improve ways of working.

But decisions about whether or not to proceed with proposals are often made by people you may never meet. We’ll look at this in more detail next week. Our theme for the week will be “Working with Multiple Stakeholders”.

For today, have a look at some of your recent proposals. Put yourself in the shoes of a busy senior manager or advisor for your customer. One of your colleagues has just shown you the proposal. They say it’s come from one of their team members. They’re asking for your opinion.

Does your proposal make it easy for this busy senior manager or advisor to understand all the key aspects of the situation, what you’re proposing and how it pays for itself?

Does this busy senior manager or advisor see your proposal as being compelling?

Here’s one area of practice to emphasise today

Review some of your recent or current proposals. Put yourself in the shoes of a busy senior manager or advisor for your customer.

How to make your proposals more compelling

• The theme of yesterday’s email was to connect the proposed investment in your products and services to the specific performance improvements in clearly stated KPIs and OKRs.

• The best way to make your proposals more compelling is to make it faster and easier for people to understand these connections between proposed investments and measurable outcomes.

• Here’s a really big observation. In my experience, the largest proportion of people in selling roles never deeply involve themselves with outcomes that customers might expect. They’re too busy talking about their products and services.

• The best thing you can do to make your proposals more compelling is to practice every day to understand more deeply the impact of what you’re selling on your customers.

• You will focus more and more on the impact of what you’re selling and the measurable outcomes that customers will achieve.

• Because your understanding of these things gets better and better, your proposals will become increasingly compelling.

Coaching Focus

1. In a coaching conversation, take turns to put yourself in the role of a busy senior manager or advisor. They may be a senior financial manager, a highly trained lawyer, or a very experienced marketing professional.

2. Look together at your proposals.

3. If the only thing available to these people is your proposal, with no further explanation or conversation, do your proposals offer compelling good value?

Reminder: One area of practice to emphasise today

If you have questions or comments, it would be great to hear from you. Just hit reply and send me an email.

Have a great day!

Can you help us to find more subscribers?

• We’re on a mission to turn conventional sales training upside-down and inside-out. We want everybody in sales roles to put their customers’ success at the heart of every selling conversation.

• If you share your unique personal link below in social media posts or messages, we’ll happily give you referral rewards.

• Simply click the image or button to see the available rewards and how many subscribers you need to qualify.

• Thanks!