Write Killer Proposals & Triple Your Conversion Rate

I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.
Confucius, (551–479 BCE) Chinese philosopher and teacher.

Speaking with customers is, as we all know, a crucial part of a salesperson's job. Whether the conversations take place in person, or over a telephone, the opportunity to speak with the decision maker, to fact find and to make your pitch, is a vital part of the sales process.

Very few people would disagree with the above but, the bad news I have for you is this - a lot of what is said during such a conversation will be forgotten quite quickly.

How can we combat that?

The answer was realised all those years ago by good old Confucius, confirm everything in writing.

Your client may well forget much of the conversation that you had with him but a well written follow up can often help to seal the deal.

All of that brings me nicely to my main message for this article - the power of the proposal.

Exactly what is a proposal?

To my surprise, a lot of the salespeople I talk to don't really know.

"Surely, its a quote, an estimate" is the most common misconception.
A proposal will almost certainly include financial details and may well include  a quotation but that is not the sole purpose of a proposal, its not even the main purpose of it.

The main purpose of a proposal is to do the talking that you cannot do in person.

If your contact is in a board meeting at which one of the agenda items is to discuss the purchase of the product of which you are a supplier, you are not there, at that meeting, to provide details or to make a case for purchasing the product from you.

Your contact may remember some of that which was said at your meeting or during your telephone conversations, but can you rely on that?

If, on the other hand, he has a document to hand which provides not only pricing, but a well considered argument as to why the product is right for the job and, more importantly, why it should be purchased from you. Pictures of your product, preferably showing it in use, are also valuable sales aids.

My proposal to you is that you should always have a template proposal ready to send to every client you meet. Within days, if not hours, this should land on his or her desk, send it by email by all means but always send a printed, bound, copy as well - emails can end up in a spam folder or can easily be deleted whereas a printed, bound, copy of a well presented, well argued proposal will survive at least for a while.

Now, I can't write your proposals for you but I can give you my template for what has, for me and for lots of people who have worked with me and used this structure, been a successful formula for making sales.

In one recent project that I was involved in, conversion ratios increased three-fold for cases where a proposal was sent over as against those where one was not sent.

I'm going to publish my proposal template in the next few days, I'm just making a few adjustments to it and will post it here as soon as I can.

In the meantime if you have questions or comments please contact me.