Art
Siegel

Writing Winning Sales Proposals

"OK, I'm interested. Send me a proposal." That's the moment you've waited for: the prospect appears ready to buy, once he has reviewed the details in your proposal. Unfortunately, many salespeople blow the sale at this point by creating a proposal that fails to address what the prospect needs to see before making a decision. These salespeople don't understand the strategy behind Writing Winning Sales Proposals. 

For many high-value sales, a proposal is an essential part of the process. It often comes in the form of an RFP, a formal Request For Proposal in which the prospect asks several bidders to respond to a prepared set of questions. For most sales, though, the prospect simply says, "Give me your proposal." This article deals primarily with the latter situation, in which it is up to you to determine the content of the proposal.

Why Do Prospects Ask You For A Proposal?

For most experienced buyers, it is simply a part of the process; they automatically ask for a proposal before they buy. But there are other reasons as well:

• Throughout the sale, you made many promises to the prospect about what you would do and what it would cost. The prospect wants you to verify these promises in writing, so he or she knows exactly what is being offered. In many cases, the proposal becomes part of the purchase contract.
  
  
• In larger companies, your prospect needs approval from someone else. Your contact may understand what you are selling but needs your written proposal to help sell you to the next level up.

What Makes Proposals Fail?

Early in most sales cycles, you present somewhat generic information about your company and your prospects, and you hand out pre-printed brochures. As the sale progresses, you learn more about the prospect's unique needs, and most of your conversations focus on highly specific prospect needs and preferences.

A failing proposal is one that breaks this flow, from the generic to the specific, by including mostly generic boilerplate information. Let me give you an example that occurred very recently.

One of my clients was looking for a public relations firm that specializes in promoting Internet sites. We found one that looked good. In the client's telephone conversations with the PR firm, they had an excellent exchange of ideas. My client described his site and what he was trying to accomplish. The PR firm representative went to the site to see it for himself, and then offered my client several good ideas on how to reach the intended audience. They talked price and time frames, and everything looked good.

My client called me to say he had found the PR firm he was looking for. He was just waiting for the firm to fax its proposal/contract, and he would go ahead. Then he got the proposal. From my client's view and mine, it was a disaster:

• Most of its content talked about the broad capabilities and experience of the PR firm.
  
  
• Following that was a list of its services, including some my client wanted and several that he specifically said he did not want.
  
  
• There was no mention of my client's goals, market demographics or any of the other points he had discussed with the PR firm's representative.
  
  
• The only personalizing was the mail-merged insertion of my client's name and company in selected places.

My client rejected the proposal and resumed his search. His explanation: "Based upon this proposal, I have no confidence that the company is prepared to address the special challenges we face in reaching our market. It appears that its people are really generalists, and we need someone more specialized."

What Makes Proposals Win?

Winning proposals have these two characteristics:

1. Unlike the example above, they reinforce the major understandings reached in the oral presentations. They confirm not only the price and major features being sold, but also the specific interests of the prospect.
   
   
2. They are tailored, not just personalized. They include only information relevant to this prospect; nothing that does not relate to this prospect is in the proposal.

The Structure Of The Winning Proposal

The best proposals -- the ones that reach out, totally involve and win over the prospect -- have this six-part flow:

1. Introduction
2. Condition
3. Problem
4. Solution
5. Validation
6. Backgrounders

These are not the literal titles of the sections, but they describe the overall story flow of your proposal. In steps 1, 2 and 3, you build total prospect interest, involvement and agreement by establishing your correct understanding of his needs. You also make it clear exactly what the issue is that you are prepared to address. By that point, you have earned the right to present your company and your solutions.

1. Introduction

Depending upon the length of the proposal, this will vary from a single sentence to a full page. It tells prospects what you are going to tell them.

Example:

All of us at ABC Corporation would like to thank you for this opportunity to present our proposal for improving manufacturing efficiency at Acme Manufacturing. On the following pages, we will review . . . .

This introduction, by paraphrasing the prospect's major goal for requesting your proposal, sets the tone that this will be a custom proposal directed to this prospect's unique needs. The word "review" says that everything written here is, in your best judgment, a recap of understandings already reached orally.

The introduction works much like an attorney's opening statement. It prepares customers for what is to follow, sets them at ease and begins to pre-sell your "case."  

2. Condition

This part of your proposal summarizes your understanding of the prospect company's overall goals in the area you will address in your proposal.

Example:

Acme Engineering is in the second year of a five-year re-engineering of its software research department. The goals of this re-engineering are to . . . .

In the Condition section, by repeating things the prospect has told you plus information you have learned from the company's annual report, brochures or other materials, you make it clear that your entire focus in this proposal is on this prospect's unique situation. Nothing here is generic. Nothing here is a guess. It consists totally of things you have been told or given to read.

3. Problem

Whether the prospect solicited your proposal or it was your idea, the thing you are selling must solve some problem that the prospect agrees that he or she has. In this section of your proposal, you build on the Condition by describing one or more issues that will prevent the prospect's company from achieving its goal, which you described in the Condition.

Example:

In recent months, it has become clear that the software re-engineering process is running behind schedule. The planned five-year schedule is in danger of slipping out to seven or more years. As a result, . . . .

As with the Condition, the Problem you state in your proposal must be something that the prospect has already stated or agreed to previously. By the time your proposal gets to this point, the prospect must be thinking: "Yes, this salesperson has a perfect understanding of what we are trying to do and the challenges we are facing."

Notice that we are already well into your proposal, and we haven't said a word about your company. But we'll get to that in the next section.

4. Solution

The solution is the largest part of the proposal and consists of three parts:

1. Introduction to your company
2. Description of your solution
3. Next steps

1. Introduction to your company
The greatest weakness of most proposals is that they say too much about the vendor's company. The more you talk about you, the greater the risk that you will add points that disqualify you rather than strengthen your position. Thus, your introduction should be limited to a single page and focus on capabilities that are directly relevant to the issues you will address for this prospect.

2. Description of your solution
Take as much space as you need to describe the specific products and services you will apply to solving the problems you identified earlier. For each part of your solution, detail exactly what you expect it to accomplish for the prospect. Your solution should also include:

• All major product/service components
  For each, if your internal names for the deliverables are not crystal clear, use a heading that the prospect will easily understand.
  
  
• Major delivery/implementation stages and time frames
  Help the prospect focus on the end point when your completed solution will be in place, emphasizing the need to get started today.
  
  
• Pricing
  If your pricing includes several line items, make sure to also provide a total. And if there are multiple options, show the total for each so the prospect can easily make a decision today without having to go back and take out a calculator.

If detailed product specifications are called for, you may want to package these in a separate binder or in an appendix to the proposal, in order to make the solution section easier to read.

Some proposals include more than one solution, giving the prospect the opportunity to make a choice between them. If you are building that type of proposal, repeat all of the above points for each of them, enabling the prospect to approve a complete package.

3. Next steps
Once you have described your solution and pricing, you hope the prospect will say yes. You ease the way to yes by telling the prospect the next steps.

Example:

Next Step: The systems team for ABC Manufacturing will meet with (the prospect company)'s manufacturing engineering management to finalize specifications and develop testing standards. As a result of this meeting, we will . . . .

If you get the prospect to agree to this, then he or she has given you a de facto agreement to the entire proposal.

5. Validation

With the preceding sections, the proposal is done. You've told your story, but you need two more things, particularly if the proposal will be passed along to a higher-level decision maker.

The first of these is validation of proof statements. These can include:

• Brief descriptions of how you have delivered similar solutions to other companies and the results achieved
  
  
• Copies of third-party statements about your company, such as articles, letters from satisfied customers and industry surveys
  
  
• A list of references for your prospect to call

6. Backgrounders

Finally, this is the place to put additional information about your company, beyond what you included in your brief introduction. Examples of things to include here are:

• The history of your company
  
  
• Profiles of the officers and key employees who will deliver your solutions to this prospect
  
  
• Customer lists
  
  
• Additional products and services that might fit some of this prospect's future needs

Is writing this type of proposal easy? No. And that's why most salespeople don't bother doing it. It's much easier to start a proposal with a few pages of boilerplate about why your company is the leader in the industry, followed by a page or two with your solutions and prices. And that's the good news. Since your competitor is probably presenting your prospect with an easy-to-create generic proposal, think of the impact when you walk in with a proposal that actually addresses the prospect's needs.

Try the proposal story flow I have described here. I guarantee that your proposals will take longer to write. But I also guarantee that you'll win more of them. And after all, that's what it's all about.

SeaBird Associates Inc
3011 NE 7th Drive
Boca Raton, FL 33431
Phone: 561-750-9233
E-mail: Art Siegel

About Art Siegel