Every business is unique in its own way. What works for someone, may not work for the other. Hence, there is no sure-shot recipe to write a sales proposal that guarantees success.
Sometimes it takes a long time to make your prospect ready to meet you and hear your offer.
More than half 55% of respondents have said the budget has become a major reason that stronger opportunities fall apart in sales.By nurturing the prospects it becomes hard work and entails team efforts, but the hard work is nothing if you fail to convert with a sales proposal.
However, let’s talk about some of the steps using which you can prepare a sales proposal that gives you maximum chances of conversion.
Keep Your Eyes Open Towards Competition
In today’s cut-throat race, there are no best friends in business. Only the fittest and smartest wins. And no matter how much you think you know, there will always be someone who knows something new. Hence, it’s always wise to take a look at your competitors’ approach.
If it’s your first time writing a sales proposal, you will learn a lot just by looking at your direct competitors. Things like what value proposition they are focusing on, how to create engaging contents, what’re the personas of your target market etc can be easily picked up from monitoring your competitors.
Find the ads that are used before and after pictures to demonstrate the usefulness of the product and cover up the before picture.
You will then discover the after picture isn’t nearly compelling without comparison. With contrast the shock value gets interestingly compelling, and this is used as an advantage for every business proposal that you write.
Easy ways to monitor your competitors are: signing up for their newsletters, following their social media activities & their website/blog.
Prepare Well. Very Well.
Doing your homework is always the best idea. After learning the basics from your competitors, the next step is to do a bit of research on every lead of yours. Here are a few things about the lead, you may need to look at:
- History of the company
- Service/product offered
- Business needs & bottlenecks
- Any alternatives they’ve used before (it’s tough to find out but very useful)
- How can you help to make their lives easier
Once you have answers, the key is to make a proposal as personalized as possible. Doing this will also give you high chances of bringing that lead over to you for a meeting/call.
Create An Outline:
As all your clients want to hear one thing, therefore you need to tailor each sales proposal. With a custom sales proposal it has a better chance to convert the clients into a generic one. Always start with the outline. This makes it easy to condense the pitch.
With the outline phase you get the chance to get rid of the extra stuff and focus on what is important.
The important process to write a sales proposals is:
- A brief introduction of your services and business
- A detailed approach, along with timelines and objectives
- A summary where you discuss the client issues/concerns that your product addresses
- A detailed approach, including objectives and timelines
- A detail overview on the pricing.
It is necessary to include these key points in your proposals. It offer more details that grab the prospect’s attention. By spending time on the sales proposals will benefit your business. With a proper outline you can organise your thoughts and develop a logical, easy to follow pitch.
Follow A Proper Structure For Your Proposal
Most of the times the only difference between a decent proposal & a good one is its contents & presentation. The proposal should be short, crisp & easy to understand. Try to avoid too many paragraphs & have as many bullet points as possible.
Here’s what a good proposal should have:
- Introduction
- Approach
- Benefits
- Quote
- Conclusion
Put Your Best Foot Forward
The introduction is the most important section in a proposal. That plays a big role in making the reader decide whether he wants to go through the entire proposal in the first place.
Key is to make the introduction convincing enough; explaining how you have the expertise to deliver the best possible work on time. Also, don’t forget to mention briefly about your company, your years of experience & other important stats like the number of projects completed.
Needless to say, don’t stretch this section too long.
Say Out Loud, How You Can Help
After the introduction, this is by far the most important section in every proposal. This is where the leads spend most of their time; going through how you can help them.
It’s always wise to clearly mention what your approach is going to be, how your milestones are going to be, what’s the payment model and timeline. Pro tip is to always keep a few days as buffer while quoting the timeline. e.g. If you’re into web development and you think a website will take 1 week to make, ask more 1 & half week at-least. Some extra hours always come in handy.
If you’re writing about your approach, make sure not to reveal all your cards. You don’t want the lead to take your impressive idea/plan & execute it on their own. Just saying 🙂
Always Sell The Value, Not The Service
Always remember, it’s not your efforts or time or knowledge that sells. Your value proposition does. The customers only pay for what actually solves their problems and makes their lives easier.
I was able to work with it from day 1 as it was pretty easy to get started with. Within a week I experienced a net increase of around 23% in my sales activities, which is good compared to my past 6 months story.
Ajay P.S, Co-founder & CEO,
India
Conclusion:
A sales proposal is an important factor that you need to consider to grow your business sales. Not only developing sales proposals is enough but you need to develop engaging and effective sales proposals that will attract the attention of your customer.
Only handling your sale is not enough. You need to manage your sales process effectively by using CRM tool, like Wakeupsales.