Why are some proposals a success and others not? Why do some people rise to the top of your sales organization and others don’t?
Are some proposals just lucky? Are some sales proposals just better arguments?
Or (the favorite excuse of less successful salespeople and proposal writers) is their prices too high?
No way.
If you want to win, you just have to follow one simple law: present the benefits that are most important to them to the prospect in the order that matter most to them.
When you ignore this law, you are praying to win the deal by luck, on false pretenses or, more commonly, because everyone else’s proposal is worse than yours.
Sometimes you have the opportunity to speak to the prospect directly before submitting your proposal. If so, so much the better. Ask him what is important to him.
But with the government or when you do direct sales, you can’t ask what’s important ahead of time. You still have to try to figure out what is important to this potential customer, but you also need to get the potential customer’s attention and interest in order to have a chance to do so.
So what should you emphasize in the meantime to get the potential customer’s attention? By looking at successful sales, you can identify the sales pitches that are most persuasive overall. These are the 10 commandments.
Here’s an example to show how it works in the real world:
When I was in college, I worked a hot summer in Arizona for a small business in an office park, where we did focus groups and survey research. A water bottle delivery vendor approached.
Now this was a service that I, as an employee, would have liked. As it was, my boss’s water bottle system was for one of the employees to drive with empty jugs to the water filling machine at a nearby Mexican store. When I found that the bottles were not rinsing or sterilizing between uses, I stopped using them. Other employees felt the same.
However, it was a cheap system. And my boss was the very definition of a price buyer. He was also a price seller. He was convinced that everything was a matter of price. So if price was going to work for someone, it was going to work for him.
The salesman gave my boss his card and a brochure. My boss looked at them and said he wasn’t interested and that he already had a system. But, he asked, how much was the service?
The seller gave him an answer and a price. He argued that the price was great and for the price the delivery service was a good investment.
You could almost hear the doorbell ringing. Not for sale. My boss was not interested. Thank you anyway. The seller left.
A few weeks later, a salesperson from a competing water supply company stopped by. He didn’t try to force a business card or tri-fold brochure on my boss. I have no idea if he did.
Instead, his first words were about how my boss could increase his profits with a better water system. He gave a case study on an employee who was in a car accident while refilling water on business hours and the costs in time, stress and insurance premiums that go with it. He gave another case study on improving employee morale and making him more comfortable. And he gave some tests on the bacteria count when filling the bottles yourself instead of using a convenient service.
My boss, always a price buyer, asked the price. The water vendor replied, “Well, it depends on what service you request. But no matter which one you request, you can be sure that the water will be clean, the bottles will be sterilized, and the service will be convenient and professional.” that’s why we deliver water for Home Depot, Sears, and more than 500 other local businesses. ”He also emphasized how my boss would benefit from his company’s excellent on-time reputation and management focus on quality.
Finally, he addressed the price. Given all the benefits of the service I’d already discussed, the price seemed perfectly reasonable, even to my boss. The seller received the order (and I was finally able to quench my thirst again).
The same principles apply to proposals. Today more mediocre proposals are presented than ever. This is because more companies than ever are using RFPs and the fact that, despite this, few companies bother to institute training on how to win them. Add to this that many proposals are written by the salespeople themselves and that there are more mediocre salespeople than ever, mainly because the industry generates 30% turnover each year.
Considering that the same principles that win in proposals are the same that win in direct sales, there is no more urgent need in business than training to improve the quality of salespeople and their commercial proposals.
Why the urgency? Because, like the losing water seller, poor sellers use price as the crutch on which to support their sales pitch. And when the low price doesn’t win the deal, they revert to the price, in the form of a special discount or a “one-time” price concession.
When that fails, the salesperson will use a strange set of bad practices, such as asking for the sale as a favor (“because I need one more to win the competition”), or personal relationships, whining, or simply trying to intimidate. the prospect in a sale.
But, even when you don’t know anything about the individual prospect, you know that these are very poor conversion strategies. You also know that there are other sales pitches that win much more consistently.
Finally, you know that price should be the last approach to winning a sale. A seller should practice his poker face and not reveal his hunger for a large order … if the seller just cuts the price a bit more. The buyer will see that desperate look and exploit it.
Similarly, the sales manager must be able to stand his ground, even while listening to a pleading salesperson on the phone or reading a frantic email about how “I can sell 10,000 if we can cut the price by 15%. Let me know ASAP! ! !! “
No no no. If you don’t know anything about the prospect (which is as bad an idea as there is) and instead of finding out you need to pitch in anyway, this is the order to do so. Here are the 10 commandments of writing and selling proposals:
1. Opportunity. The opportunity to make money, be the first to enter a new market, dominate an industry. Anyone in a position to make purchasing decisions feels this call. A sale is an opportunity for the buyer. The seller is only the means to get there.
2. Profitability. What would you care if you were making the purchase decision on your own? What would your concern be? If your concern is more than getting the profits that will keep you in business, it’s hard to see how you will stay in business.
3. Quality. How much would you pay for something that you knew would be undone in a few seconds? Not only would you not pay anything, but you would have to pay to accept it. All products have the hassle factor, so higher quality will always be a selling point because it always reduces the hassle factor.
4. Service. Two types of service are essential: your advisory recommendation service before the sale and its customer service after the sale. Both are critical. The potential customer will judge your commitment and ability to perform the second type of service based on how you perform the first. Honest and thoughtful recommendations will always prevail over “in-it-for-me” sales.
5. Name recognition. The simplest and easiest way to make a decision is “Do I recognize the brand?” If you do, you buy it. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t. That is why so much advertising is simply brand awareness advertising.
6. Reputation. The reputation of the organization follows closely after mere recognition. Let’s say you recognize two brands: Apple and Dell. On their own, they would both be fine. However, one against the other, reputation will prevail. Apple has a reputation for delivering a great user experience, while most people can’t say much about Dell’s reputation one way or another. This is the value of the corporate goodwill.
After these six, we started to get into the “Why bother?” practices. But if that doesn’t work, keep trying. Use your business skills, either in your proposal or in your direct sales. If you have direct connections, use them at this point. Referrals are a great way to get noticed even if they don’t close the sale.
7. Art of selling. The art of selling is still important. We all know many salespeople who can close many deals based on the strength of their personality.
8. Personal relationships. When you see a vendor complaining or complaining or asking for personal favors like the water vendor, it is usually a misguided attempt to capitalize on the relationship before a relationship is established.
9. References. Having a trusted broker who does a good word can open doors, but rarely close sales.
That’s nine. And what have we not mentioned? Price. The simple truth is, if you haven’t sold on any of the other nine factors, a price-based selling proposition won’t change anything. If a potential customer doesn’t want your product at a fair and honest price, then they should go back and work on how to deliver the first commandments again.
10. Price. Certainly a requirement, but it lingers in any good proposition or sale. Price is not a reason to buy. The price is the cost of obtaining all the benefits that is it so the reasons to buy. It is not an argument in itself.
