7/5/2024-“You NEED to see this proposal.”

Creating proposals is fun – it’s what you live for. Give the proposal what it deserves by getting interaction with the customer right after you’ve delivered the proposal.

You work hard to get to the proposal stage with your prospects, so why do you hit "send" and ask the proposal to close the deal for you?

Proposals don’t close business. You close business.

You must do everything possible to present your proposals personally to your prospects. Even if you get 10 minutes of their time to review one crucial part of your proposal, that’ll make a big difference.

Fight. Scrape. Claw. Bite…or do all of it to get time with your prospect to review some of your proposal.

To make the scraping and clawing easier, inform the buyer when you receive the RFP that you’ll need 10 minutes on Zoom to review certain aspects of the proposal when it’s ready.

Proactively asking the buyer for a few minutes may also reveal insights about what they’re looking forward to seeing from you.

In a perfect world, salespeople could always reach their KDMs on the phone and schedule meetings whenever they wanted. Ha… yeah…wake up and smell the espresso. Not these days.

But what if you could review even a portion of your proposals with your prospects…what would that mean to your close rate?

When you think about the times when you need to spend time with a buyer, presenting proposals ranks pretty high.

Try this line in an email: "Hey, as you saw in your inbox, I sent over the proposal yesterday…but there’s one part of the proposal that could use some context and discussion. Do you have five minutes to get on a Zoom tomorrow?"

Go into that meeting prepared to nail the one part you mentioned, and have a backup plan for a couple more parts of the proposal that you want to reinforce and get the buyer’s reaction on. Whatever you do, don’t overstay your welcome. If you asked for 5 minutes, end the meeting at 4.59; if you asked for ten minutes…you get the drift. Let them opt in for more time.

It is statistically proven that you don’t get what you don’t ask for 100% of the time. Even if you can get 10% of your buyers on the phone for five minutes to review a few key points of your proposal, you’re miles ahead of your competition. And you’d take it.

This is why you work hard to develop relationships…it’s for those five crucial minutes of reviewing the part of your proposal that needs emphasis.

Oh, to be Don Draper….the ultimate pitchman. Even though Don exists only on the screen, his unparalleled ability to present ideas and proposals is good entertainment.

Let this Mad Men clip inspire and inject you with the same confidence and courage Don wields.

Your proposals are begging for salespersonship to get them closed.

Your proposals are nothing more than a digital file unless you bring them to life.