Help your team members to co-create more compelling proposals

Hello Sales Reset Leader

Does your sales process system force team members to send ineffective proposals to their best opportunities?

Here’s the problem.

Most sales teams devise ways of producing proposals “more efficiently”.

Someone devises a proposal template that looks as professional as possible. Then, using this template becomes part of the required sales process.

However, a key challenge is that pursuing efficiency with proposals often undermines their effectiveness.

Let’s start by reviewing why this approach is almost universal.

Standard proposals save time and deliver consistency

Of course, it saves time to use templated proposals compared to starting with a blank page every time.

Templated proposals mean that the:

• best parts of successful proposals that have worked in the past can be used repeatedly.

• contract terms can be standardised.

• professional design and branding remains consistent.

In your most minor and most transactional opportunities, templated proposals are self-evidently the correct way to work.

Most salespeople don’t like writing

There’s another big reason why templated proposals are used in almost every sales team.

Many people in selling roles dislike writing. One of the main reasons they chose a sales career is that they prefer to meet people and talk.

For many reasons, some of your team may struggle with literacy skills.

I am convinced that AI “conversation intelligence” tools will become increasingly effective at solving this concern. It will become easy to use elements of spoken conversation from AI transcriptions and add them to proposal templates.

Potential problems with generic proposals

However, there are currently some big problems with using generic proposals:

1. unique circumstances: Generic proposals often fail to capture and communicate the unique elements of each situation.

2. unique vocabulary: They don’t use each unique customer's words to describe their needs.

3. stakeholder engagement: They fail to engage the growing range of stakeholders we know are becoming increasingly significant in all major B2B buying decisions.

AI tools will increasingly address the first two of these problems. However, AI will never be as effective as your team members at identifying and engaging all the stakeholders who should ideally be involved.

Typical Proposals vs. Co-Creation Proposals

This has been a long introduction explaining the theme of this week's Weekly Sales Reset newsletters about learning how to co-create proposals.

In the first of this week’s newsletters, I introduce the differences between two very different types of sales proposals.

1. typical proposals: Proposals that seek a purchase order immediately for the products and services you’re selling.

2. co-creation proposal: Proposals designed to secure agreement to collaborate in proposal development.

I suggest that 20% of their proposals be written as co-creation proposals. I recommend they review their recent and current proposals to see which would have been better for co-creation proposals.

Recommended Proposal Structure

I reminded them of a previous newsletter, recommending the following structure for their proposals. 

This structure makes it easy for people to forward their proposals to their colleagues:

• title: Your proposal title should create a great first impression and ideally focus on the proposal's outcomes for this specific customer.

• summary: Busy, senior people are unlikely to read your whole proposal. They’re more likely to read the whole of your summary. Write this summary of your proposal last.

• background: Briefly explain what has led to this proposal and the elements of the current situation.

• outcomes: These are the outcomes you helped your customer to define with your coaching.

• recommendations: Briefly explain the products and services you recommend to achieve their desired outcomes.

• investment: Provide sufficient details about the costs of your products and services.

• return on investment: Demonstrate how your recommended investment will pay for itself.

• next actions: Clarify who will need to do what and by when to proceed with these proposals.

• appendices: If you need to include detailed specifications, use clickable text links to online resources or put them at the end of your proposal. This will make your proposal faster and easier to read.

Comparing typical and co-creation proposals

In their mid-week newsletters, your team members will be given this table that compares the content of typical proposals and co-creation proposals:

Coaching your team members

If this is a new approach to proposal writing in your team, I recommend that you prioritise your coaching efforts with just a couple of team members. You need some success stories before trying to convince the sceptics!

Find out who on your team is keen to learn how to develop proposals this way.

Then, help them to review their current pipeline. Which opportunities are most suited to a potentially very different proposal?

Help them develop ideas and plans for this very different proposal. Please encourage them to budget a realistic amount of time to write it.

I’ll be very interested to hear about your experience with this week’s recommendations.

Just hit reply to the email and let me know your questions or feedback.

Have a great week!

Peter Button