Why Your Sales Proposals Suck
Let’s face it, most proposals sent out by sales people suck. I’ve seen em…so many. And most of them are terrible, but why?
As a salesperson, you know your product or service inside and out, you know (I hope) how it helps the prospect, and you’ve discussed (I also hope) at length what your offering will DO for them as specifically as possible, prior to sending the proposal. So why do most sales proposals suck?
From my experience, proposals should simply put in writing what you’ve already discussed. They should be simple, client specific (no copy and paste here) and engaging in a way that just confirm for the client that your offering is the one they should choose.
Unfortunately, like poorly trained salespeople, most proposals are all about you and your company. You know what I’m talking about. They often read, “We’ve been in business for 500 years and work with 407 of the Fortune 500. We’re the oldest and best in the industry and you can trust us because so many others have.” Who cares?!? What are you and your offering going to do for me? More importantly, for my business? Proposals that are just the paper/PDF form of “show up and throw up”, don’t work. Please stop it!
Yes, you can obviously mention how wonderful and great you are and all of the top companies that also chose you, but it should be in passing at best and usually at the end of the proposal, if at all.
Another huge reason most sales proposals suck is because the sales person hasn’t done their homework. Do you know what’s important to the prospect? What are they hoping to achieve in buying/using your offering? Do you speak their language? How many people in the organization have you spoken to, met with, and discussed what’s important to them? Do you know what’s pushing on the business as a whole, from the top? Do you know what the company’s objectives are for the quarter or the year? What internal issues have prevented them from solving the problem in the past? Why are they looking for a solution?
If you can’t answer questions like these and don’t have a strategic opportunity management plan in place to learn these answers and others from each client, you should NOT be sending proposals until you do.
Your proposals don’t have to suck. They can be clear, concise, and highlight client specific value in an engaging and thoughtful way. Once you learn how to do that, you can expect to win more deals and crush your competition that’s still doing it the same old way.
Now go sell somethin!
