Written sales proposals and bespoke sales documents often represent some of the darkest moments in our sales careers. At their best they can be lots of faintly enjoyable hard work. At their worst, they can tie us up for hours and nights, keeping us from our loved ones and making us truly regret ever getting into sales.

Here are some of the common pitfalls when it comes to writing sales proposals - and how to avoid them:

a. Offering them on a whim
I think 100% of sales people during at least one stage of their careers have been guilty of offering a prospect a proposal on a whim. Sometimes we offer them to prospective clients with the enthusiasm of a five-year-old: “I’ll tell you what - let me shoot you a proposal!” Before too long we have five proposals to write, no-one to help us and we haven’t seen our family for a month. It is at this time we regret our enthusiastic promises.

The key is of course to qualify a few things with the prospective client, such as:

Do they actually need a full proposal? Maybe an email will do instead. This is a bit like the way you don’t need an official invitation every time you go for a drink with friends.

Are they a genuine prospect at all? Maybe they simply agreed to a proposal as a way of getting you off the phone.

Simply asking “How would you prefer me to get back to you on this?” might actually help with their expectations and yours.

b. Too much detail!
Human beings have an overwhelming desire to add detail. It’s in our nature. If there’s a blank space in the conversation we have to fill it. If there’s a blank page in our documents, we also have to fill it.

Salespeople have it even worse. We know how rare it is to get in front of prospects. When we do have their attention for 10 minutes we like to include everything thinking: “This might be my only chance!”

Recently I consulted to a web design company where I reviewed their sales proposals and gave them some pointers for the future. What I found was that they were over-worked: longwinded and highly detailed.

We know that people usually only buy for one or two reasons, yet this company was giving them 25 reasons to buy. If the prospect asked for a web design, they invariably got 3 pages about their Search Engine Optimisation products too.

When you write sales proposals, assume you are going to have a long-term relationship with the client. In the fullness of time, they will learn about your other products and services once they come on board. Until then, just give them what they need to know for now.

Think of the cat with the bit of string. You keep the string out of the cat’s reach, and they will try for hours to get hold of it. Drop the string, and the cat walks away in disgust.

Do the same with your sales proposals. Don’t pack them with detail. Save some stuff for next time.

c. One size fits all
I’m sorry if this is the first time you have heard this, but your prospects can tell if you give them a standard “search and insert company name” proposal.

Have you ever got a postcard in the mail at home from a real estate agent with blue scribbly writing on it as though it was handwritten by a real person? Of course you can see the blue writing has been printed, and you can’t believe they are trying to pull the wool over your eyes.

This is a similar effect that clients feel when you do the famous Control F and replace with their name. They can tell – truly!

To get over this issue you certainly don’t have to recreate every page every time in a sales proposal, but you should customise the parts that matter, such as:

An executive summary or letter to the decision maker recapping the problem;

Customer quotes ensuring that they are from the industry that you are targeting;

Language to reflect the customer’s industry: customers can be called all sorts of things - in retail they will talk about footfall, in web it’s traffic, in professional services it’s clients, in banks it’s customers, in associations it’s members and for internal corporate markets “stakeholders” is becoming more widely used.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 10th, 2007 at 11:54 pm and is filed under Natural news, Sales advice, Sales proposals. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.