How to write a winning sales proposal?

In today's economy, salespeople have to deliver more and better business proposals than ever before. As the industry has become more competitive and complex, customers have become both more confused and more demanding. As a result, they're likely to listen to a presentation, nod and mutter those expected words: "Sounds good! Can you write it down for me?

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Why do customers want sales proposals?

Writing proposals is about as much fun as pulling teeth. And reading them is hardly any more delightful. So why do customers ask for them?

One of their motivations is to want to compare offers from different suppliers to ensure that they buy the solution with the best evaluation based on the differential and value criteria of your proposal. At a simpler level, they may just want to compare prices, clarify complex information and gather information so that the team responsible for making decisions can examine it carefully. And let's face it, sometimes they just want to slow down the sales process and think that asking for a proposal to be written will keep the sales rep busy for a few weeks.

Whatever the customer's motivation, proposal writing has become a common requirement for closing commercial deals throughout the business world. Today, people selling everything from garbage collection services to complex information technology need to create persuasive, customer-focused proposals.

What's in a winning proposal?

Your goal when writing a proposal is to provide your customer with enough information (persuasive information) to support your case and motivate the customer to buy your services or applications. Sounds simple enough.

So why do the vast majority of proposals start with the supplier's company history? Does the author believe there's something fundamentally compelling about their origin that will immediately convince customers to buy their products?

And why do so many proposals focus entirely on the supplier's products and services, but never mention how these products and services will help the customer solve a business problem or close a major gap? Does the proposal writer think that facts alone are enough to make a potential customer say "yes"?

Winning sales proposals should be customer-centric, not company- or product-centric. Most people buy products because they're looking for solutions to urgent problems, extra resources to fill gaps, or ways to cope with difficult issues. What this means is that a proposal is not a price quote, a bill of materials or a project plan.

Each of these elements may be part of a proposal, but they are not sufficient to make it compelling and customer-focused.

In our experience, there are four categories of content that proposals should include to maximize your chances of winning:

1. Evidence that you understand the customer's business problem or need
   People approach major purchasing decisions with trepidation. The more important the decision, the greater the anxiety. They know that even a well-intentioned supplier can end up wasting their time or money, or both. One way to reduce their anxiety and minimize their perception of the risk of continuing with you is to demonstrate that you clearly understand their problems, issues, needs, objectives or values. Whatever arouses the customer's interest, you need to demonstrate that you understand it and have based your solution on it.
2. A recommendation for a specific approach, program, system design or application that will solve the problem and produce positive business results.
   It may surprise you to learn that most proposals contain no recommendations at all. What they contain instead are descriptions of products or services. What's the difference? A recommendation explicitly links the features of a product or service to the customer's needs, and shows how the customer will achieve positive results. It contains language that shows unequivocally that the salesperson believes in the solution: "We recommend" or "We invite you to implement".
3. A compelling reason for the customer to choose your recommendation over another
   This is your value proposition. Remember, you can write a proposal that is completely in line with the customer's requirements, recommends the right solution, even offers the lowest price, and still not be selected. But why not? Because a competitor made a better case that their approach offered a higher return on investment, higher total cost of ownership (TCO), faster payback or a similar measure of value that's important to the customer.
   
   NOTE: Most proposals do not contain a value proposition. They contain prices, but no estimate of the rate of return the customer will get by choosing you. Failing to address the customer's needs and failing to present a compelling value proposition are the most serious mistakes you can make when writing a proposal.
4. Proof of your ability to deliver on time and on budget
   Most proposals are very good in this area. You want to show supporting evidence that answers the question, "Can they really do this?" Evidence includes case studies, references, testimonials and CVs of key personnel. You can also include project plans, management plans, expertise and other types of information (white papers, awards, third-party recognition). Avoid mentioning everything. Keep the information focused on areas of interest to the customer.

These elements are essential. Every piece of data, every figure, every paragraph of your proposal should contribute to feeding one or more of them with concrete information, as they directly address the three key factors on which every proposal is evaluated:

1. Responsiveness: do we have what we need?
2. Competence: can they really do it?
3. Value: is this the smartest way to spend our money?

Tips for maximizing your success rate

If you follow the basic structure described above (1. summarize the customer's needs, 2. indicate the opportunity for profit or improvement, 3. recommend your solution, and 4. confirm that you can accomplish the task), then you'll see an increase in your success rate.

But there are two other principles that can increase your success rate even more. In fact, one way to remember them is to remember the two P's in successful proposal writing:

• Personalization
• Primacy

Personalization

Customers expect more today. Why should they? In part, because they've been trained to expect more, due to the business community's emphasis on excellence in customer service and the importance of "total quality" and increased market competitiveness.

So you can't give customers a standard proposal for today's market. You have to include their name and the name of their company throughout the proposal. You need to demonstrate that you've listened to them, and don't forget what you've learned about them from previous exchanges.

Here are four conclusions that emerge from the reality of customers' highest expectations:

• Effective salespeople don't always deliver the same message
  They don't treat customers as demographics. They talk, they listen, and they treat customers as individuals.
• Effective marketing and sales require a combination of content and knowledge
  You need to have something important to communicate, and you need to say it in a way that shows the audience that the message is relevant.
• Standard messages can be worse than no message at all
  Because they sound "superficial" and diminish the rapport we've built up with customers.
• Use the customer's jargon and refer to issues related to their business and industry
  If you use the jargon they use, and show in the cover letter and executive summary that you know what's going on in their business and industry, they'll feel that their proposal has been personalized.

Unfortunately, most salespeople resort to "cloning" as a way of writing their proposals quickly. They take a proposal someone else has written for a different customer, use Microsoft Word's Find/Replace function to change the customer's name, and print it! It's about as personalized an approach as a can of spinach. (Plus, they run the risk of having the customer's wrong name appear somewhere in that proposal. You can imagine what that means for the report and credibility).

The primacy principle

What is the "primacy principle"? It's the tendency we all have to judge future experiences on the basis of our first experience. You might call it the principle of first impressions.

For example, if we go to the new dry cleaner on the block and he's not only very rude to us, but ends up losing some of the shirts we've entrusted to him, you'd have to be a bit of a masochist to decide to go back. It may be that he's usually very efficient and polite, but a combination of circumstances has impacted us negatively. Unfortunately, we'll never know because we'll never go back. Research indicates that the primacy principle is so strong that it takes at least seven positive experiences to overcome a negative first impression (or, conversely, seven negative experiences to overcome a positive first experience).

So what does this mean for proposals? It means that in our proposal we need to talk about the things the customer is most interested in. It means that you shouldn't send a standard cover letter. Don't write an analytical summary about yourself. And don't refer to your proposal as something generic and useless, like a "Proposal".

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The solution

The principle of primacy tells us that it's vital to understand the customer and structure the message correctly. Put the customer's most important business issues first. Put the objective or result they want most at the top of your list of results. And structure your rationale with elements that matter most to the decision-maker:

• Meet a perceived need
• Deliver superior value or return on investment (ROI)
• Conform to specification
• Confirm suppliers' professionalism

Don't guess! If you don't know what customers are interested in, ask them.

About the author

Tom Sant, founder of The Sant Corporation and author of Persuasive Business Proposals, is internationally recognized as an expert in proposal writing.