Sales Proposals |
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In the typical business-to-business sales cycle, a proposal rarely wins the sale. Only good selling does that. But if the proposal fails to incorporate some fundamental truths inherent in good selling, it can certainly cost you the sale. An effective proposal is the capstone of a customer-focused selling process. But too many sellers ignore the customer or pay only lip service to customer needs when writing sales proposals. And rare are the sellers who both recognise the criteria their customers use to make decisions and understand how to incorporate that critical information into their proposals. In short, most sellers write principally about their companies and the features of their products and services. As a result, most proposals fail to differentiate. In fact, you could probably exchange the title pages of most competing proposals without customers knowing the difference! Is it any wonder that customers quickly gravitate to the price section? Huthwaite's proposal expertise has nothing to do with writing skills or graphics. We focus exclusively on helping sellers identify and tailor the content that will carry good customer-focused selling into the written word. Our approach is to empower our clients to develop proposals that create value for the customer—your documents should be able to sell for you after you've submitted them. In short, research has shown that the most effective proposal is a memorialisation of what has already been agreed to with the customer. A good proposal:
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