Greg's Right FIT #554–This week: Proposals, Writing, Salsa

Quick notes to help you find new business in less time with less effort. . . sometime next week.

In this issue: 

• Thoughts about Proposals
• Being Human
• Random Stuff
• Back In The Day

Thoughts about Proposals

• Does your proposal lead with an About Us? Change it to About The Prospect and see what happens.
• Proposals are supposed to help prospects determine Return on Investment (ROI). It's a problem when the only numbers in the proposal are on the last page, the Investment. An investment without a return is a cost. And as you know, the cost is always too high.
• When you see your people laboring over a proposal, remind them it's a summary of the sales process, not a time to introduce new material. If it's new information, they need to get back in front of prospects and ask questions.
• If you're using AI for proposals, you need to give it the About The Prospect information. Most proposals the robot learned from don't have that key bit of information. Teach it where to find it.

Being Human – Writing skills

How are your writing skills?

I've been helping a sales team with what looks like a pipeline problem. The number of opportunities isn't the issue. We dug through a fair share of examples and even talked to a few of the prospects to confirm that there is an opportunity. The deal makes it on to the pipeline and just sits there. A couple are lost to competition, but more often than not the prospect company is doing nothing. They are just living with the issue.

With most situations like this we try to find the origin of the problem. When did it start happening? Were deals getting closed before, but not now? Was it always like this and we just wish it were different? Questions like that. That's helpful in giving us a before and after to compare, but when we looked the proposals are the same. At first, it looks like clients used to make decisions and now they aren't. Is it the economy? Has something changed in the market?

We have a half dozen deals in the pipeline right now so we cover those in depth. There's a feeling that we might have been asking more or better questions before, so the plan is to hold off on the proposal for these prospects and ask more questions. The first one comes back 24 hours later. Done deal. Fantastic, right?

"Greg, it's working," they said. I'm skeptical because while I'm good, I'm not that good.

"Walk me through it," I said.

"Let me send you what they sent me."

I get the forwarded email and read the thread. It doesn't look like a done deal. It looks like it's being passed to the next round of buyers. But that's not the part that sticks out.

"Did you call them or do this via email?" I ask, seeing that the time stamp is 8pm the night before and guessing at the answer.

"Oh, we've talked a lot [blah, blah, bah]. . ."

The rule is, or should be, no proposals in writing until they are walked through verbally. Preferably in person, but webcalls are ok, phone calls are ok, and emails are a last resort.

We're not great writers. Our buyers are not great readers. It's why we have lawyers review the contracts. They are great writers and readers.

I bring this up to the sales team. "Yeah, we know," they say, "we used to do that a lot more but you know, no one takes calls today [blah, blah, blah]. . ."

Every time we talk to a prospect a sale is made. Either they sell us, or we sell them. For good sized opportunities, like these, sell the face to face presentation of the proposal. Describe what happens if we are stuck exchanging emails. To get to the best solution we need to do our best communication, using our best tools. Writing is not usually our salespeople's best tool. Detailed reading of strong writing is rarely our prospect's best tool. Get in front of them. It will save a lot of effort, and eliminate hours of hand wringing, over time. Give it a try.

Random Stuff

We're in a weather pattern where it rains hard before dawn and heats up for the rest of the day. Crazy humid. Like living in a dishwasher. Great for a corn stalk, hard on humans. I don't need to do any garden watering, which is great, but everything is growing. Really growing. Weeds, squash vines, tomatoes, and the basil.

My lovely bride has been taking advantage of the garden bounty. While the only think I can come up when confronted with a big ripe tomato is slicing it thick, salting, peppering, and putting it between toasted slices of sourdough with mayo, she is making pastas, salsas, pestos, and salads. It's good she's around. She even baked me a cake. (you can see the salsa and pesto in the background)

In between bites of my lovely bride's culinary output, I'm banging away at my novel and trying to get over the loss of our dog. Those fur balls worm their way into every fiber of your being, don't they? As Agnes Sligh Turnbull said, "Dogs' lives are too short. Their only fault, really."

She was a novelist too, you know. A real one, not a wannabe like me. Her first book was out in 1936 and the last in 1980. She lived to be 93 writing about life in rural Pennsylvania.

Most of my novel's action takes place in rural Pennsylvania. I wonder if I'll live to be 93? (probably need to cut back on the cake a bit for that to happen)

Back in the Day

What I was thinking about last year, five years ago, and ten years ago.

• Last Year: Right FIT #502 – The part about following the flow of money to get referrals is worth a full article. Especially if part of the sales strategy is to get into key accounts via referral. An introduction from a vendor is nice. An introduction from their #1 customer is gold.
• Five Years Ago: Right FIT #293 – Summer is the time for sales force evaluation. Each year I seem to be talking about troubleshooting performance. the optimism of the first quarter gets run over by the first half of the year's results. Pretty normal and pretty easy to fix if you catch it early. Have the tough conversations earlier in the year to give yourself more time to catch up.
• Ten Years Ago: Right FIT #31 – It's been 10 years since we took our two week trip to China. We went to Shanghai, X'ian, and Beijing. Just thinking about it makes me feel disjointed. It was so foreign I was out of sorts the entire time. When we go back I want to see Hong Kong and spend more time in Shanghai. I wrote this at the time, "Shanghai had 65 high rises over 20 stories tall in 1995. Today there are 6500." Not sure where I found that stat, but I imagine there are even more today. Amazing.