How do you 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 are likely to listen to a presentation, nod and mutter the expected words: "That sounds good! Can you write it down for me?

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Why do customers want sales proposals?

Writing a proposal is about as much fun as pulling teeth. And reading them isn't much more fun. So why do customers ask for them?

One reason is that they want to compare offers from different suppliers to ensure that they buy the best-rated solution based on the value and incremental criteria in your proposal. At a simpler level, they may just want to compare prices, clarify complex information and gather information so that the decision-making team can look at 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 rubbish 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 very simple.

So why do the vast majority of proposals start with the supplier's company story? Does the author believe that there is 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 those products and services will help the customer solve a business problem or fill an important gap? Does the proposer think that facts alone are enough to make a potential customer say 'yes'?

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

Any of these can 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 maximise your chances of winning:

1. Evidence that shows you understand the business problem or customer 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 of reducing their anxiety and minimising their perception of the risk of continuing with you is to show them that you clearly understand their problems, issues, needs, objectives or values. Whatever is of interest to the customer, you need to demonstrate that you understand it and have based your solution on it.
2. A recommendation for a specific approach, programme, system design or application that will solve the problem and deliver 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 this solution: "We recommend" or "We invite you to implement".
3. A convincing reason for the customer to choose your recommendation over another
   This is your value proposition. Don't forget that you can write a proposal that is completely in line with the customer's requirements, that recommends the right solution, that even offers the lowest price and still not be selected. And 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 is 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 client'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 in your proposal should contribute to feeding one or more of them with concrete information, because 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?

A few tips to maximise your success rate

If you follow the basic structure described above (1. summarise the customer's needs, 2. indicate the opportunity for profit or improvement, 3. recommend your solution, and 4. confirm that you can do the job), then you will 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:

• Personalisation
• Primacy

Personalisation

Customers expect more these days. Why should they? Partly 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 the increased competitiveness of the market.

So you can't just 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 have to show that you have listened to them and remember what you have learned about them from previous discussions.

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

• Effective salespeople do not 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 detract from the rapport we've built up with customers.
• Use the customer's own 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 will feel that their proposal has been personalised.

Unfortunately, most salespeople resort to "cloning" as a way of writing their proposals quickly. They take a proposal that 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 as a can of spinach. (Plus, they risk having the client'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 based on our first experience. You could call it the principle of first impressions.

For example, if we go to the new dry cleaner in our neighbourhood and he's not only very rude to us but ends up losing some of the shirts we've given him, you'd have to be a bit of a masochist to decide to go back. It may be that he is usually very efficient and polite, but a combination of circumstances has had a negative impact on us. Unfortunately we'll never know because we'll never go back. Research suggests 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 should 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 executive summary about yourself. And don't refer to your proposal as something generic and pointless, like a "Proposal".

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The solution

The principle of primacy tells us that it is 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. And structure your justification with the elements that matter most to the decision-maker:

• Meeting a perceived need
• Deliver superior value or return on investment (ROI)
• Comply with the 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 recognised as an expert in proposal writing.