Five Ways to Improve Your Proposal Win Rate

In many ways, I’ve viewed my sales efforts and resources much like a CXO would view his/her precious assets – I want to use them just-in-time and at the right time, every time. One of the biggest and most precious assets in the sales process is the writing and delivery of a proposal. Because I’ve viewed proposals this way, I have enjoyed very impressive win rates throughout a long career once my proposals have been delivered. Here are five tips to live by if you’re looking to increase your win rate or that of your team:

1. In naval aviation circles, Navy pilots are taught to “get a good start” at the beginning of their landing approach to have any chance at catching the aircraft carrier’s arresting wire. We, as sales people, need “good starts” as well. So hire a lead qualifier tasked with three critical objectives to accomplish before any efforts at proposals are begun:

     a. Develop and identify a compelling reason for the prospect to act on your goods and/or services (not from your perspective but from that of the prospect)
     b. Identify each member of the decision-making group
     c. Gain commitment for at least two members to be at an initial discovery meeting before any proposal is considered

If it’s not in the business plan for such a resource as a lead qualifier, do these things on your own before you start committing too many resources.

2. Avoid boilerplates at all costs. Yes, you’ll win some of those and maybe save some time, but you won’t get the improved results you need. Willy Loman Street is littered with boilerplate proposals thrown out by the prospect because:

     a. A former prospect’s name is spread throughout the proposal
     b. It shows no appreciation for the prospect’s unique challenges, i.e. “they didn’t listen to me.”
     c. It shows no effort, i.e. “how will I be treated as a client?”

3. Show only the following in your proposal:
     a. Summary
     b. Findings
     c. Feature-Benefit
     d. Cost-Benefit

Remove the “fluff’. “Fluff” is “fluff” and it is rarely read or appreciated. If you’re hoping to “catch an eye” with some written word, that work should have been done at the discovery stage. Anything outside of (a)-(d) above is “fluff”.

4. Check, double-check and then triple-check for grammar, spelling, formatting etc. And always with at least a second set of eyes involved somewhere. If you are not good at this kind of attention-to-detail, hire someone who is, just like you did in college to type up your term papers!

5. If at all possible, deliver the proposal in person. GoToMeeting and tools like it are impressive and can be tremendous resource-savers, but there is no substitute for reading a prospect’s body language as the proposal is delivered. And it gives your prospect more trust in you to see you delivering points and answering questions with supreme confidence. If you send a proposal via mail or email, you are an amateur fisherman who saw some fish biting in that spot earlier in the day, and has no clue that the fish may have “moved on”.

If you follow these steps, you’ll deliver a resource-hungry asset known as the proposal to the right prospect, at the right time, every time, and improve your win-rate. You may even get back some precious personal time for you to go off and improve those fishing skills!