Proposal Coaching: Template and 8 Questions to Ask

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Testing the follow-up on great content-marketing campaigns: Most companies fall flat - By Richardson

Your salespeople need your support. And while they may try to entice you to write or help them with their proposals, in fact they need your support in the form of coaching, not doing their work for them. Of course, when a customer dictates the format of a proposal it is essential to adhere to it. But even with that encourage your salespeople to ask their customer if they may either add to the information requested to help the customer make the best decision.

One way to help salespeople write winning proposals is to provide them with a template to use to organize and structure their recommendations. We've found the following categories apply to almost all proposed solutions!

Customer Objectives
Proposed Solution
Why X (Your Organization)
X (Your) Team
Implementation
Pricing Information/Value Justification
Appendix

And possibly add these sections:

Organization Chart
Information on Ownership of Your Company
Financial Information

Always include

Cover Page
Table of Contents
Page Numbers
Plenty of White Space/Bullets
Cover letter

In coaching your salespeople, ask them to bring their customer notes to the meeting. Ask these questions:

What are the customer's objectives? Priorities?
What does this customer value?
What are the elements of our solution?
How do the elements of our solution relate to the customer's objectives? (look for percentage of customized vs. boilerplate)
What are the key five or ten customer words/language from your notes you've integrated into our information about us and our solution throughout your proposal? How often do these words appear in our solution? Where?
What internal resources did you tap into?
What research did you conduct?
With whom will you validate your ideas to test your thinking before you presented your proposals?

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About the Author: Richardson

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Linda Richardson is the Founder and Executive Chairwoman of Richardson, a global sales training and performance improvement company. As a recognized leader in the industry, she has won the coveted Stevie Award for Lifetime Achievement in Sales Excellence and she was identified by Training Industry, Inc. as one of the “Top 20 Most Influential Training Professionals.” Ms. Richardson is credited with the movement to Consultative Selling and is the author of ten books on selling and sales management, including Sales Coaching — Making the Great Leap from Sales Manager to Sales Coach, and Stop Telling, Start Selling. She teaches sales and management at the Wharton Graduate School of the University of Pennsylvania and the Wharton Executive Development Center. Linda is a frequent speaker at industry and client conferences, has been published extensively in industry and training journals, and has been featured in numerous publications, including The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Nation’s Business, Selling Power, Success, and The Conference Board Magazine. Learn more about Richardson's sales training and performance improvement solutions at http://www.richardson.com web
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Testing the followup on great contentmarketing campaigns Most companies fall flat

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Proposal Coaching: Template and 8 Questions to Ask

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