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Proposal Coaching: Template and 8 Questions to Ask

Guest post by: Linda Richardson

Article Overview: 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.

Proposal Coaching: Template and 8 Questions to Ask

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:

1. What are the customer's objectives? Priorities?
2. What does this customer value?
3. What are the elements of our solution?
4. How do the elements of our solution relate to the customer's objectives? (look for percentage of customized vs. boilerplate)
5. 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?
6. What internal resources did you tap into?
7. What research did you conduct?
8. With whom will you validate your ideas to test your thinking before you presented your proposals?
   
   

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  How to Improve your Click Through Rate in Google AdWords
  Setting the Presentation/Proposal Meeting Date
  Writing Business Proposals: Don't Fall into the Trap !
  Coaching Action Plan for Sales Managers
  Action Sales Management Coaching
  Mistakes To Avoid When Using Web Templates
  Six Rules For Doing Proposals
  Does Your Proposal Sell or Are You Just Crossing Your Fingers?
  Formula for Sales Templating
  Have A Plan Before Proposing Telecommuting To Your Boss
  Indecent Proposals
  Six Steps to an Effective Business Proposal
  Entrepreneurs – Want To Write A Winning Proposal?
  Secrets to Filling your Coaching Practice
  Get Smart - Offer a Proposal
  Ask for that meeting - and grow your sales!
  How to be a Better Workplace Coach

Article Tags: Linda Richardson, Richardson Company, Sales Training



Related Forum Posts
Don't give up 40%! - Congrats on this milestone Evan... I agree with outsourcing any function that makes the business owner a Front-line worker as this is not best use of your time. I also agree with Louis that 40% is too much to give up. 40% may work if you have surpassed your income goals from the website and after you pay the 40% you are still within your monthly income goals. Would an RFP/RFI (Request For Proposal/Information) to companies like this Website Sales Team be a call you need to make?
Re: Quote of the Day - "Don't be embarrassed about asking "stupi - One of my favorite requests when leading a class, workshop, lecture, interview, whatever... There are no Stupid Questions, don't be afraid to ask - someone else has the same question, but is afraid to ask On the other hand - try anticipate the questions Back to the first hand - Some People ARE dummer than a ROCK
Re: Marketing ideas? - Questions will set you free... And make you Rich [quote="KH_Global":349pds7c]Just ask ask ask. That is it.[/quote:349pds7c]
Re: need pricing help please - here's my opinion that was derived from the person I heard it from (Russell Brunson) I view internet Marketing products as a Ladder. At the bottom of the Ladder is ebooks and at the top is One on One Coaching. so the ladder would look like this starting from the Top ($$$) to Bottom($) One-to-One Coaching ($$$$$$) Workshops ($$$$$) Teleseminars ($$$$) Video($$$) Audio ($$) ebooks ($) I agree with this methodology mainly because of the convenience factor and value from the customers point of view.
Re: Contact Information - Another idea would be to have an email form in place to accept "ticketed" inquires (if people are afraid of spammers seeing their email address). However, I hate how some sites try to persuade you out of sending an email by bombarding you with lists of "Frequently Asked Questions & Answers" as I find they're rarely helpful.


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