What’s the secret of writing more effective proposals?

Proposal writing

A proposal will not win a deal. But it can lose one in an instant.

Do you struggle with proposals and responding to RFPs?  There is so much other sales work that needs to go into the effort of securing business. But the wrong proposal can undo all your hard work.

Do you recognise some of these symptoms?

  • Executive Summaries which ramble on for page after page
  • Customer expectations that are not established
  • Documents filled with technical jargon
  • Closely typed documents with nothing to ‘please the eye’
  • Unclear propositions and pricing which needs interpretation
  • No attempt to address customer pain points
  • Generic proposals which are not targeted at the customer
  • Benefits which are non-existent or not clearly defined
  • Consistent use of unexplained abbreviations
  • A fast burn, time crisis approach which end up with “we’ll go with what we’ve got!”
  • Your proposal managers struggle to get the right information out of the sales team

Problems like these can damage your chances of winning.

Winning proposals:

  • Encourage early engagement with sales team
  • Demonstrate understanding of all the customer requirements
  • Suggest to the customer a carefully planned preparation process
  • Focus on the customer and not the vendor
  • Present a compelling story and creative thinking
  • Are easy to evaluate
  • Contain a well written and ‘eye-catching’ Executive Summary

The Solution

It is not just the proposal manager who is responsible for putting together the winning proposal. That’s why we have developed a training course aimed at all the stakeholders in the proposal management process.  This web based training is highly interactive, fast-paced, fun, and highly effective in providing knowledge and skills for sales people to start using even before the course is completed.  Each course is divided into four elements to optimise learning. These include interactive workshops in a virtual classroom, self-study time, hands-on exercises and finally an assessment or test.

The course content includes real-life experience in sales and sales support as we identify critical moments in customer-facing and commercial areas, where your staff could benefit from well focused, targeted training.

Content includes:

  • Best practice proposal management – a guide to excellence and how to deliver business results to customers
  • Working in an international environment - ensuring all members of the virtual team deliver on promises
  • Applying Miller-Heiman Strategic Selling® methodologies to bids and sales processes
  • Explaining why well-written and compelling Executive Summaries are essential to success

The value of proposal training