If this is your first time visiting, you can receive this blog by RSS Feed or email .

We have two big adversaries when it comes to sales proposals; the following tip can help with both of them.

1. Sameness. All proposals tend to look like every other sales proposal in the known universe to our customers and prospects. This is not a good thing.
2. LIT (Lack of Information Transmittal). Because of the way we format our proposals we often don’t communicate our added value. This can kill things right out of the gate.

What are the generally accepted rules of thumb from a salesperson’s perspective for sales proposal construction?

1. Bigger is better
2. Hide the pricing
3. Stuff it with as many brochures as we can find
4. Make it look really professional with pre-printed tabs, etc.
5. Find all the “boiler plate” text available and “find and replace” the customer’s name into it
6. Make lots of copies and send out more than the customer could possibly need

What are the general rules of thumb from a customer’s perspective when viewing a sales proposal?

1. Where’s the pricing page?

Our customers and prospects go right to the pricing page when initially viewing a proposal and could not care less about all the other filler we include.

Since we know this, we can use it to our advantage and overcome the Sameness and LIT (Lack of Information Transmittal) issues with the following proposal tip. Here’s how it works.

First, put the pricing page in a place that is easy for the customer to find. This will immediately make us look different. Next, comb through the entire proposal and find the absolutely most essential value added items that we would like them to see. Lastly, include these items on the pricing page.

Since we know they are going to immediately dive for the pricing page, we need to put the most important points where we know they are going to be looking. The pricing page. In fact, with this technique they can’t avoid seeing these important points.

This technique will hopefully get us invited to the “short list” party where we can do additional in-depth value selling.

© 2008 Scott R. Sheaffer

Tags: collateral, pricing

We'd like to hear your feedback on this post - feel free to comment below!