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Linda 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

and 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 and 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?

About Richardson: As the global leader in sales performance improvement, companies turn to Richardson to help accelerate sales success.  Richardson’s end-to-end Sales Performance System helps organizations master today’s complex selling environment. Our solutions address the key elements that enable companies to accelerate the performance of their sales organizations: effectiveness of your sales structure, process, and talent; a client- focused salesforce with the strategies and skills to execute your sales process and drive results; and the sales tools and resources necessary for sustained performance improvement.

As the chief architect of this survey, Richardson is able to leverage its experience and work with you to determine how the data directly relates to your specific goals and requirements for success in 2010.

As part of your success initiatives for 2010, join with other global sales leaders and resolve to take a proactive position on sales performance improvement.

Visit Richardson’s website at www.richardson.com or call  (215) 940-9255, and see how our suite of advisory services and our Sales Performance System can help maximize sales effectiveness.

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