3 Elements Omitted in Proposals Will Kill Sales

When speaking to audiences or coaching clients, I am always asked what may have gone wrong upon submitting their proposal to a prospect who was previously interested but now no longer communicates.

1. Speak to the budget of your prospect
2. Itemize your packages offered for easy comparison
3. Full disclosure

Prior to writing your proposal, you of course need to find out why your prospect invited you in for an appointment or agreed to take time on the phone to speak with you.

The initial conversation puts you, the vendor, in the position of a consultant. You need to dig deep through questioning to discover all of the problems your prospect is experiencing.

In turn, you question further to find how each problem is affecting other areas of their business. Only after you ask all of the relevant questions for the situation, will you be able to determine if your services are a correct fit and that you can indeed help.

It has become apparent that some industries do not know to ask for the budget of their prospect. Instead, these suppliers simply assume they know what is needed and that the money is available to accept the proposal.

The belief of these vendors is their prospect would not have inquired about their services in the first place. Nothing is further from the truth.

When it is your turn to speak after uncovering the needs of your prospect, ask upfront,What is your budget? If you do not ask this frank question, you may well be wasting your own valuable time putting a proposal together and presenting it.

Your prospect may have designer taste or a budget so low they cannot possibly afford the services offered. You will frustrate the prospect to the point where they walk away.

The second element of a proposal is line items. Your proposal should clearly indicate everything that is included. If you provide individual pricing for each service then that should itemized. If you instead provide a package, be certain every element is carefully listed in the package.

Provide as much detail as possible so that your prospect knows exactly what is to be expected. Your prospect needs to know exactly what they will be receiving in exchange for their money spent.

To improve your success rate for sales, relationship building throughout the sales cycle is also a critical element.

The biggest error on a proposal is omission. Omission of expected items in the package will cause your prospect to not walk away but run.

Some vendors purposely omit or are vague about what needs to be included. They hope to begin the project and mid-way through announce an extra element is needed which allows them to add money to their bottom line.

This practice only serves to spread bad word of mouth and hurt business on a bigger scale than just losing one prospect. Honesty is still the best policy.

Upon working with a kitchen designer, an associate was given a proposal to update his old tired-looking house. Jim initially told the designer he was on limited income and the improvement needed to be modest. He was never asked precisely what he had in mind. Instead, the designer said she understood.

The proposal came back being thousands of dollars over the expected amount. Jim told her the numbers needed to be redone.

Jim and the kitchen designer finally came to agreement however Jim said he needed to check one more source before signing. The second vendor asked the question, In addition to the cabinets, how much are the counter tops?

Jim called the first company to ask if the counter tops were included in their proposal. He thought, how would a kitchen design be complete without the counters? To his dismay, Jim found out the counter tops were a never-before disclosed extra charge and not included in the bid.

Jim walked away thanking his lucky stars he never signed the paperwork.

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