John Gruber has an in-depth piece about Apple Watch over on DaringFireball. It’s well thought-out, but what’s particularly interesting is his guess at the prices of the three different tiers. Apple announced that the watch would start at $349, which … Read More
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Proposal Writing Style: Formality and Clarity
There are two ways to look at writing style: formality and clarity. The formality of the writing, formatting, and imagery will depend on your customers. A professional party planner may promise to “keep the drinks flowing, the music thumping, and … Read More
Defining the Customer’s Commitments in a Proposal
In addition to clearly defining what we are not doing as part of a project (see What You’re Forgetting to Include in Your Proposal), we need to define what we need the customer to do to make the project successful. … Read More
What You’re Forgetting to Include in Your Sales Proposal
In our rush to define all the great things we’re going to do for our customer, we sometimes forget that we can’t do everything on the wish list. Even worse, the customer sometimes forgets this, as well. Even if the … Read More
The Powerful Question Most Sales Reps Forget to Ask
Let’s imagine you run a consulting firm that specializes in helping companies in the widget industry improve sales productivity. Half your business comes from this industry, but you also have clients in other industries, and some of your projects extend … Read More
Why Apple University Has a Course on Communicating Clearly
Before he died, Steve Jobs launched an “Apple University” program to keep the culture of the company strong. Employees can sign up for various courses, most of which are completely shrouded in secrecy. Recently, the New York Times got 3 … Read More
Art is the only serious thing in the world. And the artist is the only person who is never serious.
Sales Proposal Buzzword Highlighter Now Live
If you’ve read this blog before, you know how much I hate terrible writing. If not, check out: The Importance of Writing Well, Microsoft CEO Edition How Your High School English Class Is Ruining Your Proposals Don’t Use Jargon, Unless … Read More
Are Your Proposals Like the Baseball Rulebook (or the Tax Code)?
In addition to being very long, the rules of baseball cover scenarios that aren’t all that likely to happen. (This piece in the WSJ cover the 5 strangest rules in baseball.) Why do you need 240 pages of rules for … Read More
5 Sales-Killing Mistakes from Our Attempt to Buy a Car
My wife’s car has been struggling along lately, and it’s finally reached the stage of life support that replacing it is no longer optional. So lastweekend, we went car shopping. We were trying to buy a car. You know who … Read More