What do great sales reps know that the rest of your team doesn’t? As this article on SellingBrew notes, great sales reps know when an opportunity isn’t a real opportunity. So they just say no to it and stop wasting … Read More
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Facebook’s Acquisition of WhatsApp is Bigger than You Think
Facebook rocked Silicon Valley with its $19B of messaging app WhatsApp, with tech writers, leaders, and investors debating the massive purchase price. Wall Street seemed less than enthusiastic, dropping Facebook shares slightly after the announcement. The deal price is certainly … Read More
What the Lego Movie Can Teach Us About Sales Proposals
We’ve had a strange winter in Austin. Three “snow days”, one of which involved a small dusting of snow. Last Friday, we had a “snow day” based on, well, chance of cold rain. There was no precipitation. I’m not sure … Read More
Why Your Sales Proposal Language Might be Giving You Away
For someone who spends so much time dealing with sales proposals, I really hate reading them. It’s not just that they are boring, it’s that they often lie, or obscure truth. In an effort to sound convincing, their authors subvert … Read More
Speed is a Competitive Advantage in Sales Proposals
Delivering a proposal to your prospects faster can not only help you close faster, it can also help you win more deals. If you can turn around a compelling proposal before the competition, by the time they submit their proposals, … Read More
How Important Are the Graphics in Your Sales Proposal?
Most sales proposals look like they were designed by the template team for Microsoft Word, circa 1995. I get a lot of questions about how proposals should look and how important the aesthetics of the proposal are to buying decisions. … Read More
To Persuade People, Tell Them a Story
Transmitting information and persuading people to make a change are fundamentally different goals. Human minds are not like computer storage devices. You can’t just shove a bunch of stuff in, expect some processing to happen, and a change to occur. … Read More
When to Follow Up on a Sales Proposal: The Magic Time to Boost Close Rates
In an ideal world, you would send out a sales proposal, the prospect would accept it, and your company would start working on the project. In the real world, proposals usually require follow up. Prospects have questions, concerns, and bosses … Read More
5 Steps to Deal with Sales Proposal Writer’s Block
Anyone who’s ever been asked to write anything gets writer’s block at some point. In sales, few moments are worse than when the excitement of “great, they asked for a proposal” turns into “what the heck should I write?” Everything … Read More
Your Sales Proposals are too Long
When you wrote your first sales proposal, you probably grabbed an existing company template, or something you used before, made some adjustments, added what you needed, and sent it off. The next time, you took what you did the time … Read More