When taking on a project, sometimes it’s hard to know the right approach until we have detailed choices. Do I want the minimal approach? The high-end approach? Somewhere in the middle? When I’m buying, I want to know what my … Read More
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The biggest flaw in your software sales proposal
Someone wants to buy your really awesome, cutting-edge software package/app/solution, and has asked for a proposal. You grab your beautiful marketing collateral and a few old sales proposals, and cobble together a new proposal. You send it over to your … Read More
One Easy Tip to Make Your Sales Proposals More Compelling
I’ve written before about why proposal writing tends to be terrible (see How Your High School English Class is Ruining Your Sales Proposals), which makes your customers less interesting in reading, understanding, and signing your proposals. Writing well is hard, but … Read More
When you should absolutely not discount your proposal or quote
I got a call from a customer recently asking about whether to discount a proposal. The brief background: after some great initial conversations, the prospect had asked my customer to create a proposal for a mid-sized project. The initial discussion … Read More
Pitch Deck vs Proposal vs Contract: How many sales documents do you need?
When you get asked for a proposal, what do you actually create? What do you send to the customer? What do they need to sign? And how long will all of this take? I notice a lot of people create … Read More
The 5 Minute Proposal
Mimiran has helped me turn around proposals much faster– rich templates, automatic merging of customer and pricing information and the ability to send a link instead of a big attachment make it easy to not just crank out proposals quickly, but to focus … Read More
What’s your proposal writing ritual?
Ray Allen is one of the great NBA shooters. He is one of the surest bets from the free throw line. Every time he shoots a free throw, he practices his stroke before he gets the ball. Then he spins … Read More
Rare moments in great business writing: “We Promise Not to Screw It Up”
When Yahoo! acquired Tumblr for $1.1B, everyone who used Tumblr was hoping that Yahoo! wouldn’t screw it up, as they have with some previous acquisitions. When Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer took to Tumblr to announce the deal, she addressed this … Read More
What Small Business Owners Should Learn from Apple
Apple earns praise for churning out cool gadgets and generating mountains of cash. The company has also created a whole industry of pundits and authors trying to tell people what they should learn from Apple. As much as I don’t … Read More
Sales Proposal Writing Secrets: How to Use the Right Words
You get done with a great prospecting meeting, concluding with a promise to send over a proposal. Then you get back to your desk, stare at a blank page, and wonder what to write. Having a great proposal template will … Read More