Marc Wayshak of Game Plan Selling fame posted some great tips on selling more, and at higher prices. Go check it out. I’ll add some bonus ideas: Give prospects more than one option. Sometimes, we don’t know exactly what we … Read More
proposals
Don’t Sell, Help
I always hated “sales”. The stereotypical sliminess. The used car salesman trying to push junk on someone at an information disadvantage. When I joined the software world, I found plenty of these people. But I also found that the most … Read More
Customizable Rich Descriptions for Products in Proposals
Sometimes you need to provide a customized rich description for a line item that’s different than the default description supplied by the product. Perhaps you want to remove language that won’t appeal to a particular prospect, add more details, display … Read More
Are You Presenting Your Proposal Too Early?
The proposal is a critical piece of the sales process, but it’s not a goal in and of itself. Sometimes, though, we get wrapped up in things like “how many proposals did we send out this week?” If you’re getting … Read More
What to do when a prospect wants a price upfront
Have you ever tried to buy something and found a sales rep would not give you a price or even an estimate before you jumped through a bunch of hoops? How pleasant was that? Yet, so many companies don’t want … Read More
4 Rules for Pricing Proposals
One of the most important (and stressful) parts of the proposal, for both the buyer and the seller, is the price. As the seller, you get to decide on the price you offer, although you can’t always dictate the final … Read More
Ever Put the Wrong Customer Name in a Proposal?
I have. I was sending off a proposal to a very large manufacturer. I read and re-read and edited and re-read the proposal. I thought everything looked good. (Looking back, I’m cringing at how awful the proposal probably was, even … Read More
Learning to Say No, So You Can Say Yes
Most people want to say “yes”, to be helpful, most of the time. In sales, there’s a lot of pressure to say “yes” to the prospect. However, sometimes saying “yes” not only kills the deal, it means you’ve actually said … Read More
Bad Corporate Writing, Again
John Gruber over at @daringfireball points out the absurdity of Twitter’s corporate strategy statement: Twitter’s New ‘Strategy Statement’ “Reach the largest daily audience in the world by connecting everyone to their world via our information sharing and distribution platform products and … Read More
Snippets Let You Save and Reuse Proposal Content
Sometimes you have some content that you want to reuse. It’s smaller than a whole template– maybe a section, or even a few bullet points, or a nicely formatted image with a customer quote. Now you can, with “snippets.” Here’s … Read More