Amazon finally broke out numbers for its cloud services offerings, and they’re huge. As The New York Times reports: Amazon said in its first-quarter earnings report that its cloud division, Amazon Web Services, had revenue of $1.57 billion during the … Read More
proposals
The 2 Biggest Mistakes of Proposal Writing
I’ve got an article up at SmallToday, a community of about 75,000 small business owners. If you’re making these fundamental mistakes, you’re holding back your sales.
Mimiran Announces New Module to Streamline Marriage Proposals
Austin, TX. Mimiran, a leading provider of online proposal software, announced the addition of a new module designed to streamline marriage proposals. Aimed at young, tech-savvy couples who don’t have time for traditional proposals, Mimiran makes it easier to get … Read More
3 Ways to Increase Deal Size (Plus a Bonus)
Marc Wayshak always has great sales advice. This blog post gives some tips to grow the size of a deal. Especially as an individual sales rep, you can only handle so many prospects and activities. To sell more (and make more), you sometimes need to grow the size of your deals.
Here’s a simple formula:
Revenue/Time = Average Deal Size * Number of Deals * Deal Win Rate / Time to Close.
Increasing your deal size, number of deals, and/or win rate drives up your revenue. If you take longer to close, as can happen when pursuing larger deals, your revenue per period will go down. If you can find ideal prospects, you can drive all the metrics in the right direction.
One other tip to add onto Marc’s post– you can also increase your deal size (and your win rate), by offering multiple options to the buyer. They may surprise you by selecting a higher priced, higher value option.
Table Styling Fixed
Yes, this is embarrassing. For some time, it’s been really hard to style tables in Mimiran, due to conflicts with style sheets in the app. There’s no good reason for this, but once it was in place, changing it might … Read More
Austin Meetup March 26: Create Winning Proposals
I’ll be doing a short talk on Thursday, March 26 at Sherlock’s at 183 and Burnet. Networking from 11:30-12, then a talk, with Q&A from 12-1. The meetup is free, but lunch is on your own.
The talk will cover some of my mistakes in proposal writing, and tips for how you can learn the easy way instead of the hard way like me.
• Create proposals that get accepted faster (and more often)
• Increase your deal size and profitability
• Stand out from the competition
• Grow your business faster with better proposals
• Reduce the sales stress related to proposal creation
Workshop– Beyond the Number: Sales, Positioning, Pricing
I’ll be doing a one day workshop for the Professional Pricing Society at their Spring Conference in Dallas on May 6. This workshop is about how you can’t just focus on the number in your pricing sheet, proposal, or negotiation. … Read More
3 Tips for Never Discounting Again
Sales guru Marc Wayshak has some great tips on avoiding discounting. Check out the whole post, but #3 is a highlight:
“#3. When you cut price, cut out deliverables.”
The Biggest Mistake Small Businesses Make Selling to Large Businesses
You’ve landed the big meeting with the huge prospect that can catapult your small business to the next level. Your presentation goes well and they ask for a proposal. Don’t make the common, painful, sometimes fatal mistake that many small … Read More
New Snippets to Make Your Sales Proposals Pop
There’s nothing wrong with simple text in a proposal. But sometimes you want to make your proposal stand out a little more. Here are 2 new public snippets you can use set off your headers. Both include images, a dark … Read More