The Perfect (Sales) Proposal

What is the perfect sales proposal? Is there a template you can use? Is there a process you could follow? Is it something you can automate or use AI to help you do?

Well, the answer might surprise you. Let's break it down on the podcast hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of Breaking Biz Dev. I am Mark Wainwright, that is John Tyreman, and today we are going to talk about the perfect proposal. It's a sunset on the beach.

You're down on one knee. You're asking your client, "Hey, do you want to enter into a five-year engagement together?" Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, it's, it's funny, uh, that image and that word proposal comes to mind.

It's like, you know, working in professional services is the, that image so rarely enters into people's mind. But as soon as you mention it, you know, uh, this, th- this wh- this whole other vision of actually what the perfect proposal would be comes flooding into your brain. You're like, "Oh yeah, right. It would be sunset.

There would be a beach," and, you know, the, all this. Like, it would be perfect. It would just be, it would be amazing. And I'm like, okay, so take that framing that this needs to be perfect, and, you know, overlay it on what you're doing now in your sort of hacked, you know, thrown together new business proposals with your, with your clients.

It's like, are they gonna, are they gonna say yes to you as you extend the ring? Are they gonna... No. They're, they're...

No. You've done a terrible job. You barely know each other. This is horrible.

You know, e- everything's unexpected. You know, you're just like, right, you're gonna get married, and you're like, "Hey, let's get married, and we're gonna move to," you Arkansas. I always seem to think further, like, you know. It's like, "We're moving to South America."

You know. What- whatever. You know, it's just like everything's unexpected. You didn't know what this...

It's like, "I didn't know blue was your favorite color." It's like, "Really? You don't like seafood?" We digress.

So we're, we're here to talk about the perfect proposal, and it ties to a bunch of stuff in the past that we've discussed, but it ties a lot of it together. So we're gonna create a nice little, nice little package here of a, a, a number of things, uh, related to the perfect proposal. And hopefully it's simple. We have been fortunate to, I know you spent a little bit of time with, uh, David C.

Baker and Blair Enns, who are the hosts of Two Bobs. Um, and they do a great job. And, uh, they did a snarky episode a while ago, I think it was some, some years, some years ago, I don't know, I don't know when, about, you know, the secrets, I think it was called The Secrets Behind the Killer Proposal. Do you remember that?

I didn't listen to it until you flagged it a couple weeks ago when we were talking about it, and then, um, yeah, I, it was very snarky. It wasn't what I was expecting. Um, I was expecting it to be just pretty straightforward, but I thought that was a really great episode. Oh, yeah.

And I listened to it right around the time when it was published, and the fury and firestorm that followed was insane. Like, it was, it was crazy. It was, you know... And, and I mean, they're, they're two, two smart guys, and their content is fantastic, and just for this one, they decided to, you know, be sarcastic, right?

So they went ahead and created an entire episode completely based on what not to do, you know, in a proposal, and everybody, like 99% of the people that listened to it, took it wrong. You know, it was like, "That's crazy. I don't understand why you guys said do..." Like, like it was, it was, I- it was funny.

I mean, it's absurd. It's an absurd episode, but people lost their minds For example, let me just give a taste of it. One of their examples was always put your logo in the top left-hand corner of your proposals and the client's logo in the top right to show that, "Oh, we look so good together." Yeah, that's so - Yeah, it So there's, there's just a little taste.

Go check out that episode For sure. For sure. It's, it's, it's worth, it's worth a, uh, a listen. You know, we like to have fun, John.

We're - The intent of our episode is not to be, you know, snarky for sure. Not this time not this time. Okay, cool. All right, right back, right back at it.

Let's start at the beginning, right? What that means that let's begin at the beginning. What happens at the very beginning here, I would say let's go all the way upstream in your sales and marketing process. Let's go all the way upstream to the source of a lead.

Um, so even before you have a conversation with an opportunity, how did they find you? I mean, was it a referral? Was it inbound from your website? Was it through social media conversations?

Was this someone that you had a conversation with at a live event last year that popped their head up? I mean, it's important to know where the leads come from so that you can layer that into your understanding and your discovery of that particular opportunity. I, yeah, I think that's great. I mean, not all leads are created equal, right?

I mean, s- some are, some are, you know, inbound, right? They come to you through your, your marketing work. Some are from outbound actions, you know, where you are going and getting them, where you are asking for referrals or whatever else. And so there's, you know, so there's a bunch of flavor all in that.

And if you get to the point where you're applying the same language, the same approach, the same proposals to all of these various leads, then you're probably doing something wrong, right? You... So good point. We need to understand that, and we need to, we need to let those different lead sources in- inform how we propose what we propose, et cetera.

And then I know we've talked about these different sales stages in the past on past episodes, but Mark, what's the next, what's the next phase here? Qualification, right? We got the lead. We need to qualify the lead appropriately.

Are they, you know, are they the type of buyers? Are they the type of clients that, that we wanna work with? Do they have a problem we can solve? All of that, sure.

Discovery. We need to dig deep, understand them deeply. What are they trying to achieve? What outcomes do they want?

What do they wanna avoid? You know, ev-ev-everything we throw into good, good discovery. We need to make great, recommendations based on our discovery, based on our understanding. Three option proposals for good negotiation, right?

We agree on terms of the deal. We just walked through a sales kind of process there. Sure, that's the sequence. One, two, three, ABC And then if listeners want to go expand on that and go deeper, check out "A Sales Process," is a past episode that we put out, a few months ago that goes into each stage of that process in a little bit more depth do not believe that the proposal is a thing that's all and of itself, right?

The reason we've run through that process, is because it's so tightly woven into it. You know, a great proposal needs all that stuff. It needs all those components in, and it's not just some, pretty document with their logo in the top left corner and your logo in the top right corner, right? With, you know, somebody shaking hands on the front, you know, whatever.

And the cover letter begins with, "We're just, we're excited to submit our..." You know, n- right? That's, that's not what we're, The whole is worth more than the sum of its parts. I think that's the old adage For sure.

For sure. And, and, and we're gonna, I mean, the, here's my little snarky bias coming in here, John, is that I'll just interject this right now, is that does the per- perfect proposal, you know, even exist? It's like, well, Ooh maybe it, maybe it, maybe it does, maybe it, maybe it doesn't, From my perspective, it's like people who are looking for the perfect proposal are looking for the wrong thing, right? Right?

It's, I mean, the whole sales process we just walked through right there, it's like they think the proposal is everything, and for me, it's like, well, it's basically nothing. You know? It's basically just, you know, documentation of everything that's happened to date where you've had great conversations, and then the conversation is, is like, "Okay, this is what we're gonna propose. This is the dollar amount, everything else, and are you good?"

And they're like, "Yeah, we're good." "Okay, great. Good, I'll send you a piece of paper to sign." Right?

I there's no surprises. Right, exactly, exactly. So we digress. I think, you know, may- maybe we just end now.

What are we, like, 10 minutes in? We'll in, yeah. That's it. All right.

So, so let's, you, you wanted to take a little tack on this. What does this look like, Yeah. proposal? What does a perfect proposal look like from different, you know, to different roles in the consultant organization?

Let's kind of come at it, let's look at that facet of the, of the perfect proposal. I thought that this was an interesting exercise, and it's a little bit of a different spin on the sales and marketing continuum that we've used in the past. And this is like the different roles that support a proposal to a potential new client. Um, you've got the opportunity owner, you've got the delivery team, you've got the marketers, you've got proposal managers, you've got other folks that support in other different ways.

Those are the four that we kind of zeroed in on. But let's start with the opportunity owner. So the s- the person who is in a business development seat, maybe they're a doer-seller, maybe they're a dedicated rep, um, but they're the one who owns the relationship and is responsible for moving this forward within their sales process. So I think the reflection question for this person in this seat is did within this proposal, did we accurately reflect back the prospect's needs and then address them with our solution?

Yeah. And, and, and I would layer in, you know, one thing right in front of that. Did we accurately or did we successfully uncover, the prospective client's needs? Did we successfully uncover their needs?

And then what you said, accurately reflect back to them our understanding and address them in our options in our proposal. Good amendment well, I, I mean, it's just, you know, the uncovering thing is, means that we didn't make too many assumptions, right? It means that we didn't come into this with a bunch of boilerplate and a bunch of like, "Oh yeah, we're just gonna do the same old thing, and this client is not different from the last." So did we successfully uncover their needs?

And like we always say, the things that they place, things are important to them, right? Things they place the most value on. Did we successfully uncover those things so that we can reflect back to them and says, "Did we hear this correctly? This is what we heard.

This is what we heard you say. This is what your priorities are," you know, et cetera. And then we price them in our options. Good.

Oppor- opportunity owner from that p- That's a good one. I like this, I like this thing. All right, so the next one you had here was the, the delivery team perspective on this Yeah, so this, these are the folks that are actually going to deliver on the work. And in, in our doer seller's case, they're in a good position to be able to, um, have perspective on this.

But if you're operating within an organization where you have a sales team and then a delivery team, then you're going to need to talk with that delivery team and understand from their perspective, are they able to deliver on the solution for the client as promised within the proposal? So that's the big question there. Yeah, for sure. And for expert firms, I mean, this is, this is core, right?

I mean, this is, this is central to it. this is the moment where the, proposal team marketers set, everybody who's been involved in this thing up front has really aligned and is of one mind with the delivery team so that, you know, they're putting forward, a reasonable scope, uh, with, you know, a reasonable level of efforts and involvement, engagement from the delivery team where not, you know, the client's gonna be overjoyed and successful. They're gonna achieve what they want to achieve.

The consultant is going to be successful, right? So this is that whole sort of, okay, are we putting forward something where we can, where we're both gonna be successful, right? So I And th- this is - it's tricky 'cause it gets kind of intertwined with like resource planning and understanding like capacity of your team. And I - you, you probably have a little bit more experience on the engineering side.

I - my experience with this is mostly on the agency side of things I've seen situations where the delivery team doesn't really quite have a full grasp on the timing of these proposals and the, the - when the work hits, 'cause they're like, "Oh my God, I'm on fire right now. I can't even think about taking on any more work." It's like, "Well, this - the work won't happen for another three months." Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Right. I just have this, I worked for a marketing agency forever ago, you know, creative agency, and I just have this picture in my mind of just, like, just constantly fire hosing creative, Yeah. know, just stuff. You're like, "Oh, there's another thing.

Here's another thing. Here's another thing. Oh, the client just called." You know?

"Oh, there's another thing." So it's just like this endless fire hose of just stuff with no regard of, you know, mental health, capacity, you know, reasonable working hours, y- and whatever, you know. And we could, we could go on that for, for days. So good.

So these are things, right? Opportunity owner, delivery team, these are all important critical components that all come together to form a- the perfect proposal. How about the marketer? Does the marketer still have a, a, a role here in creating the perfect proposal?

Well, the, the marketer's role happens far upstream. So we talked about earlier about like where did the lead come from, right? Was it a website, referral, et cetera? But I think for the, for the marketer, marketing team, did they educate the prospect well enough before it got to the proposal stage, before they reached out?

And you could measure this in terms of pipeline velocity. How quickly did they move through the pipeline? That's one unit of measurement that you can take a look at. Um, but were they armed with the information that they needed to be able to have a productive conversation in those early discovery phases with the sales professional?

Good, good, good. Yeah, the m- marketing stuff happens obviously, like you said, way upstream, and it is the thing that tees everyone else up for success or not, right? So good one. Good one.

All right, last one you have here is proposal manager And Mark, you might have a better perspective on the proposal manager than I do, but I think the, the big reflection question for them would be, did we set the stage right in the sales process for this proposal? Yeah. It's, very similar to the opportunity owner, but the proposal manager is taking direction and taking content from all these different, pieces and bringing it all together, and hopefully the proposal manager has, you know, sufficient information that says, "Okay, we uncovered the problem.

We're addressing the problem. Here are our options." The pricing is, is, is, is well-presented. You know, and again, there's a lot of pr- there's a lot of proposal managers out there, people in sort of the AEC industry and et- and et cetera, that aren't really responsible for pricing.

I have often said that those folks absolutely should be. Not necessarily the dollar amount, but just that we are, you know, these various components that are coming together in, in the proposal make sense. They're easy to read. They're gonna, you know, th- they're not going to slow down the decision-making process.

They're actually gonna be, they're gonna help the client make a really smart decision, right? So the proposal manager should ultimately be responsible for that, is like, we pulled together this document that is, you know, of the client, right? It is reflective of everything their, their, what their needs are, what their wants are, their goals, et cetera. We've put together some fantastic options.

We're presenting it in a way that makes a ton of sense. You know, so the proposal manager really needs to be the person that says, "Okay, so have we assembled this all appropriately?" And again, our brains default to putting together a document, but the proposal manager should obviously be supporting the opportunity owner and others who are going to be participating in a conversation, right? Because we'll get to that next, right?

And that's a critical component of the perfect proposal, is that it's not just a piece of paper, John. It's a conversation Interesting. I, I wanna unpack that a little bit 'cause what, something that you said really stood out to me and it, it was that proposal managers should be responsible for pricing. Did I hear you that, say that right?

Sure. Y- and pricing in that the proposal manager should be the person that looks at the pricing that is presented and says, "It makes sense." We've got a low price, we've got a m- we've got a middle, medium price, we've got a high price. it's put together in a logical order.

Clearly the low price is a, small scope. there's a bunch of exclusions and a bunch, bunch of stuff we're not doing, The high price, it's got the kitchen sink in it, it's got everything, it's got these, you know. So the delivery team are go- you know, the whatever the project manager, delivery team, the lead on the delivery team person is the person that ultimately, along with the opportunity owner, if we're talking like doer sellers, those are the people that are res- that develop price.

Right. The proposal manager should be taking that information and putting it together in a way Testing it the... Still testing it and make sure the client is gonna, you know, are they gonna be able to read this? It's like, folks, you just gave me pricing for this particular, you know, client that it's gonna take you 45 minutes just to explain this one part, and when we translate it, translate this to a slide or a document, it's gonna take us 40 pages to, explain this.

It's like, we can't do this. we can't put this much cognitive load on our clients as they're trying to make these really important decisions and, you know, they're having to cross-reference, oh, if you want option two, you go to page 19, and then they have to go back to page 13 and add that number up and do... Right? So that's kind of what I'm talking about here, is that the proposal manager really is the person that, sure, you're working, got your sleeves rolled up, you got your working in the document, but also you have to take a step back and be like, does this whole document make sense?

Does this whole conversation make sense? Does the flow of this presentation, is it logical? Is by the time we hit this particular point in the conversation, is the client gonna be ready to be like, "All right, cool. Great.

Let's talk, let's talk price." Great. You know, so there's that. that's, that's really...

Yeah. That, that makes total sense. And it, it's more like you, you've said this in the past, but it's very much like information design and how is the proposal structured in a way that conveys it. 100%.

100%, for sure. You're listening to breaking biz dev the podcast that beats up, breaks down, and redefines business development for the professional services firms of tomorrow. Your hosts are John Tyerman, founder of Red Cedar Marketing, the podcast marketing company for experts and professional services firms, And Mark Wainwright, principal consultant and founder of Wainwright Insight, the fractional sales manager and sales consultant to professional services firms. If you find this podcast helpful, please help us by following the show and leaving a review on Apple podcasts and now back to the show.

all right, so we've got the kitchen, right? We've got the cooks who are in the Ja. So let's, let's talk ingredients for a minute. Like, what are the, what are the different...

We've talked about all these, like, on, on individual episodes in the past, so if folks wanna go back and check them out, they can. But let's talk about some of the different key elements of these sales proposals. Yeah. And remember folks, we're talking about the perfect proposal, right?

And before we go through this, let's, let's go back to our original sort of, you know, image that flashed in someone's mind is that there's, you know, someone on bended knee in the beach, in the sunset, whatever else. It's like, right? Would you ever propose marriage to s- or whatever, whatever we call, you know. Would you ever propose to someone, you know, in a PDF attachment on an email?

We have to look at these business proposals not in the same light, John, but, informed by the same emotions and, ups and downs and confusion and clarity and everything else that inform these other proposals in our lives, right? So, what this says to me is that the perfect proposal is something that is communicated in a synchronous live conversation, right? That is first and foremost. And I will tell you the, the second thing, there's some other bits and pieces that we'll get to, but the other thing that is sort of like a non-negotiable for me is that the proposal needs to be all about the other people, the other person, the client, you're not proposing to your, life partner, and being like, "This is really gonna work out great for me.

You know, I'm really excited because I think that, you know, I bring a lot to your life, and, should say yes because, you know, I'm just, you know, I'm a catch," right? That's not what you're saying when you're proposing. You're like, "Look, I have... I'm, I'm ready to do this because you have changed me.

You know, you turned me into a, turned me into a new person," right? I mean, that's... So proposals need to be about the clients, and they need to be all, they need to be live synchronous conversations, right? There you go.

There's my... Did I digress? I kind of wandered all over the place there, but Maybe a little bit, but, uh, the, the point kind of strikes true One of them that we have here on the list I think is r- is really good, and this is, this is one that I, I thought, in my opinion is maybe the most important hot take, but the, it's the consistent follow-up. We talked about that on an episode recently, and I, it just dawned on me that that's like, that's what keeps everything moving, right?

And so it l- your analogy of links in the chain, it really kind of stood out to me. Um, at least, uh, since we've recorded that, I've definitely taken a different approach to that. But I think like if we're talking about the perfect proposal and the whole is worth more than, than the sum of its parts, then every interaction that gets you like, that moves you along is, there's a premium on that in my mind. Yeah, for sure.

I think that's a, that's a, a great component of that. And it's glaringly obvious if that hasn't been part of this whole perfect proposal, it's like, well, when are the last time - You're, you're sending them a proposal and they're kind of ghosting you, and when are the last time you talked? What was the content of that conversation? What, what deeper understanding did you gain through that conver- Like, what's your back and forth, your follow-up, your conversations, everything else?

It's so, it's so important. Because, if we're having conversations and we're doing great follow-up, "Thanks for talking on Tuesday. We discussed this thing and this thing. I understood this.

You mentioned this. This is an important component," da, da, da, da, da, all those bits and pieces. We take all those bits and pieces and we just pull them together in what I call the statement of understanding, right? And we've talked about this.

And the statement of understanding is a critical compulsory part of every proposal which says, "This is everything we understand." "Did we get that right?" You know, like that's, that's effectively what that is. "This is everything we heard, or heard you mention.

These are the outcomes you want," Did we get that right?" And sometimes they'll say, "Yeah, you nailed it," or, "There's an edit here. There's, you missed a component here. You were off on this thing," or whatever else.

Because that statement of understanding builds the foundation for that next component. Three option pricing tables. And we've talked about this in the past and, and why this is so important, and that statement of un- understanding kinda sets the foundation, And puts them in a position to make a decision. They feel in control.

They see that understanding, that statement of understanding reflected in the options that you're putting in front of them Statement of understanding builds the foundation for the recommendations and the three option proposals, right? So like you said, we give the client the ability to choose with our three options, low, medium, high, small, medium, big, whatever. However we structure. And there's, we've talked in the past about a number of different ways you can structure these, these options.

But we're giving the client the agency and the control that they want and need in order to make the, make the buying decision confidently, right? So there you go. Great. And then the last component that we don't wanna leave out, 'cause I think this is still part of the perfect proposal from my perspective, is negotiation, right?

And negotiation says that we're gonna get to a point where there's a, we have a win-win situation in front of us. We're both really excited about this, and, we've got everything super clear about what we're doing and what you're doing, and competition, and all this other stuff. So that is all really clear. Without good negotiation, there's still some holes a lot of times in the work to be done that contribute to, you know, we did a recent episode on sort of like changes in scope.

"Oh, I thought you guys were gonna do this." "Oh, no, we were gonna leave that out." So there's that, and a good negotiation helps really just, gonna use a cheese. Why, why am I gonna use a cheese?

I'm gonna use a cheese reference here, right? It turns the Swiss cheese into a nice mozzarella. You know what? I don't know.

Whatever. Fills all the upgrade It was weird. It was we- yeah. Yeah.

So it fills all the holes, right? Uh, good negotiation. I think people are fearful of negotiation, and it just means negotiation means we're gonna get hammered on price and scope, whatever else. It's like, no, actually good negotiation just helps clarify and flesh everything out so that both you come out of this whole thing signing contracts, ready to go.

It tees your engagement up for success. So there you go. Super easy components, and you're like, "Wait a minute. Wait a minute, Mark.

We missed out on this, all this other stuff that we thought was really important to include in our proposal." That's all stuff I think is important, and what's our, what's the bonus, what's the bonus material, John, that, you know, If, if you have all of these other areas covered, let's call them Easter eggs that you can pull into your proposals. icing on the cake, gravy, uh, client success stories was one that we had. Didn't quite make the kind of the key element list, but this is definitely something that can help you out.

so showing that past performance, showing those real world examples. social proof is another one. So if you don't have a full story to tell, bring in testimonials, bring in references And then resumes. And Mark, you, you added this one to the list.

Tell us, tell the listeners about resumes and their role. y- y- it's, if you work in some architecture firm out there in the world, and you've received a request for proposals, a request for a proposal from a, from a potential client, and, you know, it's like section number one, experience. Section number two, resumes. Section number three, references.

They're like, "Mark, they're asking for all this stuff up front." And I'm saying, we're saying, John, that this stuff is important stuff to have, for sure, right? And some clients will insist you put it in their proposal. Okay, just stick it in the back, right?

Put the resumes in the back. Put the references in the back, right? Because all of this stuff is about you. It's not about the client, right?

And the client thinks that this stuff is the most important part of the proposal, right? So they ask for it up front. They're like, "Oh, we need to have their resumes and their projects." Yes, all of that stuff, sure, they can ask for it and you can give it to them.

But just put it in the back, right? It's your appendix, right? It's... The most important stuff is we know you, we know the client, here are some recommendations on how you can achieve what you want to achieve, and, you know, here are some pricing and options that kind of go along with it.

Those, you can't, you can't tell me that your resume is gonna be more important than really extremely well-designed three-option pricing. Never. Yeah. I think that's a fantastic point, and th- that's a good lens for which to look th- look at your proposals even page by page.

Is this page about us or is this page about the client? Yeah. Yeah. we're talk- let's talk about a document here, a p- you know, whatever, a conversation it could be, you know, or, you know, maybe you're gonna go present to a prospective client, whatever else it is, right?

You just get your little highlighter out, and you start highlighting all the content that you're planning to talk about, you know, or your document. Just highlight everything that's about you in, pink, and highlight everything that's about them in green. And Gonna be pretty pink Yeah, it's gonna be pretty pink, and a lot of people think, "Well, what's, that's the, that's, that's what the client wanted." And it's like, no, that's what the client thought they wanted.

yep That's what the client thinks they want is you to go and talk about yourself, but at the end of the day, they're like, "Wow, they just put in a bunch of gobbledygook in this, and they never really paid attention to us, the client." Right? So unfortunately, they're like, "Shoot, now it's hard to choose. They all talked about themselves the whole time, but nobody really seemed to focus on us much."

You know? So there you go. There... Was that a rant?

That, was that a little, was that a rant? That might have been a rant a little bit. No, I, I, I think it's good because, and especially your last point of the client is sitting with their desk, uh, all these different proposals from that RFP process and all of these different competing firms are talking about themselves except one, except yours Except one. And I just want that to hit you on the side of the head like a baseball bat.

And it's just like, "Oh, they all talked about themselves except for us. Oh, we're different now." And people think, oh, our, our, you know, our differentiation is our 14 years of experience and this and that, whatever else. It's like, no, actually, your client organization or, or your client orientation, your obsessive focus on them instead of you is a powerful differentiator for sure.

So yeah, that's another part of a perfect proposal, right? This obsessive focus on the client for sure. All right. There it is, John.

It's not, it's not pretty. I'm sorry, folks, there's no template. I'm not... There's no download.

There's no nothing. There's a, there's naught, right? But it's just like relentless focus on the client, a series of fantastic synchronous communica- you know, conversations, right? Consistent follow-up the whole time, building a, a really powerful client-centric statement of understanding, putting forward recommendations, client-centered recommendations with options, three options, right?

And then having fantastic, negotiation towards the end. Like that, that's our marriage proposal. sunset, sunrises, beach. Yeah, exactly.

Fancy Italian restaurant, string quartet in the corner. That's it it. Mark, I think this was a fantastic breakdown of the perfect sales proposal. Yeah, for sure.