Do you spend hours writing the perfect proposal, only to be ghosted by the prospect?
In this episode, I explain why the problem isn’t your proposal, but what you did before you ever started writing it.
Too many of us treat a proposal like a sales brochure, but the sale should be made long before the document is sent. The proposal is just a confirmation of what has already been verbally agreed. I’ll show you how to shift your process so you stop wasting time on proposals that go nowhere and start winning more of the work you want.
In this episode you will learn:
- The three essential conversations you must have before you even think about writing.
- My go-to diagnostic questions for uncovering what a prospect really needs.
- How to get a verbal agreement on the scope and price to avoid any awkward surprises.
- The common proposal writing mistakes that can make you look like a commodity.
If you find this episode useful, don’t forget to like it and then subscribe so you don’t miss another episode.
You can also listen to this episode on Substack and on Apple Podcasts
Hello, I’m Heather Townsend and in today’s podcast episode for the How to Make Partner podcast, we’re gonna talk about proposals.
And more importantly, what to do before you write it to increase your chance of winning it.
So let’s give you the scenario. You have a great conversation with a potential client, you feel that real connection, you’re getting good vibes. They ask you to send over a proposal, you spend the next three, six days, crafting the perfect document uplining exactly how you can help, thinking about how that work win is really going to help your numbers and figures. Y
ou hit send, you feel optimistic and then nothing. You follow up as agreed a week later and get a polite non-committed reply. Perhaps you’ve been ghosted. All that time and effort wasted.
Now does that sound familiar? I mean this came up on a group call that I was running with lawyers on their way to partnership.
It’s something that’s really common to all of us.
The hard truth is if your proposal gets a no or no response at all, the problem isn’t the proposal itself. The problem is what you didn’t do before you wrote it.
Too many of us treat a proposal like a brochure. You know, we see it as our big chance to sell ourselves. But by the time you write the proposal, the sale should already be made. The document is just a confirmation of what’s already been agreed.
So before we go any further and talk about how to win more proposals, this is the How to Make Partner podcast with me, Heather Townsend, the author of Poised for Partnership and co-author of How to Make Partner and Still Have a Life.
In this podcast, I’m gonna be highlighting some of the great stuff in our Progress Partner Academy. New episodes are released weekly, so press subscribe so you never miss a new episode.
In this episode, we’re talking about how to get more clients and prospects to say yes to your proposal.
Now, if you want to stop wasting time on proposals that go nowhere, you kind of need to change your process. And in this podcast episode, I’m going to talk about three essential conversations you must have before you even think about writing that proposal.
First off, you need to have that proper diagnostic call. You might call it a fact find. You might call it a discovery call.
Now, when a prospect says, can you send me a proposal? And often they can do that quite early on. Your answer should be, of course I’m happy to, but first I need to understand a bit more to make sure I’m proposing the right solution that will really help you solve your problems. Can we book in a call to go through what you really need?
Now this call is not for you to sell them anything. It’s to help understand their issues, challenges, and then work with them to design a solution to solve their problems. You are there to help them buy.
Now this means you need to listen and ask powerful questions to understand what is really motivating them to speak with you about spending money with you.
After all, most normal people don’t wake up in the morning and think, I know, I buy expensive services from a lawyer, accountant, coach, consultant or creative. These are normally well thought out, purposeful decisions that happen over maybe a period of months, potentially even years and a number of conversations to get to the point of I am ready to buy from you.
So you have to find out what do they say they want versus what they actually need. And they’re often two different things. And these are some of the questions I ask in the situation.
Number one, what is the risk of doing nothing? You say you want the work, but what happens if you did nothing? What’s the impact?
Number two, if we’re successful with this piece of work, what are the results you expect and by when? What has prompted you or motivated you to pick up the phone to me?
Now I often say ask this question right at the very beginning of the call and then I dive in and I go deeper and deeper to find out what is really driving them. Then how does this work impact your personal or business goals or objectives or help your organization achieve its key objectives? If I can be, you know, helping them with that strategic plan, that, you know, the annual targets, the long term goals, and this is seen as key to doing it, I know there’s a far better, there’s a far better likelihood of me winning the proposal.
And then I’ll ask them, well, what have you already tried that didn’t work?
Sometimes they might say, well, we’ve worked with someone else on this. I said, OK, I’m sure that everybody entered into the good faith, but where did it go wrong with them? What was it that didn’t work? What are you trying to avoid next time? I might ask them, what other suppliers are you talking to? Do you mind me asking? What’s prompted you to pick up the phone to them? And I’ll only do that when I’m much, much further in and the trust is there.
Second, you need to get a verbal agreement on the scope and the likely fee. Now this is part of the bit that most people skip because either it feels awkward, they’re uncomfortable with saying a fee, but it’s the most important step of all. Now what I’ll often do is I’ll go, look, don’t hold me to this, but I’m thinking about, it’s going to be in the region of this kind of level, is that what you’re expecting? And I want to hear the answer, yes. I want to hear maybe if that’s not what I’m expecting, I’m going, okay, what were you expecting?
Okay, particularly if it’s less, I’ll go, okay, so… We’re going to have to cut some stuff out. What’s really important that you keep as part of what we do? What stuff can you take responsibility for? And let’s see if I can move my solution to match their budget.
What I’m not doing is going, OK, well, we just slashed 30 % off our fees. I’m really going, OK, so you need to do more of the work. We will do less of the work. What can we take out and what can you take over? And then if they still can’t find it, I’ll go, look, how important is this?
And if they’re saying this is really important, I’ll say, look, let’s talk when you know you can get the budget for this work. I’m not going to waste time for somebody that’s going to take it to their senior management and go, no, it’s too expensive.
So, you know, a good way of testing it is based on what we discussed, the solution to get you from A to B would typically involve these three steps. An investment for a project or a matter or a job or a piece of drafting or a transaction like this would be in the region of say, let’s say 100,000 pounds, how does this sound to you? They say yes, you’ve got a green light to start to write the proposal.
If they hesitate or say no, you haven’t wasted three hours writing a document. You’re still in a conversation where you can explore the budget, adjust the scope or decide that you’re not the right fit for each other. Now in this stage, if they’re not ready to go, I’ll ask, what else do I need to answer for you to know yes, we’re ready to start on this? And that will often get out some objections.
I might find out who else you need to talk to before you can start getting to a decision on this. And they might go, look, I need to see some options, in which case I’ll go, right, let’s book in a call. Let’s go through some options that I’ve thought about and costed.
Let’s go through those and see which ones are a good fit. Once we’ve done that, then I’m happy to write that proposal and we can move ahead knowing that we’re on the right kind of page. What I don’t want to do is wasting time while they dither. And then the third thing you want to do is finally agree on the next steps.
End the call by saying, great, I’ll send over a short proposal that confirms everything we talked about today. Can we book a 15 minute call for Thursday to walk it through together and answer any questions? And by doing this, you’re getting their commitment to move this forward. You’re not just emailing in to avoid, you’re setting a clear deadline and a dedicated time to close the loop.
Now let’s look at a few mistakes that many professionals like you make with how their proposals are written.
I see it a lot and I pick a proposal and it’s written about the wrong person, it needs to be written about them, their needs, their business, what they need, not about you. For example, how do you start your proposals? I see many proposals make the mistake of talking about yourself or the firm first. You know, we are a chartered accountancy firm with six offices or ⁓ we’re a tier one legal practice or we’ve been doing this work for the last 25 years.
You know, it’s a common trap to open a proposal with a long section about your firm’s history and credentials or even a small one about your firm’s history or credentials. In fact, some automated quotation software, I’ve seen it with accounting professionals such as GoProposal used to do this, it, you know, you stick in, is what the fees the client wants, it spit out a 20 page proposal when you press the button and the first 10, 15 pages were all about the firm, its history, quotes about how the firm were great.
And you’re like, just get to the meat of what are going to do and how is it going to cost?
All your potential client cares about is their problem not when you’re founded or how many partners offices your firm has you know the about a section in your proposal is important but its proper place is at the very end now the final mistake I might see with your proposals you treating it like a brochure far too often I see proposals which are not in my view proposals but a list of services a client wants to buy.
Now, giving the client multiple options to choose on your proposal is setting yourself up for buying friction, stopping your client from saying, yes, promptly. Now, if they want to see options before they go any further in your buying process, of course give them options, but book a meeting with them to talk through those options, what you could do.
You’re not yet at proposal stage. If you’re creating that proposal, it should be almost a verbal confirmation of this is what we want.
Then you need to make it time to tailor it to your client’s specific situation. The risk is if the proposal feels like a generic cookie cutter document, you may inadvertently be suggesting to your client that you’re more of a commodity type service.
Now this runs the risk of your potential client basically price shopping or worse ignoring you completely. Right, let’s quickly summarize this episode before I go on to your next step.
You know, if you want more clients to say yes to your proposal, and the name for your proposal to be more like documenting what you and they have agreed to do, it should be the final part of the sales process. Now, if you’re thinking, I get the theory, but I need more help with winning work and difficult conversations, our Progress to Partner Academy can help you.
That’s precisely why we have a suite of courses in our Progress to Partner Academy to help you with this. For example, our course, The Go To Expert, gives you all the tools to confidently win work and always be in demand for your new business.
And, you know, how to have a difficult conversation. We have a brilliant virtual masterclass, which gives you the how to for having these crucial conversations. Now, I popped a link to get 12 months of our Progress to Partner Academy membership, premium membership in the show notes. If you want access to everything, you can join our membership and use the code podcast 10. That’s podcast 10 with 10 in numbers. and podcast all in capital letters to get 10 % off 12 months of premium annual membership.
Also, in the show notes, you’ll find links to my book so you can easily find them on Amazon.
So before I get to your next step from this episode, if you’ve enjoyed this episode, please leave us a review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. This helps us get the word out to others who may need this advice too.
Remember to hit subscribe so you don’t miss next week’s episode. And what is your one action this week?
Your one action this week is to stop writing proposals on request.
Your aim is to make sure that when you next write a proposal, you are at a verbal agreement of what the client wants, the fee they want it, and what is the solution that they’re asking you for.
Once again, remember to hit subscribe so you don’t miss next week’s episode. Thanks for listening.
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