You review your proposal with your customer, go over all the fine details of your wonderful offering, and the customer says, “Looks good. Let me look it over and I will get back to you.” When you hear those magical words, don’t hold your breath. Or, you will end up blue in the face. Do they really get back to you? How many times has your customer actually called you with a response to your proposal?
Avoid being that blue-faced salesperson and start managing your proposal process more effectively. Here are some simple tips to help you avoid this perpetual trap:
- Get out of the proposal business: Effectively qualify your customer in such a way that you both come to an understanding of what they need, why they need it, and how you can help them. Leave behind a simple summary of what your proposal would look like–issues, offering, timing, and loosely estimated costs. Leave that behind for them to ponder. (Pictured is the tool that I use for this.)
- Only write agreements: Everyone desires and requires a formal document as part of the business relationship. Once a client commits that you are the person they will be doing business with, sit down with them and write-up the agreement. Arrange a time to review and sign the formal document and you are on your way. If they cannot commit to making an agreement, they are not yet fully engaged in doing business with you.
- Always know what will happen next: At the end of every meeting, always schedule a follow-up visit. If the customer must take some time to review the proposal (even though I warned you not to submit one), do not leave their office until you have a confirmed follow-up meeting. You need to do this with all your sales calls. Formally established follow-up meetings are the most effective way to professionally manage the sales process.
The most effective way to protect your intellectual property and manage the sales process is to control how you share this information. Your product offering is only valuable if you make it valuable and you establish that your customer values it, too. Waiting for their follow-up to a proposal you gave away without any commitments or obligations is not how you control the process. The result of that process is you find yourself waiting for that follow-up meeting until you are blue in the face. Take control–manage your information and your process more effectively.