Don’t you hate it when everywhere you go brands are trying to sell you something? Exactly. The best sales proposal is the one that doesn’t even look like a sales proposal. If you have searched “How to write a sales proposal” and ended up on this blog, you are looking for creative ways to sell your product or service. Just the curiosity to be different from others is what makes you unique. Being a sales professional, you must know everything about a sales proposal. That’s why we have researched and brought this to you.
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What is a Sales Proposal?
It is a document where the seller offers its product or service to the potential buyer. Here the seller tries to show they can benefit the buyer by solving their problem or increasing their efficiency by their product or service.
Basically a sales proposal is a document where you show your potential customers on how they can benefit from your business. Sales proposal includes an introduction to your company, benefits that your customer will receive, pricing of your product/service, terms and conditions, etc. The format of a sales proposal is covered in the later section of the blog.
You need to take care that these 3 factors are taken care of while writing a sales proposal:
1. Trust,
2. Empathy, and
3. Irresistibility
These are just abstract terms but you need to create a tone of your writing after keeping in mind these factors. It will help you gain the confidence of your prospects. Once you have the confidence of your prospect, half of the race is won.
Why Sales proposal is important in the sales funnel?
A sales funnel is a metaphorical funnel where your targeted customer will enter as a lead and exit as a customer. It is the journey of your lead to becoming a customer of your company. Here is how your sales proposal is important in the sales funnel.
1. Helps you close the deal
As the customer is approaching the final phase of your sales funnel, a sales proposal helps them take the final call. It has all the necessary information that the customer needs to take that call. It makes your process of selling easy and helps you close more deals than ever.
2. Saves abundance of time
Sales Teams will waste a lot of their time building sales proposals every time a new prospect comes. It would be better to have a pre-made sales proposal that works effectively for all your potential customers. You can create a simple sales proposal in google docs or any such editing software. You need to leave the blanks for specific information regarding the sales and your buyer. It will impact your sales team’s productivity if you have a proposal ready. All they have to do is make a copy and send it to them. This way your sales team can reach hundreds of people in a day.
3. Consistent Positioning
Generally, sales teams are aware of brand positioning and what to sell. But if they are pitching to different people, they might mistakenly spill some beans that can affect your company’s image and position in the buyer’s mind.
For example, if you are selling a social media tool that helps you schedule posts and gathers analytics, but you also have a feature where users can create bots to auto-like and comment on certain accounts. Now you don’t want your buyers to buy your tool just for the bots as you don’t want to create that positioning for yourself. But if a customer comes in looking just for bots and your salesperson is lagging behind on his targets or hasn’t had the morning coffee, they might change your company positioning to make a sale.
If you have a sales proposal, your company would have consistent positioning across buyers.
4. Increases success rate
Since you have crafted your sales proposal after keeping in mind your customer’s ideologies, thinking, and needs, you will see more customers getting converted into sales. This will increase the percentage of successful sales you have.
Another reason for the increased success rate is that your sales team will be able to expand their reach to a bigger number of customers. This would increase the number of customers you have.
5. Analysis to make data-driven decisions
When you send a sales proposal to your customers, you can use tools that will help you gather analytics of the document. There are tools that will give you a heat map of your customer’s reading. It will give you an idea of where your customer is spending more time on your document. So, if you make a change in your sales proposal and suddenly start getting more rejections, you can analyze that exact point where customers are disliking your proposal.
Tips to write a customer winning sales proposal
Before writing a proposal, make sure you read these tips to write an awesome sales proposal. It will not only help you get a direction but also give you actionable tips on what to do.
1. Research your customer
You must know what are the trigger points of your customers, what makes them close the deal, what are the aspects that they look for while buying a product, etc. It is important that you do a market research based on your user persona and try to list down these things. It will help you while creating a sales proposal.
2. Keep it brief
Don’t make it boring, too formal, and lengthy. You want to get your customer interested in your product, not lose their attention in the way. That’s why it is suggested that you keep your sales proposal as brief and crisp as possible. Try to follow the 7 Cs of communication. That’ll help you retain the attention of your clients.
3. Give them option
You might think that choice is an illusion and there is no such thing as free will. But that is a discussion for your existentialism expert. Your customers will feel bound when you give them just one plan or price. It will impact your sales if you provide more than 2 options. These prices are suggested to be put starting from low to high, but it completely depends on your product and target market.
If you are into a luxury market where if a buyer sees that the product is cheap first, they might move away from the brand. Don’t show the low-cost items in the top here.
4. Be visually creative
This might be a tough task but you will create a sales proposal only once. So it is worth it. Take the help of your designer and tell them to give their inputs while creating a sales proposal. You might want to create a sales proposal with colors that match your brand identity. Color psychology plays a good role in creating an image of your company. Make sure you use all your research of colors in your sales proposal as well.
5. Make it a contract
Adding the signature column at the end of your proposal will make it official and formal looking. This way you propose and create a contract with your customers. Once it’s official, it gives your customers a sense of accomplishment. This value exchange is legally documented. This security helps you gain the trust of your customers.
6. Focus on solving problems
This is the most important tip for writing a great sales proposal. Don’t sell your product to them. Focus on solving their problems. You don’t want to brag about the features of your tools or the characteristics of your unique product. You need to talk about how this product will affect your customer’s life and make it better.
Steps of writing a sales proposal
Here are the steps that you need to follow in order to create an effective sales proposal. These are some reasons why you need to consider writing and improving your sales proposal while mapping your processes
1. Create a brief outline for sales proposal
Make sure you have an outline that has a brief structure of your sales proposal. That will include all the subheadings and the purpose of why you are creating this proposal. You can create an outline after reading the next section i.e. format of the sales proposal.
Do some market research on your customer’s problems – Identify the gap in the market that other solutions are not providing. This will help you get a better understanding of what the market needs.
2. Write an Executive Summary
Writing a great executive summary is important. As the customer can get an idea of what is in the document through that.
3. Offer The Solution
Once you have put forward all the problems your customer is facing, offer your solution. Make sure they understand all the ways that your solution will help them get rid of their problems. Make a strong statement here. The customer will feel more confident if they see you confident.
4. Put your Pricing
Be straightforward and put your pricing in the document. Do not beat around the bushes and put negotiable prices here. As mentioned before, you must follow an ascending or descending order in the pricing section. Also, explain in detail what each price has to offer.
5. Proofread. Proofread Again
You don’t want it to be full of mistakes. So proofread your sales proposal and run it through grammar checkers and such tools. It will help you identify small mistakes if any.
6. Analyze and Improve
Try this proposal on a bunch of customers and gather data. At the end of a particular period of time or number of customers, analyze your proposal. If you find that there is room to improve, make a few changes. You will be seeing miracles when you do a positive change.
Format of a Sales Proposal
Here are the things that you must include chronologically in your sales proposal.
| Name | Description |
| 1. About the company | Include the summary of your company, organization, or business |
| 2. Benefits to a customer |
How all the features and characteristics of your product/service can benefit the customer |
| 3. Price selection | Here you would mention all the prices of your different plans/products. The customer will choose it according to their preference. |
| 4. Product sales contract | It is a legal document between you and the customer |
| 5.Terms and conditions | Mention all the terms and conditions that your client is supposed to read and accept before buying from your business. This would include all the legal details of the contract. |
| 6. Signature column | This column is for your customer to sign. Once this signature has been done, the document becomes official. |
Conclusion
Whether you are a salesperson at a big MNC or a small enterprise, writing a sales proposal will help you. It might seem like a big investment in terms of time but once you have a sales proposal ready, your sales team is off to achieve new possibilities. Follow these steps and start working on your sales proposal now. If you have any doubts or queries, you can write them down in the comment section below.