I’ve had several conversations with consultants [clients on 121 coaching] this week about proposals. In every instance, they’d had a good meeting, agreed verbally that there was a project worth exploring, and finished with some version of this:
“I’ll send you a proposal.”
They all wanted me to advise them on the content of the proposal and to ‘roast’ it. The truth of the matter, however, is 80% or more of the success of your proposal is going to happen outside of the document itself. Before you spend hours fussing over every comma in the document make sure you get these basics right.
Booked a meeting to run through it. [BAMFAM]
Discuss the investment and agree in principle prior to sending any document over.
I’d fix these 2 before spending more time on LinkedIn, another funnel or a new content plan.
Before you go looking at some golden bullet leading to “shiny object syndrome”, It’s likely you will greater returns from fixing the small problems in the business you’ve already got. No matter how dull and mundane they feel like.
For a consultant, one of those small problems can be how you finish a perfectly good sales conversation.
BAMFAM means “book a meeting from a meeting”. You agree the next meeting before finishing the one you’re in.
If you’ve heard that a couple of times, it can feel too basic to deserve much attention. But it does nothing for your business while it remains something you know and forget to use. You may be intellectually curious and have come across this concept before BUT if you do not use it - it will add zero value!
Pair it with a proposal review. Before you finish the diagnostic call, agree when you’ll discuss the proposed work and investment together.
You can send the document ahead of that meeting but ideally no more than 24hours.
NEVER send it blind i.e. without agreeing in principle the scope of work and investment and/or have diarised a next call to run through it.
That combination can make a substantial difference because you remove avoidable steps: finding a time after you’ve sent the proposal, explaining the price by email, and waiting for someone else to have a look before the questions finally reach you.
That’s when you fall into the “Just chasing up the poposal. Have you had a chance to read it yet?”
Content can bring you new conversations. Your proposal process determines what happens to the opportunities you’ve already earned.
Gong analysed 28,833 closed deals and found that sellers in the fastest deals spent 53% more time discussing next steps during the first meeting than sellers in slow deals. Gong’s research For a consultancy speeding up sales cycle can hugely im[pact your cash flow and ability to operate. It’s not unusual to reduce 12 weeks sales cycles down to 3 or 4 weeks with some careful planning and adherence to basic principles.
When I did my MBA, I studied Robert G. Cooper’s Stage-Gate approach to developing new products and it’s influenced my thinking on business development. Every process in your business development can be broken down into a series of gates. At each gate there a set of criteria that must happen before a person/business can move to the next gate. The whole proposal process is a complex interaction of gates that can be turned into a repeatable process.
Back in your initail diagnostic call with a potential client - you can prepare for the proposal review meeting from the beginning. Sandler Training calls this an up-front contract, which is simply agreeing what both people want from the meeting and what could happen afterwards, including the possibility that there isn’t a fit. Sandler’s explanation
You could say:
“We’ve got 45 minutes. I’d like to understand what’s happening with your team and what you’d like to change. Is there anything else you’d like to cover? By the end, we should both have a view on whether there’s a fit. If there is, we can agree an outline of the work, and indicative investments and then I’ll put a proposal together. Before we finish, we’ll schedule a time to run through it. If it doesn’t look right for either of us, we can say that as well. Does that work for you?”
As the conversation develops, you can explore the commercial fit alongside the work itself.
If you know enough to give a rough investment range, discuss it and explain what could change the final figure. If you need to do more thinking first, say that. You can still ask whether there’s a budget or approval limit you need to understand before putting the numbers together. [Maybe in another article I’ll show you how you can win deals 3 to 5 times more than quoted budget or a stated competitor price - let me know in the comments if that would help].
It’s useful information when deciding what to propose.
Then, when you reach the end of the call, you’re following through on something you’ve already discussed:
“Yes, I’ll put a proposal together. I’d need a couple of days to work through the scope properly. How are you fixed for Friday at 10 or Friday at 2? I’ll run you through the proposed work, the investment and how we’d deliver it. You can ask questions, and we can decide whether it makes sense to proceed. If it does, we can look at the practicalities of getting started.”
Once you’ve agreed the time, there’s another useful phrase:
“Most of our best clients get huge value from this call when we get [Job Title A, Job Title B and Job Title C on the call. How do we get those involved?
What you are doing here is further reducing the sales cycle [time to you getting cash] by pre-empting delays involved with other people needing to ask questions or have their say later. Deal with it upfront.
DO NOT MAKE THE SCHOOLBOY ERROR OF ASKING:
“Who else needs to have input or approve the investment?”
It’s too focused on closing the deal
It’s too ambiguous. Tell them who needs to be there based on your experience and social proof “most of our best clients”
If someone won’t agree to a review call, find out why. A declined meeting doesn’t prove a lack of commitment, but the explanation can help you decide how much work to invest and what the appropriate next step should be.
By the time the review happens, both sides know what the conversation is for. The buyer has had time to prepare, questions about the scope and investment can be discussed together, and the people involved in approval can explain what they need.
Some projects will still require more conversations, but you’ve removed the separate scheduling exercise and given yourself a chance to avoid several rounds of repeated explanations and follow ups.
Make this a habit before adding another business development activity.
It can change what happens to the opportunities you already have, and it takes very little extra effort to make it part of how you work.
On your next diagnostic call this week, book the proposal review before you finish. Make its purpose clear, agree who needs to be involved, and put it in both diaries while you’re still talking - not after.
If you want to shortcut time to revenue on tactics like this you can:
Talk to me about being an early adopter of Nynch
I’m currently opening spots for 1 to 1 work with me where we build out your Business Dev’t process together. This is for you if you want to add an additional £100K in revenue and will commit to do the work to get it. Reach out here