Why your proposal needs MORE information (and what to cut out)
A top concern for many sellers is keeping proposal content clear, direct, and to the point. While clear and concise proposals are essential for selling, if you keep your proposal too short, you might be leaving out key information that can help you sell. Read on to learn key information to add to your proposals, and what you should remove.
What to Add
It’s easy to include information on your product or service in your proposal along with pricing and maybe a company overview. However, the one thing that most buyers leave out is the company’s value. Buyers will choose to work with you for a number of reasons, and many of those come down to value. This is especially true in product-based industries where many companies sell the same (or very similar) products. When your actual offering is almost identical to your competition’s, then the way you win the project will be through showcasing your value.
To add value to your proposal, you can start by answering the following questions:
Why buy from you?
At its core, this is the main question you need to answer when incorporating value into your proposal. The ultimate question to ask throughout your proposal is “why would they buy from us instead of someone else”? If you know the answer to this question, but it doesn’t come across in your proposal, that’s a clear sign that you need to add more value information to your content.
What is our company’s value?
This is another way of asking the first question. You can think of this in terms of your offering compared to the overall industry or compared to specific competitors or even an in-house solution. Your company likely brings something extra to the table beyond your offering alone. Make sure you share that information in your proposal.
What do they risk if they don’t buy from us?
Your potential customer has a problem they’re trying to solve, and if they don’t take action (or they take the wrong action), that problem is going to continue to get worse. If possible, figure out your customer’s current challenges and pain points, and use this information to tailor your proposal to their goals. You want to show that you understand the importance of moving beyond their current situation, and that your company can help set them up to never experience that again.
How do we help the buyer achieve their goal?
After you figure out the challenges from the last question, the next step is to understand where the customer wants to go. Your value lies in the actions you take to help them achieve their goals. If you make the process simple and easy for them, explain how in your proposal. If you can help them figure out exactly what’s causing the problem and prevent it in the future, then that should be highlighted in your proposal. Some companies even provide monthly, quarterly, or annual reviews or reports to help keep customers aligned with their goals. If this is something you offer, make sure to include it in your proposal.
What to Remove
Adding value to your proposal can help you stand out and remind the buyer why they should work with you. It’s important, however, to not include too much information or your proposal will be overwhelming and your valuable points will be lost in a sea of content.
Instead focus on including only the most important information and remove anything that doesn’t address the buyer’s concerns or goals.
Common content that can be removed includes:
General company information
Most companies have a general company overview that they include within the proposal and other sales materials. While including information about your company is essential, make sure that you aren’t sharing information that is too generic and not tied back to what you’re selling. For example, not every proposal needs a timeline of your company’s history, unless that’s important to showcasing your value. In general, it’s best to swap out the Company Overview section with a Company Qualifications section that briefly describes your company but focuses on showing why your company is qualified to do the work. It’s a subtle difference, but this change will allow your company section to sell for you instead of being filler text.
Unnecessary team or product descriptions
For team overviews, stick to short bios for only the key team members. Not everyone needs to be included in the proposal. Team members to include are those who will work with the customer directly or anyone with valuable expertise that you want to highlight (i.e. certifications or past experience). Unless the customer asks, full-length resumes aren’t necessary for your proposal.
The same is true for product or services descriptions. Especially for products, it’s easy to want to include all of the specifications and every piece of information about the product so the customer can make an informed decision. The problem with this is that it often results in information overwhelm for the reader, which makes it hard to make a decision. Instead, include only essential information in the product section, which means only describe the features of your product that are important to that particular customer. You can include detailed product information in the appendix of the proposal if they want to review in more detail.
Filler text and legal language
Text that should have its own section in your proposal is anything legal or contract related. When you incorporate this into the main sections of your proposal, you distract from your selling points. Most buyers want to first know if they are even interested in your offering and then they’ll review to confirm they can meet the legal requirements. Having a separate legal or contract section in your proposal allows you to incorporate all of that information in one place and let the rest of your proposal sell for you.
The other thing to remove from your proposal is any filler text. This is content that doesn’t directly relate to your selling points or that specific buyer. It’s often general marketing language that somehow found its way into your proposals. Where possible, delete this content as it dilutes the value of the rest of your proposal.
Once you add value and rework the sections above, your buyers will be able to more easily see and understand why they should select your company.