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Writing Effective Proposals

Last month I spent a few minutes talking about responding to RFP's. More specifically I shared two thoughts to keep in mind when considering responding to an RFP. First, if you didn't create the opportunity through your own sales efforts than you have a very low chance of winning (less than 10% according to an IBM study) . In this case your time is better spent on creating your own opportunity, not responding to a random RFP. Second, if you must compete on random RFP's you need to develop a strategy. Ideally your strategy should dictate how you're going to change the playing field (decision making criteria) and to do that will require you to go around the person who included you in the RFP. This month I want to talk a little about how to write an effective proposal.

I don't know about you but most proposals I see-and I have seen a lot (selling software, staffing, consulting services) -focus 98% of the content on broadcasting features and benefits and 2% focused on the customer's goals and objectives and anticipated outcomes. It's as if we think whoever sends in the heaviest proposal is going win! Let me make this clear; your customers don't care about your service offerings. They expect you to do all those things. They're not buying your services, their buying business results that are the end deliverable from your service offerings. So how do you sell business results?
The most important part of a proposal is the Executive Summary. Interestingly enough most proposals don't even include an Executive Summary and those that do still miss the point. The Executive Summary can be broken down in to a few key points.

Define the customers business problem

The first you need to do is demonstrate to the customer that you truly understand their business and their business issue(s) that need to be resolved. This is not simply paraphrasing the customer's requirements. The customer's requirements is not the same as their business problem(s). You must write in as much detail as possible everything that you know about your customer's business and the problems their experiencing. The problem is the compelling event that has driven them to seek a solution. If you can't demonstrate that you understand their issue than how can you expect them to have confidence in your proposed solution? You might be asking, "how do I find out the details of my customers business problem(s)? By asking. Asking the questions that lead you to these answers is selling! So ask really good questions and take really good notes because this information is going to go into your proposal. Specifically, the executive summary.

Define the impact of the business problem

Simply understanding your customer's business problem is not enough. Now you must explain why resolving the issue(s) is so important. You need to understand the impact of the problem. Who is the problem affecting? Customers? Employees? Partners? Shareholders? Stock price? Market share? Your client's year-end bonus? Perhaps their job? All of this needs to be detailed in your executive summary.

Define the anticipated business results

How am I suppose to know what the anticipated outcome are? Isn't it always just reduced costs? No! Certainly cost reduction is often one benefit but you need to talk to all of the executive stakeholders and ask them what specific results they hope to see. You need to describe all of the ways in which the company will benefit if the problems are resolved and the goals are met. This can mean many different things to different people, depending on how you ask. For example, replacing a legacy order entry system can please the CFO from a cost stand point (reduce costs), the CEO from an earnings standpoint (generate more profit) and the CIO from an efficiency stand point (less employees to manage a new system with less down time). This is not a discussion of your features and benefits. But if in your proposal you only write about the anticipated outcomes for the CIO, it will not appeal to the CEO or CFO. Also, this is NOT the area to talk about your features and benefits. Instead, this area should focus on the benefits the customer will get from your solution....increase revenue and market share, shorter time to market, etc..

Define your solution

Here is where you should define (in non technical terms) your solution. You should include your approach for solving the problem and be able to connect the dots between the client's business problem and your solution. Ideally, you should have a story (keep it pointed) that highlights how you have solved this same problem for other customers.

Call To Action

Finally, and don't forget, ASK FOR THE BUSINESS. Let the customer know you are excited about the opportunity and look forward to working with them. Don't include pricing or any other company literature in this area.

I can assure you that most proposals are won and lost based on the vendors ability to demonstrate how well they understand the customer and their business. If you have ever hired a vendor (even a contractor to do work on your house) than you know what I am talking about. You want a vendor who understands you and "gets it," not the vendor with all the bells and whistles.

Thanks and Happy Selling!

Dan Fisher is Founder and Managing Director of Menemsha Group, a Boston based sales training and consulting organization. To learn more visit www.menemshagroup.com or email dan at dan at menemshagroup dot com.

Responding To RFP's

Greetings and happy Fall! This month I turn my attention to talk about responding to RPF's and participating in bids. I see a lot of organizations in our industry exert a lot of time, energy and resources ($$ and manpower) responding to RPF's only to get little or nothing in return. I have spent a large part of my sales career "elephant hunting" for winning large global accounts and I have a learned a few lessons. Going into all the details would be impossible but let me share with you two rules that you should keep in mind when evaluating and responding to RFP's.

Rule #1

If you didn't generate the sales opportunity through your own prospecting, relationship building and qualifying efforts on your own than you have a slim to zero chance of actually winning the opportunity. Have you ever received an RFP from a prospective company where you (and your company) didn't have much or any relationship with the prospective client but they still included you in the RFP process? Sure you have. We all have! Did it ever dawn on you to question it..."gee, why are they including us, we don't have a relationship with them." These are the opportunities I'm talking about. 99% of them are a waste of time. IBM actually did a study on this and discovered that if you didn't "create the opportunity and set the buying criteria," than you have less than a 10% chance of winning it. The reason is some other sales person out there has been working their tail off creating and cultivating the opportunity. They set the buying criteria and vision of the ideal solution with the customer and in many cases even wrote or contributed to the RPF themselves. Don't waste your time on these, instead invest your time on creating your own opportunities. Of course it is more work, that is what sales is. Focus your time and energy on creating your own opportunities and you will significantly increase your close rate. And you will have much healthier pipeline.

Rule #2

If you simply can't resist responding because the RFP opportunity is " too good" pass then......You must find out who is on the decision making committee and what each member's role is on the committee. I know the procurement person who sent you the RFP will clearly tell you "If we find that you have contacted anyone in our company regarding this opportunity, your company will no longer be considered." Whippidy do!! We already have a 90% chance of losing! Instead, go around this person (their job is to keep you at bay so don't even bother asking for their help) and uncover who the decision makers are and push for a face to face meeting (our training teaches you how to get these meetings) to interview each decision maker and uncover the business drivers for the initiative and what their ideal solution is to solve the problem(s) they seek to fix. Without this information how can you expect to pitch a solution that will meet their needs? Now I know some of you reading this disagree with me and might be saying "I won the ABC account off of an RFP bid like this and we now do $5M in business with the customer." If that is the case that is great. But how many RFP's just like that one have you had to bid on before you actually won that one account? Let's not forgot about the most valuable asset of all and the one we have the least of. TIME. It takes a ton of time to gather the information requested in these RFP's. So let's be sure we qualify the heck out of the opportunity before making the decision to invest the time. Deciding when to compete and what strategy to deploy are critical to your success.

Next month I'm going to share some ideas on how to write winning proposals. At the end of the day, we should really be presenting proposals, not responding to RFP's. There is a difference between the two. Specifically I'll share with you the most important part of the proposal including the key ingredients that go into a successful proposal.

Thanks and Happy Selling!

Frustrated With The Sales Cycle?

As I talk with customers, industry thought leaders and other product and service providers across the country about the recovering economy and the staffing industry as whole, one common theme has emerged; order activity has picked up but customers are “dragging their feet.” CEO’s, executives, sales and recruiting professionals alike are frustrated with what little results they have to show for all of their hard work despite the significant increase in order activity. The sales process continues to be plagued by delay after delay and move at a snails pace. What is one to do?

I figure the timing couldn’t be better between this revelation and the fact that I am hosting a sales training workshop on this very topic at this week’s Staffing World hosted by the American Staffing Association in Las Vegas. The topic: How To Manage The Sales Cycle and Close More Deals Quickly & Efficiently.

What I have come to realize in our industry is that our sales process can be described as a random sequence of events. We get a job order from a customer-either over the phone, via email or in a client meeting-post it to our internal CRM system and the job boards and write it up on our white board in our office for all to stare at -and then we simply focus on finding and submitting candidates. Beyond that we have no clue as to what needs to happen in order for our deals to close. We just hope we submitted the most qualified candidate for the job. Many of the common sales bottlenecks and major points of frustration occur when we try to get feedback from our client’s on the candidate resumes, when we try to schedule interviews or when we try to get feedback after an interview and/or attempt to get the client to make a final decision. It’s one delay after the other. And we all know time kills all deals. So what is one to do? How can we prevent these delays and keep the process moving forward? First we must understand the problem.

The problem is twofold. First, we focus exclusively on the tasks that WE have to complete and far too often fail to recognize, understand and appreciate the tasks that our client has to complete in order to hire our consultant or temporary employee. This is why I typify our sales process as a “random sequence of events.” After we complete all of our tasks (take job order, screen candidates, interview candidates, reference checks, etc..) we stop selling. We go into “wait and see mode” and hope to hear back from the client because we think once our candidate completes the face-to-face client interview that we are now at the end of the sales cycle. We’re not. And that leads me to the second problem. We stop selling. We stop selling because we have completed all of our tasks in the sales process but we fail to understand and recognize where our customer is in their purchasing process.

In my workshop this week I am going to be sharing with the group how and why we need to continue to sell well beyond the submittal and interview process. We’re going to explore all of the steps or tasks that a typical client has to complete in order to hire a consultant or temporary employee and why it is critically important that we understand these steps. Second, I’m going to share how you to lead your customer through their purchasing process by applying project management principles. Third, I am also going to share strategies on how to eliminate these bottlenecks. In the end, the group will discover that the sales process is your customer’s purchasing process and that you earn commissions based on what your client does, not what you do.

If you’re interested in putting an end to the frustrating bottlenecks in your sales opportunities and would like to close more deals quickly and more efficiently, give me a call at (617) 506-1186 or simply email me at dan@menemshagroup.com

"I'm Happy With My Current Vendor"

I'm happy with my current vendor. Try me back in 6 months.

We've all heard this one before...over and over and over again. Let's face it, it's not an easy one to overcome. And rule #1 in sales is "no pain, no sale." In other words, if the customer has no dissatisfaction with their current situation and/or supplier(s) then they have no compelling reason to make a change and start using your service or product. They will stick with the supplier that has proven themselves. After all, "if it's not broken, why fix it" The trick to getting new opportunities with new customers who give you this objection is getting the prospect to open up and share with you their dissatisfaction with their current provider. How do you do that?

First, we must be certain we are doing an effective job of disarming our prospects and making them feel comfortable in speaking with us. Ultimately, if our prospects don't "let us into their world," we will never learn about their business issues and thus be able to offer ideas and solutions to those business issues. If a prospect is afraid to make themselves vulnerable to you than you have not effectively disarmed them. Think of the movie Goodwill Hunting and how Robin Williams (the psychologist) had to make Matt Damon (patient) feel comfortable before he would open up and talk. For tips on how to do this check out my white paper, Cold Calling Tips & Techniques. Now back to that objection.

When I first got into sales and I started hearing the "I'm happy with my current vendor" objection, I use to always respond by asking "if you could change one thing about your vendor, what would it be?" My hope was that that the prospect would tell me something about their vendor that they were not happy with and thus give me an opening. But I almost always got a "nothing, our vendor is great" response. And in those rare occasions when the prospect did have something negative to say about their vendor they always counter balanced it by saying "but I don't expect my vendor to be perfect," or "but that doesn't mean I'm looking for a new vendor." In the end, I never got through the objection. Until one day, and on accident I finally broke through. Here is what happened.

Client: "Dan, were happy with our current suppliers, but you're more than welcome to stay in touch. Try me back in 6-9 months."

Me: "Thanks for the feedback Mr. customer. Despite how much I really want your business, I'm sincerely happy for you and your company and how well your vendor has performed. Let me ask you, what is their secret? It's as if they are perfect."

Client: Goes on to tell me about all these great things their vendor does and what they love about them.

The client just went on and on about how great his vendor his, what am I suppose to do? I had nothing to say in response because I was stuck. I didn't know how to respond. So we have a long uncomfortable pause that seemed to last forever. While I'm thinking of how to respond the customer finally speaks up (after a long pause) and says "You know Dan, I guess the one area that has been a concern is....."

First, I was relieved that the customer said something, because I had no idea where to take the conversation. He sort of let me off the hook because nothing was coming to mind. Second, and more importantly, he opened up the door for me to ask further clarifying and qualifying questions to understand this concern in further detail. We went ahead and had a conversation about that concern and how I thought I might be able to address it. Long story short, that prospect became a customer. So what is the lesson learned?

When a prospect gives you the "I'm happy with my current vendor" objection ask them the following question: "What do you like best about working with ABC Company?" No matter what they say in response, wait 7-10 seconds even if it seems like an eternity and becomes an uncomfortable moment of silence (which it will). See if the prospect offers up a negative comment or concern about their current supplier. Not always, but often they will. And as my example above shows, a prospective typically will not share with you what they don't like about their current supplier when blatantly ask them. But you can pull it out of them if you are patient and tactful. Remember, the key to this is to shut your mouth and not say a word no matter how unnerving it is. Try it next time you hear the objection and see how the conversation goes. Once you get the prospect to share their point of dissatisfaction with their supplier it is up to you to turn that "pain point" into a sales opportunity. Keep asking questions.

How Do We Sell Differently?

Times  are a changing!  Actually times have changed.  Senior level buyers and executives-the people who are now making the decisions on what staffing and professional service organizations their companies ought to use-are interested in buying business results, not just individual products or services ("skills," "talent" and "people") or features and benefits. Leading sales organizations today are recognizing changes in buyer behavior and client expectations and redefining what value means, through the eyes of their customers. In other words, they are taking the time to understand what their customer's business goals and objectives are and what business outcomes they seek. That is what the customer values. Translated into the world of IT staffing and consulting (and this applies for all of staffing/professional services), customers are interested in buying the business results that your consultants/candidates will produce for your customer. To achieve this we need to understand what their "current state" is and what their desired state or "end state" is.  And we need to understand why it is important for them to get there.  To operate at a strategic level sales professionals must understand the customer's problem, the impact the problem has on the organization (who, what departments, how, does it impact customers, suppliers and partners too?), and the group of stakeholders responsible for solving the problem(s).  Lastly we must understand what the customer must do in order to solve the problem (and determine if they are committed to doing so).   

Why Haven't We Adapted?

I watched the movie "Hot Tub Time Machine" the other day. I know, nothing to brag about but hear me out..... I was looking for some good humor that required no thinking. The movie is a big spoof on the "80's." Watching the movie and seeing (and remembering )the fashion from the 80's and what was in style and "cool," was hilarious. All good humor. But all this time lapse back to the 80's got me thinking. Why are we still selling staffing and professional services the same way it was sold 10, 15 and 20 years ago? If you really think about it and if we're being brutally honest with ourselves, we as an industry are stuck in a time machine......in the wrong time zone!

Let's do a quick (high level) history lesson of our industry. Over the past 10-15 years we have witnessed a lot of change in our industry. Low-barriers to entry have crowded the marketplace with an over-saturation of service providers. The supply of IT staffing firms (and all professional services) far outweighs the demand for these services. The .com boom represented the dawn of the job board era with the birth of Monster.com, Dice.com, Career Builder and many others and it introduced us to procurement services software products such as Ariba. Traditional clerical and administrative staffing firms expanded the scope of their service portfolio to not only include IT staffing services but also MSP and VMS programs. Bench based system integrators including the “big-five” now generate a significant portion of their revenues through staff augmentation services. And perhaps the biggest change and impact on the industry has been the rise of the Chief Procurement Officer within corporate America. The process for purchasing contingent labor within corporate America has become fragmented among executive stakeholders thus making the selling process more complex. Competition and pricing commoditization have reached unprecedented levels and service differentiation is close to impossible. Customer expectations continue to rise and buyer's are much more sophisticated than they were in the past. Despite all this we still sell the same way we always have. Why are we still selling with our "leg warmers" and "Miami Vice T-Shirt" on? Why haven't we adapted?

Here is an interesting quote I recently read.

"We're aggressively positioning ourselves in important ways for future growth. We did a complete refresh of our strategy for growth. We did this with the bias that the economy has not just slowed, it is resetting itself. It will emerge differently in terms of client needs, business models and buyer values."
-William D. Green, Chairman & CEO, Accenture

How Do We Sell Differently?

Time are a changing! Actually times have changed. Senior level buyers and executives-the people who are now making the decisions on what staffing and professional service organizations their companies ought to use-are interested in buying business results, not just individual products or services ("skills," "talent" and "people") or features and benefits. Leading sales organizations today are recognizing changes in buyer behavior and client expectations and redefining what value means, through the eyes of their customers. In other words, they are taking the time to understand what their customer's business goals and objectives are and what business outcomes they seek. That is what the customer values. Translated into the world of IT staffing and consulting (and this applies for all of staffing/professional services), customers are interested in buying the business results that your consultants/candidates will produce for your customer. To achieve this we need to understand what their "current state" is and what their desired state or "end state" is. And we need to understand why it is important for them to get there. To operate at a strategic level sales professionals must understand the customer's problem, the impact the problem has on the organization (who, what departments, how, does it impact customers, suppliers and partners too?), and the group of stakeholders responsible for solving the problem(s). Lastly we must understand what the customer must do in order to solve the problem (and determine if they are committed to doing so). Critical to executing this is the salespersons ability to recognizing and understanding the customers problem and connecting the dots between the customer's pain point and their solution offerings. Lastly, the salesperson needs to be able to translate the concept into a workable solution so that the customer feels confident in your ability to help them achieve their "end state." One of the biggest challenges or issues I hear from business owners and sales professionals is their inability to establish follow up meetings with their clients and prospects. This is especially true with senior level contacts-VP's, EVP's and the C-suite. Perhaps one of the causes for the lack of follow up meetings is the salespersons inability to demonstrate to the customer that they understand the customer's critical business issues and can map those issues to their service offerings and offer a solution?

Why Haven't We Adapted? When Will We Adapt?

So back to my original question, "Why haven't we adapted?" I don't know the answer to this question, I am sure there are lots of reasons. But what I do know is that every sales professional, business owner and managers across the country that I work with desperately wants to "sell to the C level," "sell a solution," "get on the approved vendors list," and "win the RFP/bid." They want to win more market share and they want to "sell deeper and wider" in their existing accounts. To do so we will need to start having these conversations with our prospects and customers. If you're ready to lose your "leg warmers" and get with the times, give us a call, we just might be able to help you.