Internet security services to groups of business professionals.

Our ancestors didn't have the biggest teeth or the sharpest claws, so they needed to make good decisions. Those decisions helped them survive, and they help us function this day. To determine whether people use these techniques in making a proposal-related business decision, I asked business professionals to evaluate a proposal for internet security services I distributed, noting the time when they reach a decision either in favor of or against the offer being made in the proposal. They are looking at a real proposal, one that deals with a complex, important problem and offers solution priced at approximately $250,000. Leave a comment.

Checkout How People Really Make Decisions

Recent research has recorded for the first time how people actually make decisions. It turns out that people use a limited set of decision -making strategies or techniques. We use them from the time we're kids who are taking "multiple-guess" tests in school resort to these techniques for narrowing our choices, in our personal lives, in college, and even in our business activities. Take for instance in our carport net business,we do sometimes decide to cut it 10m x 5m instead of 5m x 5m. The researchers speculate that these techniques,or "fast and frugal heuristics" as the authors of Simple Heuristics call them, are hard-wired into our brains, part of our evolutionary survival package.

Start looking at your proposals as tools

By keeping those long-range objectives in mind as you write each proposal, you may be able spot leverage points. If you have a choice between two or more equally right solutions, you can recommend the one that will move the business relationship in the area you want it to go. In other words, start looking at your proposal as tools and opportunities. Rather than seeing them as a kind of test that's been set up by clients to count you out,look at each business proposal as a means of accomplishing your objectives. That is the real problems you face-not just getting the proposal done on time so you can check it off your list of sales"activities,"but making sure that when it is done, it accomplishes exactly what you want. Don't forget to post a comment.

Thinking in terms of your long-term plan

Each time you write a proposal, think in terms of your long-term plan for a given customer. Where do you want the relationship to be in a quater? In a year? In five years? What intermediate steps are necessary to get the relationship there? Maybe you are currently providing carport net to the client, but you'd also like to take on developmental projects. Or perhaps you are currently providing call center operations on an outsourced basis, but you'd eventually like to enlarge that to include outbound telemarketing and help desk functions, too.

Influencing clients

Each proposal should also amplify and promote your perceived strengths and offer evidence,if possible, to overturn preconceptions about your weaknesses or shortcomings. If you don't win a given bid,you may have a positive impact on the decision maker's assumptions about you and your company. Over the long term that can be extremely valuable. Now, Good account management requires you to think about your busines relationships,not merely the immediate opportunity. Meeting customer's problems or needs when the customer brings them up is all right, but it's not nearly as effective as working with the customer collaboratively to develop a business direction.

You might want to target current customers

Doesn't it make sense to issue an unsolicited letter proposal every time you have a price reduction? In particular, you might want to target current customers whose costs can be reduced if they adopt the recommendations you're proposing. One of the good things on the list is that your company has a very important local presence in your market. Why not play that up in each proposal you submit? Remind the decision maker that he or she will be dealing with a vendor who can respond to challenges or concerns immediately,in person, rather than in a day or two or over the phone.

A typical list might look something like this:

1.Not interested in small jobs or small clients 2. Significant local presence 3. Lots of experience 4. Financially stable/solid 5. Expensive 6. High-quality vendor 7. Trustful 8. Difficult to deal with 9. Good product knowledge 10. Innovative,willing to come up with new solution(for a price). Openly, this is a mixed list, as virtually any company's would be. The question is how to use your proposals to capitalize on the positives and to minimize or overcome the negatives. One of the negatives on the list is the fact that customers notice your company to be expensive.

Proposal as a marketing tool

What do your clients think of you? How is your company's image? What do prospects who have never worked with you assume about you? Try this exercise. Take a clean sheet of paper and list all the characteristics, traits or attributes that are typically associated with your company. Write them all, positive and negative. Be honest,but be fair.(Try to get out of your head and see things the way a customer or prospect probably does)

SELL ON VALUE INSTEAD OF PRICE

Use your proposal to move the decision maker's focus away from price and toward such measures of value as lower total cost of ownership,higher reliability,direct customer support,documented technical superiority,or message that separates you from your competitors. 2. Compete successfully without having personal contact with every member of the decision team: You may never have the opportunity to meet every member of the team in person. A better proposal can talk to each member of the team,helping make your case.

Make sure you offer a bundled solution

The buyer may ask you for a proposal for basic bookkeeping services. In your proposal, though, you can add a brief description of your ability to provide tax preparation, too, as part of a total solution. That will make the size of the deal to increase,it may differentiate you from other bookkeepers who submit a proposal, or it may just make the customer aware that you also do taxes. All of these things are good.

Sell a complex,technical product to nontechnical buyers

Speaking the customer's language is an important part of winning his or her trust. A flexible proposal process can help you communicate effectively even if the buyer lacks in-depth knowledge of what you're offering. Sell the"smarter"customer: Smart buyers want to gain as much as possible while spending as little as possible. If you don't show them what they gain by choosing your recommendations, they will inevitably focus on the other half of the equation:spending very small.

Helping you sell

Look at your proposals very well as part of your overall sales and marketing activities,rather than narrowly as the formal means of responding to a particular request. Seen that way, a proposal can help you build your business in many ways, including some that extend beyond the immediate opportunity to which you are responding. The obvious:helping you sell. The proposal's most important job is to help you sell something. (In no profit realm,it should help you obtain funding in support of your mission and purposes.) To go a bit further,though, a high-quality, carefully constructed proposal can help you.

The important lesson in a quality proposal

The client may use your proposal as the basis for soliciting bids from your competitors. It does not happen often,but it happens often enough that you should be careful. The important lesson is that you should always do some prudent quality proposal. There is no point in submitting to some people who have no budget,no authority, or no real interest in working with you. There is even less point in submitting to someone who may take your material and share it with your competitors.