Our pre-proposal activities lay the foundation for choice

To test the principle, I have often shared a "lunch menu"at the outset of seminars. The so-called menu gives ATTENDEES two options: a turkey club sandwich or baked gravlox with crem'ora sauce. As you might expect, over 90% of participants will choose the turkey club sandwich. A few adventurous souls choose the gravlox,and a few will complain that there's no vegetarian option. But people for the most part are not willing to eat something for lunch that they have never heard of. So what does this mean for our proposal efforts? First, it suggests how important pre-proposal activities are. If the evaluator has never heard of us and our proposal comes on his or her office DESK, chances are we won't get much more than a cursory glance. (Converely, if you work for a fortune 500 company, you may get passed along to the next stage of evaluation based on recognition alone.)

The Recognition

The first and simplest technique depends on recognition as a simple cue to make decisions. The basic principle is that given two objects,one recognizable, the other not, we infer that the recognized object has higher value. For instance, suppose your laptop computer suddenly died. You go to your I.T. Manager and tell her that you need a new one. She says, "well, you are lucky, because I happen to have two brand new laptops with all the software installed. You can have either this IBM Thinkpad or this kretzenheimer millennial. Which one do you want?" Chances are, you will take IBM. Why? Because you've never heard of the other one.

Understand how people gather and process information

How long does it take people to make a "keep/discard" decision? On average, a little over six minutes. Infact, fast and frugal! By understanding how people gather and process information, we can gain good insight into the best way to organize our proposals. Also,we can structure our evidence for maximum effectiveness and can prioritize the content to match the kind of information the customer is looking for based on the decision techniques he or she is using. In simple Heuristics the authors describe seven heuristics of choice, but of those there are three that are particularly important for making business decisions.

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.