What a lovely photo that Flicker user adonis hunter / ahptical provides us with.

Allow me to describe a scene from the movie Elf. Elf is completely new to civilization as we know it. He’s just skipping merrily down the street when he spots a sign on a window for “The World’s Best Cup of Coffee”. He runs into the shop and enthusiastically shouts “CONGRATULATIONS!” to everyone for the amazing achievement. In return, he receives a full serving of blank stares. You can check the clip out here.

This makes an excellent point. In sales and proposal writing, it’s easy to get caught up in saying the usual things rather than the accurate things. Customers don’t really buy that crap. When was the last time you really believed that place had the top of the line _____ or the best _____ on this side of the hemisphere?

In celebration of making accurate, fresh points, here’s a list of ten phrases to keep out of your proposal:

1. Top quality
2. Cutting edge
3. Customer first
4. Comprehensive solutions
5. State-of-the-art
6. We are commited…
7. Our mission is to…
8. Trustworthy
9. The right choice
10. We will strive/We hope/We intend

Instead of using tired cliches, focus on stating what you DO do and giving concise examples of the amazing work you’re capable of producing.

Source: CapturePlanning.com.

Many thanks to the feisty Flickr user Anant N S (www.thelensor.tumblr.com) for this great picture.

I’m talking about the military tactic, not the video game. Its also known as counterattack or in debate, the counterpoint, and surprisingly can be an important technique to master when it comes to proposal writing.

To sum it up, a counterstrike is a response to an attack. There are many ways to respond to criticism in the sales world, the most popular of which seems to be the well-known “RUN-AND-HIDE!!!” technique. This entails the company becoming aware that their product or service has a weakness and doing everything they can to cover that up.

That technique is all well and good, but as we all know, eventually the person hiding gets caught. And by that time, the person who had to run all around looking for them is nothing short of furious. Enter counterstrike.

This technique enables the company to admit to a certain fault in the proposal; to come clean. But, never let your guard down. This is the moment for battle. Anticipate their offense: What arguments could my client think up to convince herself not to buy my product? Now, throw up the defense (counter): Break down the argument with facts. The final blow (strike): Provide another brilliant example of why your products or service rocks. And bam, the reader is blown away.

Flickr user Audringje is a saint for graciously providing this photo.

So, you want to be that dude in the sweet hat, eh? Well, you’ll have to be quick on your feet if you want to write a better business proposal. Any successful piece of writing requires engaging in a balancing act between author and audience.

If you don’t sell yourself enough there is nothing to buy. But, if you don’t sell to your audience enough there’s nothing they would want to buy.  “To” is italicized for a reason. You never want to sell at the audience, but rather cater to them.

Two very important things to remember when selling to the audience:

1. It’s very likely that the person reading your proposal has 100 better things to do with his or her time and doesn’t even enjoy reading proposals in the first place.

2. However, this person really wants your proposal to be the winning one. If they didn’t have hope that yours would be worth their time, then they wouldn’t be reading it.

Keeping these things in mind here are 3 tips:

A. Backwards essay: don’t save the best for last. Your reader is short on time, so put the most important, most compelling information about you service at the beginning and work down from there. Remember, the audience wants your proposal to be The One, so give them what they want from the start and show them that you have what it takes to solve their problems.

B. Keep is short: Filling up pages with b.s. is also another essay technique that I don’t recommend employing in a proposal. The longer a proposal is, the less likely someone is to read through it. So, identify what the reader needs to know, toss out the rest and make these need-know-points easily accessable for the audience.

C. Jargon watch: always keep your audience in the back of your mind when choosing your vocab. Do they know a whole heck of a lot about this subject? Great, use those fancy words. Are they noobs? Keep your writing elementary, then, my dear Watson.

Follow these tips and in no time your proposals will be looking as suave and gentlemanly as our good friend up there.

Special thanks go to Flickr user snlsn for the background photo.

…as long as you keep you perspective balanced.

Diligence is essential. The stats vary a little bit from place to place, but the general consensus seems to be that most sales (meaning a whopping 80%) are made after the 5th point of contact. But, to point out how truly interesting this information is, you have to take a look at how salespeople make their calls. Basically half, 48%, only call one time. 12% of folks only call three times. But then there’s the 10% who doesn’t give up and these guys are the ones who make 80% of sales. In other words, these are the people making 5 or more points of contact with the client.

The reason I mention keeping a balanced perspective is because getting ran off by a secretary before you have a chance to make meaningful conversation with someone by no means counts as a “point of contact” or a “call”. If you are pouring out your energy making as many calls as possible, but seeing no sign of life on the other end of the line, then you may be beating your head against a wall. Reassess your strategy and attack the problem from a more effective angle. Here your persistence will be valuable.

Everyone hates writing proposals. Even if you like the selling process of getting to know the client, learning there implicit wants and explicit needs, and selling to their pain points. Even if you really believe in your company and are excited about solving their problems with your services. I’ll bet you still don’t like writing the proposal.

So what do we end up with? We end up with a document that does not reflect the company brand, usually does not have the most up-to-date material and is not customized enough to feel personal to the client. All that and the rep dreaded writing the proposal the whole time.

So what can we do about it?

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