Your offer - Legal warning or love letter?

Paul Weber on Proposal Creation in Companies

A single field visit costs a company in the industrial customer sector a lot of money. For example: In a full cost calculation, a sales representative costs €120,000.00. On 160 days a year, he typically attends three appointments with customers. This means each visit costs the company €250.00. However, this does not include any marketing activities or possible preparation measures by the inside sales team. In the case of acquiring new customers, it is often not sufficient to visit a customer only once before being able to submit a proposal. The field sales representative usually needs to convince the customer multiple times before they are ready for a proposal. By that time, a considerable amount of money has usually been invested in the potential customer. And right now - in the all-important phase - it happens: The proposal becomes a disaster. Often, the belatedly arriving proposal has the charm of a lawyer's reminder and the attractiveness of a technical data sheet. There is hardly any reference to the customer's concerns, and the customer benefit that justifies the investment for the customer is - if at all - only vaguely apparent. Additionally, this proposal, which required additional time and money, is often not followed up with the necessary persistence and cleverness. The beautiful total investment in acquiring new customers is thus often in vain: "We have decided on a different offer." One should prevent such a fiasco on two levels. Firstly, there is the technical process. Especially in the proposal process, it is necessary to define the individual steps precisely, work with templates, and adhere to content and time specifications. This ensures a targeted course of acquisition, and annoying delays for the customer are avoided. The customer gets the feeling that they are genuinely being cared for. Employees should be carefully trained on the individual process steps. Equally important is the content design of the interaction. My motto in sales is: As a sales representative, one should always try to - platonically, of course - fall a little in love with their customer. If successful, this inevitably develops a sense of what the customer needs. When in love, one wants the best for the other, and when in love, one tries to write in a letter what the other likes to read. A proposal written on this basis will naturally be more of a "love letter" than a "legal reminder," and accordingly, its chances of a positive conclusion are higher. When these aspects are considered and implemented, the investments in acquiring new customers are well spent in the long run. For more information about our Top 100 Entrepreneur Paul Weber, visit: http://www.excellente-unternehmer.de/redner/paul-weber.html