8 elements for a profitable sales proposal and tools to automate the process.

Submitting professional, personalized proposals at scale is a key challenge for most companies, but a failure to master this undermines all the great public relations work which has been done. So on this podcast I share 8 key elements to include in proposals which sell and also include tools which can be used to automate the process.

Proposify, iQuoteexpress, PandaDoc, and Proposeful from Brazil are all good options to consider, but starting prices are US19.00 across the range. There doesn't appear to be a freebie in this category.

SPEAK|Pr is for business owners to unlock the value in their business brought to you by entrepreneur Jim James.

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Transcript

Jim James: 0:24

Today, we're going to talk about the challenge of creating professional and personalized presentations and proposals. We're all in the position where we need to communicate through our websites and through our PR, but we also need to prepare proposals, so how can make it personalized but also do it at scale and at speed? I'm going to look at some key elements within a great proposal as well as some technologies that we can use for helping us to create quick, effective, and personalized presentations and proposals. The reason this is so important is that the proposal and the presentation that we make deliver on all the marketing promises that we make. We need to make sure that the proposal that we're issuing is aligned with the public relations, advertising, events or signage that we've done for the company. I'm addressing this in a PR conversation, because after all that great work, the next set of experiences and relationships that the audience is going to have with our business is going to be the one where we're making them an offer. This applies not just to potential customers, but also to potential partners and staff. This idea that we're offering a presentation or a proposal to somebody that really reflects the brand qualities that we've got as a company is worth addressing. Over the last 25 years, I've issued literally tens of millions of dollars worth of proposals, and not just for public relations, because in China, I imported Morgan sports cars, and I worked quite hard to make the presentation about building a custom sports car for a Chinese client into part of the experience. When we look at what a proposal includes, let's drill down into that. First of all, it needs to be personalize. It would be nice to have a cover letter or some sort of a welcome address. I've recently started using a couple of apps. One is called Bonjoro, which allows me to send a video along with the presentation. I've also been using Loom which has enabled me to record my presentation and then send the video link along with the file to a client or prospective client, so that instead of hoping that they're going to read and understand all the nuances that I have in my presentation, they're going to have me explain it. However, we can't make our presentation too long; otherwise, people might not read it. But then if it's too short and too brief, we're missing out detail, so it has to take just the right amount of time to read or watch that the client gets all the information they need yet doesn't get bored doing so. If we're making an in-person presentation, we have all the benefits of charisma, character, and chemistry. But if we're sending something to somebody that may be on the other side of the planet, often in my case, how do we communicate and send the energy that we have for the work we're about to try and get from them or the product we're about to sell them, but do it all online? The answer is personalization, and using video is one of the ways this can be done. Another key ingredient to a great presentations is knowing the customer's motivation. In consumer PR, people buy products and services, because it solves a problem for them. Whether it's a car, a piece of clothing, food, or travel, it meets a personal need. Now, in business-to-business, it's very different. On many levels, people are buying a good, a service, or a person in order to accomplish something else, and they're spending company money, not their own. They'll often have to justify that expenditure, so there may be two or three people involved in the process. So, understanding the different people inside the organization that are going to be involved in the purchasing decision is important, and so is understanding their motivation behind actually buying the good or service that we're selling. The third aspect is the executive summary. This involves making the body of the proposal. Here at EastWest PR, we have a five-stage methodology, and we we talk about investigation first. As part of our presentations, we always include a little bit of background about the company and the market they operate in. One of the things that we found works really well is when we include information or news about their competitors. That's partly because we want to instill a little bit of fear in our client or prospective client that we know that they're not alone. Quite often, we had as much or more information on the client's competitors than they did, because internally, they're focused on their own work, and they may not be researching on their competitors, which is something that we can do for them. So, the executive summary can be the research on the client, the market, the market trend, and their competitors. Another element of the presentation is the outcome. In consumer, the outcome is happiness for yourself, your children, or whoever you're buying that good or service for. In B2B, the outcome is the integration within an existing process. I always say that the only two outcomes that companies are looking for is either time or money. They're buying something to make them either more money directly or to save them time or cost. So, for outcomes in B2B, I always narrow it down to either efficiency or profitability, and how I can translate my service into doing that. The next element is about interactive pricing tables, which means that you can have a set of offers which enables you to move within the range of what the client has got or maybe what you want to sell them. There's a school of thought in negotiation that says, "Name price first," because by going in with a price early, you're setting expectations. I always mention how much the good, service, or program is going to cost early because, frankly, it saves me a lot of time. In the early years of my PR firm, I did a long presentation, and it was only during the third meeting that the client asked how much they would need to spend. I ended up wasting a lot of time. Nowadays, I quickly get to a ballpark figure with the client. From there, I can tell whether I'm on the right lines or the wrong lines and tailor the proposal accordingly. We're now just building our proposals in a menu system. We found over the years, especially now, that as attractive as it is to give a lump sum, clients often are afraid of that lump sum. A bit like buying a base-level car, they may end up with the entry-level product that gets them what they need, with some extras. My line is always that I want them to be happy and us to be happy. It has to be profitable on both sides, or the relationship won't work. With interactive pricing tables, we can modify together what the project is going to cost, and it's already then creating teamwork between us and the client which is a big part, of course, of the proposal. It's getting them across the line of having trust in us. The next is compelling imagery. Data from 3M has shown that people access and process images up to 60,000 times faster than text. Steve Jobs was always the proponent of one large picture on the screen and then a narrative. That's great if you're in the room and you've got a theatre-style presentation, but it's not great if you're just showing a picture of an apple on a screen. Compelling imagery involves the use of infographics, of which Canva has some really useful templates. What I also like to do is to include pictures of the client, because I found that clients really like to see themselves. The next part is about making an action plan, so that what you're showing the client is what they're going to get over time. What we do in our proposals is we put a chart showing which work by which timeline we expect to get done. That's important, because all the people I've dealt with are trying to integrate what we're offering them within another plan. It's never standalone. What we also like to include in our proposals is social proof, or evidence that we've done this before. Having case studies at the tail end of a presentation can help convince your client that they need you. This is taken from your public relations content, and this is the intersection between sales and PR. We include, for instance, media coverage that validates the performance of this product or service, and we also give people a link to view them online, which is especially important now that we're not necessarily with them in the room. We used to, in the old days, give people a printed out handbook of case studies or media clippings to show that we've got media coverage. If you're creating an offer for somebody, how can you demonstrate that you've already succeeded for someone like them with another client? Through showing them case studies, because this removes the element of risk. This is related to public relations, because if the PR has done its job properly, they'll have already heard or read about the product or the service. The next thing is about creating a couple of calls to action. I always like to include a timeframe or a validity for which the quote is available. I give people seven days, because then it creates a sense of urgency on their part, and if they have an event or a particular need, and they don't give me enough time to deliver on all the goods and services I've proposed, I'm just creating a problem for myself. So, I always give a duration for the validity of the proposal. The final thing that I include now that we're sending proposals to people online and not with them in person is I give them phone numbers and emails of people to call. We're using the Zoho booking system, and I include a link which says, "If you're not happy with anything or you have a question, here is a place to book time with me to review it at your convenience." These are some of the elements that I include in my proposals. Now, what about the software? As you know, I like to think about how I can automate this, because as I've mentioned, we're trying to create proposals that are personalized but at scale and with speed. Always keep in mind those three dimensions. Building templates each time off of Word, PowerPoint, or Excel is really cumbersome, and because most of us now are working remotely, we're unable to just cross over and have people look at things. Part of my team are in China, some are in Singapore, some are in America, so I really need to have a shared platform, which is why we've been using the Zoho platform for our CRM. We've been wrestling with getting these Zoho Quotes module into place, and I say'wrestling,' because Zoho is an extremely powerful and extremely cost-effective platform, especially with Zoho One. It's just $40 a month with over 50 apps. It's amazing. I've opted to use that, because it enables me to have a signature element in that as well also within the Zoho framework. In terms of displaying graphics and embedding video, Zoho Quotes doesn't have that. It seems to have come much more from the manufacturing and production side of things, so the fields that we're able to enter really talk about products, units, boxes, and so on. I'm happy to customize that, but also, I'm not really able to embed some of the graphics that I'd like to unless I just upload a separate document. It's great for the quote in the sense of actually delivering information like the pricing and the terms, but it's not so great for making it all look beautiful. There are a couple of other tools out there that I'd like to share with you. One is called Proposify. It's an online SaaS service that allows you to create branded and marketing approved templates that you can use directly and again and again. The beauty of this is that you can create standard templates that you would create in a Word document but with Proposify, this is done in the cloud and with graphics embedded. They also have the ability to add in video, and they can also translate the interface into 15 different languages. Obviously, you write the content yourself in different languages, but that's great if you've got an international team selling it to different marketing team but the sending of that proposal by the sales rep. You can change the date, the currency, the location, and the owner. It also has an embedded live chat function, so you can actually take the client through that proposal using Zoom and have this live chat on the dock. It also has an analytics function, and with this, you can see who's viewing the document and for how long. You can also then take it from proposal to quote to contract. They have the ability to take the key data and move it across the workflow, which is really useful. Using that within Zoho is something that I haven't tried. But it's something I'm considering now.. It has a Tall plan which osts $19 a month per user. That ould add up, because they allo three users maximum per acc unt, so you could be looking a$60 a month. But if yo're making proposals everyday it could easily pay for its lf. However, you can only have f ve active proposals, but it's ot specified whether it's fiv per account or five per user(which would mean 15 active pr posals). They have a Gra d plan, which offers unlimited roposals for $49 per month per ser, which Alternatives to Proposify include iQuoteXpress, which is$39 a month, PandaDoc, which is also just $19 a month per user, and Proposeful, which is from Brazil and is also $19 a month.$19 seems to be the magic number when it comes to getting a proposal made. In summary, you go from the proposal, preparation, and distribution, and then that's followed up by the quote, the contract, then the invoice. The reason I'm mentioning this is because it's automated now. It's centralized online, and it enables us to create proposals which are personalized and at scale. A big part of public relations now is about creating personalized communications. We talk about Storification, Personalization, Engagement, Amplification, and Knowing in our SPEAK|pr program, so it only makes sense that once someone's seen and read the mainstream media and gone online, when they receive a proposal, it's branded the same, it has case studies that have come from the public relations to give reassurance, and it's got all the key messaging that you have in your public relations across the proposal.