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Empower Your Sales Team With Proposal Software

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Silje Stensland

13.04.2021

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2 min

Why do you write proposals?

Is it to provide the prospective client with basic details and facts about your services?

No – the only reason you devote precious resources and time to creating proposals is to win more business. (Granted, some businesses answer RFPs because they cannot afford not to, from a brand image and company reputation perspective.)

Winning means getting a client to choose your proposal over your competitor’s. To do so, you need to persuade prospective clients that you’re better than the competition.

Writing a proposal is all about selling. The purpose of the proposal is to close the deal with the prospect. In a word, to win.

So how do you differentiate yourself from the competition and clearly demonstrate to the client why you should be selected? There’s a ‘secret weapon’ for winning more RFPs, one that you should arm your sales team with. 

 

The X Factor for Winning Bids and Proposals

As opposed to sales meetings, a proposal is a one-way communication that doesn’t let you counter the prospect’s arguments or resistance about buying your services.

Simultaneously, the prospective client is a sophisticated buyer and doesn’t really care what your services are, but instead how your product or service will help meet their needs and solve their problems. 

They need to see details of your proposed solution and evidence of your capabilities, not marketing material or sales fluff. Over-sell, and you may fall flat.

To convince an educated buyer that you’re the best choice, your selling approach must be strategic. Understand what you need to win, understand your prospect, and make your message stick with the evaluators. Build facts, information and evidence that sell without the marketing hype.

That said, positioning yourself as the best choice is easier said than done when you’re struggling to meet deadlines and lack control of your proposal process. When you’re cobbling documents together, battling formatting, and receiving content last minute.

Your sales team may be top of the line, but it’s hard to create a winning proposal when, at 4 A.M. on the day of the deadline, they realize that vital parts are missing, and are forced to submit one big ‘Frankenstein’ document – different fonts, wrong numbering, and graphics all over the place.

There’s a way out of this predicament. As a proposal manager, one of the most significant impacts you can make is to empower your team with the right tools to reach and sell to sophisticated buyers. 

Read more: Everything you want to know about proposal software

 

Position yourself to WIN

A good co-authoring and automation solution makes formatting, numbering and layout a breeze. It streamlines and simplifies your entire proposal process, giving you control of team progress, and how much work remains.

This means your sales team can focus on what matters the most – effectively collaborate to produce clear, concise and compelling proposals that are a cut above the competition.

 

 

download winning proposals

 

Author picture

Silje Stensland

Silje is the Chief Marketing Officer of Xait. She holds a Bachelor in Marketing Communication and an Executive Master in Business Administration. She is an analytical, efficient and results-focused marketing and communications professional and her career spans over 15 years within real estate, oil & gas and IT. When Silje is not busy growing the Xait brand, you can find her at her family cabin in picturesque Sirdal, Norway, hiking, trekking and cross-country skiing.

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