How to Craft an Awesome Business Proposal

Selling is about moving the buyers’ emotions. Appealing to emotions has everything to do with telling your story in the form of a proposal. The proposal is the Third Tool of Persuasion, and we use it at the Bottom of the Sales Funnel.

Every presentation wants to persuade its audience to take action, even though most business presentations serve only to convey data and not to persuade. Program on Persuasion’s corporate sales training coaches you on how to persuade your audience every time, how to continue to strengthen the business relationship. This post starts with the overall objectives of the presentation that includes your proposal, segues into the checklist of what to include in the presentation, and ends with the many options you have for your opening gambit.

The Easy Yes

Our audience has been conditioned by TV and media not to think too much. Similarly, we don’t want our client to have to think too much, and they don’t want you to make them think. Prolonged periods of cognitive reasoning are actually painful.

Instead, our corporate sales training suggests that the seller take control. We have all the information that we need because of the business relationship during the phases of Educationand Discovery. The effective presenter is the one who makes it easy for the client to grasp ideas. The story leads the client to one, irrefutable conclusion, and the journey there gives the audience a psychological comfort level that makes it easy for them to say yes.

Psychology, Storytelling, and Calls to Action

The audience perceives a person who can tell an effective business story as in command and worthy of confidence. This section is about presentations, but it’s also about psychology, storytelling, and getting the audience to respond to the call to action. In this section, we understand how to strike at the root of emotion!

The Checklist

Begin with the End in Mind

Every presentation’s goal is to take the audience from their starting point to their objective, Point B. At Point B, the prospect should understand, believe, and take action. Your presentation may be educational, engaging, and entertaining, but if you don’t move the buyer to take action—if you don’t get them to Point B—then you’ve failed.

Before your audience can understand your purpose, though, you must understand your purpose. Before we worry about the flow of ideas, we should focus on what we want to accomplish. We must begin with an end in mind.

Understand the Pain

Once we establish Point B, we should make sure that we understand the pain—or potential gain—of not fixing the buyer’s problem. This is the information that we collected in the Middle of the Funnel through our business relationship, with our Impact Question.

Customized Benefits

Another piece of information that we need is that of the Customized Benefits. If we asked properly, we should have discovered this information during our corporate sales training’s Discovery Phase. If we don’t have that information, we need to revisit the prospect to get it before we can proceed. Absence of any one of these checklist items means we are not ready to proceed into the Bottom of the Funnel.

Value Proposition

The final checklist item is for us to brainstorm our Value Proposition for this specific buyer, remembering all the details we discovered in the business relationship. We will have lots of value propositions, but it’s a mistake to confuse the buyer with all of them. Program on Persuasion’s corporate sales training coages that we should isolate the one or few that directly addresses this prospect’s problems or goals.

When we have all the ingredients that we need from this checklist, we can move forward to the next module and the crafting of our story. You have probably heard that when you tell a story there are three parts.

  1.      Tell them what you’re about to say.
  2.      Say it.
  3.      Tell them what you just said.

Of these three sections, the first is the most important because the beginning is when you get—or don’t get—your audience’s attention. For that reason, this module focuses on the Strong Start of your presentation.

We are finally in the Bottom of the Funnel. In the MOFU, we were inquisitive, a think-partner who diagnosed the situation. Here, we are no longer diagnosing but prescribing. This section requires confidence and believability in order to transfer emotion from us (the seller) to our buyer, and to direct our business relationship into this new direction.

The Strong Start

The template for the Strong Start looks complex, and it looks that way because it sets up your entire presentation. The astounding part is that all of this preparation is for the first thirty seconds of your presentation because that is the most important part.

Here are the six components of the Strong Start.

  1. The Opening Gambit.
  2.      Unique Value Proposition
  3.      Link to Proof of Concept
  4.      WIIFY
  5.      Link to Point B
  6.      Preview and Running Time

Next, we will detail each of the six components for clearer understanding.

The Opening Gambit

The Opening Gambit consists of the very beginning of your presentation. Our corporate sales training designs it to grab your audience’s attention. You have cultivated a business relationship and know your audience very well by this phase, and you also know what interests them.

There are several options for your opening gambit. The key is customizing the gambit to meet your audience’s problem or opportunity.

  • Question: How could you possibly give the same exam two courses in a row?
  • Statistic: Most homeowners only get one bid when painting their home.
  • Anecdote:80% of juries decide the verdict after only the opening remarks….
  • Quotation: “Ailing organizations have developed a functional blindness to their own defects,” John Gardner.
  • Analogy: … equivalent of the paradigm shift of backing up a trailer.
  • Aphorism: “You can lead a horse to water….

The Unique Value Proposition

The Unique Value Proposition (UVP) simply names or titles your solution. The beginning of your presentation is too soon to get into its details, so the title of your solution helps you avoid mistakes losing your flow, including too much detail, and being too long-winded.

Proof of Concept

Proof of Concept is usually one line that illustrates your success with the UVP. Avoid the temptation of telling the buyer everything to get him or her to understand anything. We will tell them more, later, in the body of the presentation.

What’s In It For You (WIFFY)

The WIIFY encapsulates the one or two most powerful desired results—or benefits—that your prospect told you that they wanted. This section should be simple and to the point.

Point B

Point B is your call to action. To meet this portion, we are tell them the exact purpose of this meeting: we are going to ask you to commit to something at the end of this presentation. We always need to begin with the end in mind so that we don’t disrupt the business relationship and surprise the buyer with our call to action.

Preview and Running Time

Last, we include the preview and running time. Your audience wants to see the agenda so they know what’s coming and how long it will take. We should not make them guess. Positioning this section at the end also allows for an easy transition into the body of the presentation.

Example: “Our agenda has us addressing three different issues. One, the origins of the problem and how we detected it. Two, how our solution will completely resolve the issue. And three, our implementation plan. With that timing set up, let’s begin with number one, the origins of the problem and how we detected it….” With that, we have easily transitioned into the second portion of the presentation, “Saying it.”

Conclusion

Program on Persuasion’s corporate sales training coaches how to persuade your audience every time. This post details the objectives of a proposal, the checklist of the presentation itself, and how to introduce the ideas of your proposal.

Photo by Olu Eletu.