Whether you like it or not, doing business with other businesses often involve submitting a proposal. Let’s face it, proposal processes are time-consuming. You end up with pages filled with marketing data, features, and benefits.

As a business owner, take a moment to calculate how much of your resources are eaten into by proposals that aren’t accepted. Many of the reasons they aren’t accepted happens before you even submit that proposal.

Some studies suggest that over 67 percent of your sales are lost by not properly pre-qualifying your potential customer. In pre-qualifying, it’s also your chance to build a solid connection so there is less reliance on the proposal.

Your questions should be focused on what’s most important to your prospective customer. Listen for what’s being said and what’s not being said. During this process, determine their buying readiness, who is involved in the decision, and if there is a budget.

Most of all, determine a time frame for every step of the process. This also means identifying specific dates that you will submit your proposal, a meeting date that is scheduled to review the proposal, and a scheduled meeting date for the decision.

When you put more effort on the front end of your proposal process and tie it up with specific meeting dates, you will close on more sales.

Join us March 30 & 31 for our live

Online Profitability Lab: Introduction where we will dive into the 7 Profitability Systems for your small business.