Ask Me Anything: Professional Proposals AMA - 11 to 18 June 2021 - live each day.

[HubDoPete]

Hi, my name is Pete Nicholls CF APMP, HubSpot Certified Trainer, member of the Professional Pricing Society (PPC) and Proposal Certified by the APMP  and host of The Proposal.Works™ Podcast where proposal experts share real stories of how they win.

To my knowledge, I am still the only certified business proposal specialist in the HubSpot Partner Community.

My company HubDo is a HubSpot Partner since 2015 (Reviews are here)

Please also connect with me on LinkedIn

With 23 years in Sales and Business Development, my focus on business proposals stems from “really disliking” doing proposals 🙂 until I learned how professionals write proposals. Now I quite enjoy them. I created the Proposal.Works™ Grid which is a proposal platform powered by PandaDoc, supporting hundreds of companies to create proposals integrated with HubSpot.

Our Proposal.Works™ Grid generates thousands of agreement per month, so I get to see and help with hundreds of proposals across many industries and sales scenarios. Unfortunately, most proposals that I see are fundamentally not very good. They are written by talented, passionate people, who simply never learned how professionals write businesses proposals. This means that you do not have to be remarkably better to stand out with a great proposal, you only need to 5% better, to be the 100% best proposal that the customer sees.

Welcome to "ask me anything" about how professionals write proposals and the overall sales process, especially those proposals integrated and automated with HubSpot CRM.

This “Professional Proposals AMA” runs from Friday 11 June to Friday 18 June 2021.

I’ll be monitoring regularly for questions and will be online each day for 30 minutes at 8 am, Pacific, 10 am Central, 11 am Eastern, 4 pm UK and 5 pm Europe

If you are not sure what to ask, here are some ideas:

• What do professional proposal writers do, that others don’t?
• How do most people do proposals well, in HubSpot?
• How and what can I automate in HubSpot to handle proposals?
• When should I use HubSpot Quotes versus 3rd party proposal tools?
• When should proposals have an executive summary?
• Why do professionals focus on discriminators more than differentiators?
• How do you write a proposal for both the economic buyer and line manager?
• How do you write an executive summary?
• Can proposal software really save time? How much is typical?
• Why do professionals use a content library? What should it contain?
• When is the right time to submit a proactive proposal?
• How can I sell value in a proposal?
• What is Value-based Pricing?
• And anything else that comes to mind about how to write proposals that win.

[HubDoPete]

Hi @dennisedson , thanks for coming back to me on some key questions.

What do professional proposal writers do, that others don’t? 

Here are some key differences I see when often comparing proposals with those prepared by a proposal specialist or team:

• Pros use proposal software to... Save Time and Respond Fast; Look Professional; Send Track and Manage (they don't email a PDF 🙂 an streamline the process.
• Pros expect the sales team to know the top hot button wants & needs for the opportunity (and cold buttons perceived barriers) to develop win themes.
• Pros focus on the Sweet Spot crossover between hot buttons and the differentiated value that the company offers, these become "Discriminators"
• Pros back up each positioning statement with Independent Verifiable proof, or consider leaving it out.
• Overall Pro-proposals talk much more about the customer, their goals, objectives, outcomes and focus on value, with proof of ability to deliver that value - whereas other proposals often talk a lot about the bidder, use boilerplate copy, make unsubstantiated claims like "world-class" and "innovative", focus on deiverables and leave the customer to determine how relevant any testimonials or case studies are to their specific goals challenges and objectives.
  

When is the right time to submit a proactive proposal?

• Firstly the sales process has established peer-level agreement on goals, outcome and value, agreed on a recommended approach, and established price options.
• Method of approval has also been established including who signs as the economic buyer to approve the agreement. Objections are already dealt with.
• That is the perfect time to codify this agreement right away in a proposal, with no surprises, to represent what has been agreed in principle.
• The proposal contains several price options starting with the highest value package, so that downward price negotiation is already built-in with trade-offs at each level.

Naturally each situation can be different and present its own challenges, but these are some of the general best practices, especially for pro-active proposals.

I hope that helps Dennis!

[sharonlicari]

Thank you for hosting this AMA @HubDoPete! 🙂

Hey  @AdamLPW @Josh @karstenkoehler @UDas @jgoodwyn @EbarakHossain @FBuguet @CMayer @DBritt @GeorgeBThomas @Edyta7510 @BriMackey @mikekrkljus @KHollinger @NManning I want to bring to your attention this AMA, I think you would be interested to ask any question related to Sales Strategy, sales process, especially those proposals integrated and automated with HubSpot CRM.!

Thank you

Sharon