By Vibhav Singh, co-founder and CEO at xtenav.com. He helps people create amazing audiovisual designs and winning sales proposals.
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Many businesses in the world struggle with closing sales quickly enough; have you ever wondered what the other few businesses are doing to win more deals than others?
In this article, I will share my advice for how small- to medium-sized businesses can close more sales faster.
In the 21st century, if a business has not implemented a meticulously planned sales process, then it’s likely that the team is either not serious or just doesn’t have the exposure to the tools that can help them succeed. Either way, without a thorough process in place, it’s likely that they will fail at some point.
After spending 15 years in sales and marketing and putting years of research into building my company’s proposal software, I have come up with a framework that I’ve found can increase the likelihood of sales success.
My company and I decided to call it the TAAPAS framework to make it easy to remember. Here’s what the framework is and how you can implement it.
T: Tracking
Having the ability to track proposal activity can give you a tremendous advantage over your competitors. For example, every time your customer opens your proposal, you should know it.
This is because how much time they spend on your proposal or even different pages of your proposal will give you tremendous insight into which parts of your proposal are most important to your customer. (Various different tools provide these types of insights.) Based on these insights, you could create a strategy to close the deal.
This is why it’s helpful to send your proposal as a trackable URL: so that you can track when prospects open the proposal.
A: Access
In 2023, if you are still sending your proposals as PDFs and forcing your client to download bulky PDFs onto their devices, it’s time to rethink your approach. PDFs should be a strict no-no for modern businesses unless there is a bureaucratic requirement to use them.
Sending your proposal via a URL that is accessible on any device—phone, tablet or laptop—is a better approach. Plus, this also makes it easier to get e-signatures.
No more PDFs, please.
A: Acceptance
Getting acceptance or a signature to seal the deal with your customers is the holy grail in the sales business. Doing this by getting your customers to print, scan and sign is an outdated approach. There are many e-signature software options that make it easy. Ideally, e-signature software should easily integrate with your proposal tool or be a part of the tool itself. Make sure the e-signature tool makes it easy for your clients to sign. For example, it should include clear instructions, and it should work on any device, like a laptop, phone or desktop.
P: Presentation
We can all agree about this: Our proposal is one of the first impressions we make, and in many cases, it is the last impression of our companies. You don’t want to blow this chance.
That’s why it’s important to create breathtaking proposals that are not just great-looking but also easy to read and comprehend. To make a visually appealing proposal, it’s important that you create consistent branding for your organization. For example, create a section about your company’s achievements, your clients’ testimonials, how great your team is and so on. Include a lot of pictures and graphics. Nowadays, you could even include video messages in your proposal to make your proposal highly interactive.
A: Accuracy
This is probably the most important and toughest one to achieve.
Everyone I have ever spoken to in the sales business always agrees that they have messed up on the cost estimates in a proposal multiple times in their lives. Losing money on a job is one of the worst things you can do. Hence, it’s important to create perfect estimates that reflect accurate costs and profits.
All sales leaders should really understand the scope of the work and client expectations clearly. Then calculate the resources your company will have to spend to get that job done and put a proper margin or markup on those costs to create an estimate in which you can ensure your company sees good margins and will be able to serve the customer well.
S: Speed
One thing many people in the business world admire is speed. The speed at which you can start and finish a job is a differentiating factor. The same is true for sending proposals.
Let’s be fast and efficient about sending our bids and following up on time. Many people take days and weeks to create a well-crafted proposal while their client has already received a bid from a competitor and decided to go ahead with them. That’s why you should create reusable templates that will allow you to create and submit your proposals or bids at a lightning-fast pace.
In your reusable templates, create areas to lay out customer information, like the organization name, email addresses for customers and so on. That way, you don’t have to lay them out for every customer.
You could also create templates for different types of customers you serve, like those in banking, retail and so on. Each style of template should have the information you need to include for the type of customer you are serving; this can make it easier to start and finish a proposal quickly.
This framework can support your efforts to win more jobs. As they say in sales: Go get them.
