Every email marketing campaign will have to make at least a few proposals for clients and partners. In fact, if you’re running a cold email campaign for your outreach you will be dealing with this on a regular basis. B2B emails are heavily dependent on this. That’s why here we will be presenting you our top 6 winning tips & tricks in proposal writing.
Let’s face it, if you want to be successful in your business, you’re going to have to deal with writing proposals that get you the best results. This might not be so easy for everyone, but in the end, it will be worth it. It is precisely because it might not be so easy that our tips and tricks can come in handy for some.
In the modern sales approach, it is expected that anyone can come up with a decent business proposal without taking too long to do so. When you’re relatively new to this sort of stuff, or just feel like it’s not your cup of tea, this is not so simple and straight forward. However the following sections will likely clarify any issues you’re having with your proposal writing and will also help you make them even better. Without further ado, let’s get on with it.
Table of Contents
In today’s world you can always rely on software to make your life and work just a little bit easier. This is especially true when it comes to the not so easy things to do, like proposal writing and management.
People can spend hours staring at the computer screen waiting for inspiration, that may or may not come, just to begin a proposal. This is something that es common among people that don’t really have a clear outlook on how to begin the process.
The key is to spend less time thinking about how to write something and focus more on the offer itself. This is something really easy to do when you have a good and reliable proposal management software in your hands. We can even give you the main reasons why using software like this can improve your performance.
It’s simple faster and better to rely on software for this. One service that we can recommend for this is Better Proposals.
The number of proposals opened from mobile devices is at an all time high, with no signal of slowing down. This means that you have to seize the moment and make sure that every proposal you write is ready to be displayed from a mobile device, whether a tablet of a smartphone. This is so much so, that about 34% of all sent proposal get opened from a mobile device first.
Desktop devices are still on top; however, this doesn’t mean that this won’t change. In coming years, you will have to prepare for this. For example, documents and proposal sent out in .doc or .pdf formats will look differently depending on the device that it’s used to visualize them. A good idea to solve this issue, and overall the main take away from this point, is to write and send your proposals as web-based instead of document-based.
First off let’s tackle the question, how long should a proposal be? This really depends. It’s basically about what industry you’re in and exactly what you expect out of your proposal. It’s also depending of the product or service that you’re selling to your recipient.
The best performing proposals are about 8 pages long and contain 6 sections. This can be considered a sweet spot between being comprehensively long but not too long at the same time. Ideally what you want is to keep the interest of your recipient, meaning not making the proposal too long, and cover all that you need to make the proposal a good deal for you.
The actual structure of your proposals will depend on each case, however there are two sections that will be about the same for every proposal you make. These are, the introduction and the pricing. This is so long as you’re dealing with the same product or service.
Your introduction plays a critical role, as it is the main presentation of what you have to offer and in which terms. This is where you can show value to your prospect and actually get them to think that what you offer can solve their problems.
In fact, on average clients spend 34.6% of their time reading the introduction of the proposal. Followed by spending 27.1% of their time reviewing the pricing of it.
In marketing, when it comes to the actual proposal there are few things that can affect the conversion rate. Believe it or not, one of these things is the fact of whether your proposal get printed or not. Know that if a proposal gets printed, it is 78% less likely to be signed.
While there is no accurate explanation, valid for all cases, for this particular issue, what we can tell you is that it’s true. It might be due to people printing a proposal when they over think it. Or due to seeming too much old school and formal when you send a printed proposal. In reality one just never knows why this is so for each case.
This is yet another good reason to make all your proposals web-based. You can actually lower this rate by knowing just how to speak to your recipients and clients. A good idea for this would be to read our article about the language of progress.
Most people in marketing tend to simply present an offer along with several others. This done in hopes of upselling more items or services and proving you client or recipient with more freedom of choice. But in reality, this is not something desired for either calls to action or proposals.
When you make a pitch to a prospect you want them to do exactly what benefits you without derailing from that path. For example, if you only give your clients one choice in your proposals, they become much more likely to be signed. This can drastically affect your sales and at what price you can pitch your products.
This also means that you need to make sure that your whole proposal is at a good level. This means the language used and the quality of the deal. After all, you will be giving a single choice to your recipients, you want to make it as irresistible as possible.
This is actually a common mistake and one of the most important of our 6 winning tips & tricks in proposal writing. People often finish a good proposal and then just sit on it, thinking it over, well more like overthinking it. They look for non-existent typos and go over a couple of times over the main sections. Sometimes people just wait because they don’t want to seem too desperate. These are all mistakes.
Sending out your proposal within the first 24 hours from the initial contact will increase your chances of conversion by about 14%. In addition to this you can think the following. Once a proposal is finished is either good for the recipient or it isn’t, if it’s good, sending it faster also means that it will get signed quickly.
The average wait time for a proposal to get signed is of about 6 days, but this time doubles if you send the proposal in 3 to 4 days from the initial contact. Sending out your proposal faster doesn’t make you look desperate; it makes you seem more professional and on point. It shows that you’re there to do business, this is something that good companies can appreciate.
From our brief list with 6 winning tips & tricks in proposal writing, you can hopefully implement the following.
Applying these tips and tricks is a great way to increase your conversion rate in no time at all. In the event that you need some extra guidance on how to increase your sales, you can read about our 7 actionable tips to boost your sales.
