WRITING PROPOSALS

We believe that the prospect has to earn the right to get a proposal from the salesperson. The Optimal Salesperson® will only write a proposal to a prospect who has completely met all of the elements to be considered a qualified prospect. Most salespeople spend entirely too much time writing proposals. They do a cursory job of qualifying the prospect and then they either volunteer to write a proposal or are asked to write one which they eagerly agree to do. There are several possible factors which can cause this to happen.

• The salesperson does not have or does not use and effective sales process
• The salesperson knows how to qualify a prospect but is unskilled at executing the process
• The salesperson has a belief that they must quote when asked
• The salesperson has a fear of rejection so they won’t ask the tough questions
• The salesperson believes that they can’t win if they don’t quote
• The salesperson thinks that writing proposals with low probability is a good way to avoid prospecting which they hate worse than writing proposals

There are many more possible reasons and some salespeople suffer from more than one.