B2B Founders: Stop Sending Proposals Like This — It’s Costing You Deals
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Brooke Greening: There are a lot of ways to end a sales call. Some create clarity, some create momentum, and some send a proposal into the internet like a message in a bottle, hoping that it's going to wash up shore with a signature.
And today, we're talking about all of those.
You just can't send a proposal over and hope something happens.
But the proposal becomes homework for the customer. They have to interpret it. They have to remember the conversation that we had before. They have to decide how they're going to respond.
And so it's literally like you hand them a thousand-piece puzzle with no picture on the box and just say, "Hey, let me know when you're done."
when we have to start checking in, it begins like this terrible life that starts to happen. Nobody wins in this situation, not you, not them, not even the proposal.
And so that is like agreeing to baking cookies, except then you realize, okay, I have to buy the cow, get the wheat, and then build the oven, and nobody is signing up for that.
Also, the biggest piece is so many times people think onboarding is happening after they've signed the contract, after they're ready to go. No, they're evaluating how this relationship is going to go during these sales conversations.
Scott Greening: Hey everybody, I'm Scott, your host of _Sippin' Matcha and Helping You Make More Sales_. Where in about the time that it takes you to enjoy your matcha or coffee break, Brooke Greening, our sales coach, gives us some great advice on our sales conversations. Because if you have to talk to people, how well you lead those conversations is going to make or break your revenue And Brooke, your, your open today got me thinking about, like, the I'm sending out an SOS.
I'm sending out an SOS. A message in a bottle. Message. Channeling my inner Sting.
Brooke Greening: Yes.
Scott Greening: So.
Brooke Greening: Yes.
Scott Greening: Yeah. That's where we're going. But we're, we're talking today about next steps. We're continuing this on. Last time we talked about how explaining next steps is making sure, ensuring that your customer knows exactly what they need to do next to move forward with you, and then today we're going to kind of highlight the bad side of when clarity's missing, how that affects-
Brooke Greening: Yeah
Scott Greening: things and how that impacts your, your customers and your sales.
Brooke Greening: Yes. Uh, when clarity is missing, nothing good is going to happen.
Scott Greening: Yeah.
Brooke Greening: We can just end the podcast with that.
Scott Greening: S-
spoiler. So instead of your coffee break, it was just the walk to the copier. So, all right.
Brooke Greening: It was an espresso, two sips. That's
Scott Greening: right.
Whoop, whoop. That's, that's my drink. All right. So what's the, what's the first, uh, mistake?
Brooke Greening: Okay. So the first mistake we're going to talk about is what I call the proposal toss, and that sounds like, "Great. I'm going to send you a proposal," and that's the entire plan. There's no reviewed... There's, like, you haven't agreed on reviewing the process.
There is no follow-up meeting. There is no decision date. There's no clarity about what, what customer should be doing after reading it. We're just whoop, lobbing it over the fence and basically praying that it works, and this happens so much more than you actually think. Even people who have very successful businesses do this, and this is one of the things that we've fixed immediately for them to be able to make more sales.
You just can't send a proposal over and hope something happens.
Scott Greening: We're obviously not mentioning anyone in specific. But, like, I, sometimes I, I chuckle because you're always like, "Ah, I don't know how they're doing so well and they're not even doing this." So it does happen pretty, pretty regularly. But help us know, like, okay, what's...
I, I thought that was sort of the whole point. Like, we want to get a chance. We want to do- send the proposal. Like, what's so bad about this approach?
Brooke Greening: Yes, and before we go into the bad, 'cause I know some people might be like, "Well, then Brooke doesn't understand what I do or what I'm- how my proposals work," I'm not saying when you have to go to a board or you're sending the proposal 'cause that's, like, that process.
I am saying specifically when you are talking with those decision-makers, and you're able to move things forward quickly, this is not a good plan. This is not going to land in sales. This is going to start stalling that momentum and all of those things. And so what happens is when you send the proposal, that feels really productive to the salesperson.
They feel like, "Okay, I did it." And then they may have even worked really hard in creating that proposal, so it feels like progress. It feels like we did our job. But the proposal becomes homework for the customer. They have to interpret it. They have to remember the conversation that we had before. They have to decide how they're going to respond.
And so it's literally like you hand them a thousand-piece puzzle with no picture on the box and just say, "Hey, let me know when you're done."
Scott Greening: Yeah, and then three or four days later, you're like, "I, I think I should have heard from them," and so I'm going to like- Yeah ... "Did you see it? Did you, did you read it? Did you look at it?"
Brooke Greening: Yes.
Scott Greening: Yeah.
Brooke Greening: And then sometimes we get frustrated 'cause maybe they ghosted us, but, like, we were not setting them up for success in that moment if all we did was just send them a proposal and that was it.
Scott Greening: All right, so they've done that, and what, what's the ramifications of this? That they're kind of at this awkward point of checking in just to see if they got it.
Brooke Greening: When we have to start checking in, it begins like this terrible life that starts to happen. Nobody wins in this situation, not you, not them, not even the proposal.
So something better you can say is, "Hey, yeah, I'm happy to send the proposal. I'll send it by Tuesday. But before that, I want to schedule about a 20-minute meeting for us to be able to review it. Let's look and see what Thursday looks like. We can review it together. I can be able to answer any questions that you have, and we can start talking about what it looks like to be able to move forward."
Scott Greening: All right, so that's number one rule. Like, make sure you got an appointment before you send the, the proposal. Uh, what's the next sort of common mistake that you'll often hear people making?
Brooke Greening: Well, then the second one is I call this, like, the customer-led follow-up, and what that sounds like is like, "Hey, take a look and let me know," or, "Reach out when you're ready."
Scott Greening: Yeah, and I know, like, that's the one that probably I tend to do, uh, 'cause I think it just makes logical sense that- ... working with me or, doing this is what," and it may make logical sense, and maybe the customer even would agree to that. But I'm putting it all in their hands.
Brooke Greening: Well, you are, and what happens is that sounds like low pressure to us, like we're being respectful, we're giving them space, but again, it's transferring all of the responsibility to the customer.
So now the customer has to remember how to respond, decide what to respond, determine what to say, and then they have to restart that sales conversation. So it's like you're just basically saying, "Okay, I'm going to stop leading now, and you're going to take it from here, and good luck with that."
Scott Greening: Yeah, and so, like, sort of in this effort to not be pushy we sort of make the customer now lead the sales process, run the process, and they, they don't know what the process is.
Brooke Greening: No, it's... Even though no one would ever mean for it to be, it can kind of be passive-aggressive, and that's the exact opposite of, of what we're trying to do. And it's not really the kinder option. We have to remember people are busy. Their inbox can sometimes be a bit of a war zone, so clear follow-up is not pressure.
It's leadership and service, and it's also a map when someone's trying to find their way through a, through a maze, through a place they've actually never been before. 'Cause that is what's happening. They don't know your business. They don't know your process. So you can't just expect them to know what steps to do.
Scott Greening: Yeah, and so, like, I know we'll spend more time on the how-tos next time, but help us think through just an example of what a, a better version would look like.
Brooke Greening: Yeah. Someone might say, "Hey, I need to talk to my business partner," and you'll be like, "Okay, great. Talk to your business partner and call me when you're ready."
Okay, that's where we've put everything on them at that point. Instead, you can just say, "Hey, you want to talk to your business partner? I think that's a great idea. When do you expect to have that conversation?" We get the information and then, "Okay, so then would it be helpful for us to reconnect then on Friday afternoon?"
We're still leading the conversation at that point.
Scott Greening: Yeah, and the, the nice part is, like, you're still leading, you're providing direction, but they're, they actually are owning the conversation, too.
Brooke Greening: Mm-hmm.
Scott Greening: The decision. Okay-
Brooke Greening: Mm-hmm
Scott Greening: ... they're, they're going to say, "Well, actually, he's out of the office for the next two days, so it's going to be..."
And then, " Thursday or Friday doesn't work. Can we do Monday of the following week?" You know, those, those types of things, but you're still guiding the process.
Brooke Greening: Yes. Yeah.
Scott Greening: All right. So we've got two mistakes. What's number three?
Brooke Greening: So the, the third one is the surprise, the surprise process. And so what that looks like is the salesperson ends the call without expecting that, okay, a contract is coming, a deposit is required, another meeting is needed, a second decision maker must be attending, the proposed start date is actually not guaranteed.
All of this starts to happen later, and then that can really feel like a bait and switch, and we don't want to do that. So even good news can feel uncomfortable if it arrives with a surprise. So what happens is the customer is thinking one thing is happening, and then the process requires five other steps that they did not expect.
And so that is like agreeing to baking cookies, except then you realize, okay, I have to buy the cow, get the wheat, and then build the oven, and nobody is signing up for that.
Scott Greening: Yeah. And I know when we help a lot of, uh, service-based B2B service-based businesses and providers. And so it's not necessarily bad that you have, you know, multiple steps in the buying or onboarding process.
If you could sell it with one thing you probably wouldn't need to have the... Like, you could just sell it on a page on the internet, and it would be okay. Like, there's often a, a process, and that's, that's fine 'cause you're selling higher ticket things, and that's what's involved. We want to, like, strike sort of this balance though, right?
Of giving enough direction- You do ... but not, like, overwhelming them.
Brooke Greening: Yeah. I've literally listened to client calls, so I'm telling them, "Okay, this is really important. This is what we need to do." And then they go all the way to the other side, and they're like, "Okay. So I'm going to send you this 12-page agreement, and then we're going to have an invoice for 50%, and then you're going to take this intake form, and then we're going to do these five meetings."
And I'm like, "Whoa, whoa. That's not what we're talking about." We're trying to say something like, "Okay. If you decide to move forward, I'm going to send you an agreement with that initial invoice. And once that is completed, then we're going to schedule our kickoff meeting, and this whole process might take about a week."
We're giving them, like, this 30,000-foot view, but they need to know what these things are going to d- what these next steps are going to be. Not in the granular detail, but in a way that they feel like, "Okay, I can move forward with this and I'm not surprised." So we need to explain the path before asking someone to start walking through it
Scott Greening: Yeah, I, you know, we, we try to, to let people know even with our kids in that.
Like, "Hey, this is- ... this is what we're going to do. We're going to, we're going to go to the airport. We're going to get our luggage. We're going to..." but we're not explaining, "Okay, we're going to the park and- ... we gotta go through check-in and TSA and blah, blah." You know, like-
Brooke Greening: Mm-hmm
Scott Greening: ... just give enough that it, it provides the, a, a framework, a plan, but doesn't-
Brooke Greening: Yeah
Scott Greening: scare them because they're like, "How am I ever going to get through all this?"
Brooke Greening: And that it's also not where they s- 'Cause if they don't really know what to expect, or if we're kind of stumbling over that, even though that's not our intention, we start to look like we don't know what we're doing, or this is, like, the very first time we've ever done this.
Those are not things we want. We do not want to start throwing red flags at them. We want them to know this is what it is. Also, the biggest piece is so many times people think onboarding is happening after they've signed the contract, after they're ready to go. No, they're evaluating how this relationship is going to go during these sales conversations.
And when they feel comfortable, like, "Oh, they've got their things in order, and this is what I can expect," it only helps to continue to build that trust and confidence as you continue to work together.
Scott Greening: Yeah I know that's true. So I know that it's often, like, we give these examples of what not to do, and there are, there are three different examples or four different examples, or however many and they, they seem different, but there's usually sort of like a common thread or a common idea between them.
Is that the case in this instance, too?
Brooke Greening: It is. the biggest thread is that each mistake leaves part of the process undefined. So, like, the proposal toss leaves the follow-up undefined. The customer-led follow-up leaves the responsibility undefined, and the surprise process leaves the buying experience undefined.
So vague next steps create unnecessary work for the customer, and then if when that happens, then we start to wonder, "Oh, why didn't they move forward? Why are they ghosting us?" We can't give them vague next steps. They need to know what to do next.
Scott Greening: Yeah, and the good news is, like, it, it really does begin to, to change things and, and help the customer experience and the sales process look differently.
How does... What does that look like?
Brooke Greening: Yeah, it starts to feel like everybody knows what's going to be happening. Both people know, okay, what's being sent, when is it going to arrive, who needs to review it, when are we actually talking again? They're going to know, okay, what moving forward requires, and that allows that nobody is feeling chased, nobody is feeling abandoned, and nobody has to guess.
We're just two people on the same page moving in the same direction, and that's what those clear steps create, and that is how you can make more sales and shorten your sales cycle.
Scott Greening: Yeah, and then if you're, you really get it, there's, like, violin music that starts to play- ... and it's just this beautiful moment of two people coming together.
No, it is, I... You feel good when-
Brooke Greening: Mm-hmm
Scott Greening: ... You've been on both sides of it. So as a salesperson you've been on, on it, but then as customers, like, we, it... You feel good. Like, "Hey, this was a good process. I know what's happening. I'm excited-
Brooke Greening: Mm-hmm
Scott Greening: ... to move forward, and it looks like not only was I hopeful that they're going to be able to help, but, like, it's actually starting right now."
Brooke Greening: Yeah.
Scott Greening: So what do we need to think about this week? Uh, how should we be processing it?
Brooke Greening: So at the end of my sales calls, I want you to think about who is carrying the responsibility for keeping the process moving forward? Did you put it on your client, your potential client or customer, or is it on you and you're helping them?
That's the question I want you to ask. Who did you honestly give the responsibility to to move it forward?
Scott Greening: All right, Brooke has a great way of giving us good questions to think about our sales process, and another way that she does that is with her sales conversation assessment, and that is always available for you at buildingmomentum.info/assessment.
In about five minutes or so, you'll work through a series of relatively painless questions that'll give you insights into all the seven parts of the service sales framework and your sales process as a whole. So we encourage you to go to buildingmomentum.info/assessment and do that today. Brooke, next time we're, we're headed into, like, how to do this.
What's a simple way that we can explain and establish the next steps before the, the call ends, right?
Brooke Greening: Yeah. Yep, and we're going to talk about it in regards to proposals, 'cause sometimes that's pretty important to people, but then just also if you don't even have a proposal, how are we really clear in what those next steps are going to be so we're not just hoping or trying to figure out if this is going to be able to move forward?
Whether you send a proposal or not, there are ways that you can be clear in those next steps, and that's what we're going to talk about. That clear follow-up is not pressure, it's service, and this is how you can be able to move things forward.
Scott Greening: Great. So if you want to make sure that you get that conversation or revisit past conversations on things-
like proposals and all of that that we've had along the way through the different episodes of the podcast, you can always find that information at buildingmomentum.info/matcha, and we encourage you to like, to subscribe, to leave a comment. You can leave a question that we might address in a future episode as well.
But, uh, until next time, we hope you make some great sales.
Brooke Greening: Bye-bye.
