My favorite sales experience involved a national company based in Chicago. I got a call late one evening from a member of the sales vice president's staff. "Do you have proposal automation software?" he asked. "Would you be willing to demonstrate it to us next week?" Yes and yes.
The next week we were in Chicago. I was about fifteen minutes into the demo when the senior vice president of sales leaped up and said, "That's it! That's exactly what I envisioned. Get it." And with that he left the room. Ten days later we had a signed contract and a check.
Unfortunately, most of our sales cycles aren't that short. How about yours? If you'd like to shorten the sale cycle, this is a good message for you. It focuses on how effective follow-up communications can reduce the length of the sales process.
That is our topic this time.
Regards,
Tom Sant
Shortening the Sales Cycle
Bringing a deal to closure can seemingly take forever. It may be even more difficult today than ever before. Think about the characteristics of selling in today's markets.
Often you are selling not to an individual, but to a team. And that team is composed of people with different, sometimes conflicting views of what your solution should do and how it should be judged.
Typically, you're under severe cost pressure. And the analysis of costs goes much deeper than merely acquisition price.
Finally, you're expected to demonstrate positive business impact. Your decision team is looking for a solution that will improve their operations, their bottom line, their use of technology--all at the same time probably!
So that's a lot to handle. No wonder it takes so long to close a deal.
Here's a little secret that one of the largest high-technology companies in the world found several years ago:
Backing up sales calls with good written communication reduces the selling cycle by as much as 86%!
This is an insight that has also been offered by some of the leading sales training organizations. In fact, the Solution Selling curriculum emphasizes the importance of putting every step of the sales cycle into writing.
Why does it work? And how can you take advantage of this insight to reduce your sales cycle?
It works because good written communications eliminate ambiguity. That's very important in a situation where you're selling to a team, because people often listen with filters on their ears. They hear what they expect to hear or what they want to hear. Sending a document that summarizes the key points of a meeting, identifies responsibilities, establishes the next steps, confirms a timeline, and so forth, clarifies the content of the call and confirms the decisions the team has made.
It works because good written communications reinforce your selling message. Even if the communication is simply intended to confirm the date and time for a meeting, it gives you a chance to demonstrate competence and reliability. And you may be able to slip in a sales message, too. At the very least, a written message extends your "mind share" and helps the decision team remember you.
The best way to take advantage of the power of written communications is to automate the creation of the types of documents you need most often. Be careful not to use boilerplate text or static "templates." Those will actually do more damage than good, because they smell like complacency to the customer.
Instead, implement an automation tool that enables you to build a compound document that contains client-centered, unique content each time.
To see exciting ways to automate the creation of good written communications at each step of the sales cycle, visit santcorp.com/demo.
July 8, 2009
June 3, 2009
The Structure of Persuasion
“It ain’t what you say; it’s the way that you say it.”
At least, according to the words of an old song, that’s the story. Is it true? Not entirely. A sales presentation or proposal devoid of content isn’t going to do very well, no matter how brilliantly it’s put together.
But in one respect, that line is true. There is a way to say—or write—that will create maximum impact on the audience. And it has nothing to do with using fancy words or pretty pictures. Instead, it’s a matter of using the right structure. By using the structural pattern of persuasion, you will get the customer’s head nodding a lot quicker.
That’s our subject this time: Saying the right things in the right order to get the right response.
Regards,
Tom Sant
The Structure of Persuasion
In the world of business, people write for one of three reasons—to inform, to evaluate, or to persuade. For each of these purposes there is a structural pattern which will produce the best results. Think of the structural patterns as templates for delivering content in the right order. Use the wrong pattern and you will get the wrong results. It’s like trying to drive a nail with a screwdriver—you might eventually get the job done, but it’s going to be a lot harder than it has to be.
The first and most common reason people write is to inform. They’re writing to share factual content with somebody else who needs it. The ideals of informative writing are clarity and conciseness, and to achieve those goals we should start by getting right to the point and stating the key fact that the reader will find most important. For most people, writing to inform is the easiest writing task and the one they feel most confident in handling.
The second reason business people write is to evaluate something or somebody. A performance appraisal, a competitive analysis, an appraisal of an asset—in all of these cases, simply presenting the facts is not enough. What we want to know is what you think, because we assume that you are a person of experience and training who has dealt with similar issues before. (Or we recognize that you are in a position of authority so that your opinion matters, even if it’s not terribly well informed.) To write an effective evaluation, we need to define our subject—what (or who) we are evaluating—and the criteria on which we are basing our evaluation. Then we need to present our observations and evidence. Finally we need to offer our opinion. If we follow that structural pattern, our opinion will sound logical and our evaluation will be easy to follow.
The third reason people write is to persuade. Persuasion means we are attempting to influence what somebody else thinks or feels or does. We’re trying to change our audience in some small way—to get them to support our policy, to care about an issue as we do, or to sign a contract and give us their business. Effective persuasion requires more than simply delivering a bunch of facts, and our opinion alone isn’t going to persuade a customer to buy from us. Instead, we have to structure our message so that we deliver the content in a way that produces the change in our audience’s thinking or beliefs or action that we want to produce.
There’s nothing sneaky or deceptive about the process of persuasion. Sometimes people confuse persuasion with manipulation or deception. They think it involves “tricking” the reader into doing something. Maybe negative attitudes toward advertising and political campaigns have led them to regard persuasion with suspicion. In my experience, technically oriented professionals—the same people who are most comfortable writing informatively—are very suspicious of persuasion.
In reality, persuasion is a straightforward process of identifying the reader’s needs, issues, or concerns, acknowledging their importance in terms of meaningful outcomes, then positioning your solutions in the context of the customer’s needs and outcomes, and finally presenting evidence that you can deliver the solution. That’s it.
I used to call this pattern the persuasive paradigm, but lots of my clients began calling it the NOSE pattern because the four elements of persuasive structure create the acronym NOSE. Let’s take a look at each element of persuasive structure in more depth:
NEEDS: Focusing on the customer’s needs or problems or business pains wins their attention. They’ll probably be surprised that a vendor has actually listened to them. They’ll also be less anxious to move forward.
OUTCOMES: Every business has lots of problems, most of which will be ignored. Why? Because management doesn’t see enough of a payback from solving them. You don’t want your recommendations to fall into the category of ideas that “just aren’t worth it,” so spell out clearly the outcomes or the impact on the organization that solving the problem or meeting the needs will deliver. Focusing on the customer’s pains will grab attention, but focusing on the potential gains will create motivation.
SOLUTION: Recommend specifically what you think the decision maker and his or her organization should do. Link your recommendation back to the client’s needs and desired outcomes. And actually use the words, “We recommend…” If you sound like you believe in your solution, the decision maker can feel a little more confident believing in it, too.
EVIDENCE: What makes you the right choice? How do I know you can deliver the solution you’re recommending on time and on budget? Have you thought through everything? Your goal in providing evidence is to differentiate yourself and demonstrate your competence. You might include product information, cost details, management plans, project plans, training options, documentation, delivery schedules, resumes, case studies, references, testimonials, awards your organization has won, whatever. Avoid throwing evidence in just because it’s available. If it's not clearly relevant to the deal and of interest to the decision maker, leave it out. For example, most of your prospects just won’t care about your company history beyond seeing that you’re reasonably experienced and solvent.
And that’s it. Putting your content together in terms of these four steps will produce a persuasively structured message. The important thing to remember is that persuasion doesn’t have to be a mystery. In fact, the key to effective persuasion is as obvious as the NOSE on your face. Visit santcorp.com to learn how you can automatically create persuasive proposals using Sant Suite.
At least, according to the words of an old song, that’s the story. Is it true? Not entirely. A sales presentation or proposal devoid of content isn’t going to do very well, no matter how brilliantly it’s put together.
But in one respect, that line is true. There is a way to say—or write—that will create maximum impact on the audience. And it has nothing to do with using fancy words or pretty pictures. Instead, it’s a matter of using the right structure. By using the structural pattern of persuasion, you will get the customer’s head nodding a lot quicker.
That’s our subject this time: Saying the right things in the right order to get the right response.
Regards,
Tom Sant
The Structure of Persuasion
In the world of business, people write for one of three reasons—to inform, to evaluate, or to persuade. For each of these purposes there is a structural pattern which will produce the best results. Think of the structural patterns as templates for delivering content in the right order. Use the wrong pattern and you will get the wrong results. It’s like trying to drive a nail with a screwdriver—you might eventually get the job done, but it’s going to be a lot harder than it has to be.
The first and most common reason people write is to inform. They’re writing to share factual content with somebody else who needs it. The ideals of informative writing are clarity and conciseness, and to achieve those goals we should start by getting right to the point and stating the key fact that the reader will find most important. For most people, writing to inform is the easiest writing task and the one they feel most confident in handling.
The second reason business people write is to evaluate something or somebody. A performance appraisal, a competitive analysis, an appraisal of an asset—in all of these cases, simply presenting the facts is not enough. What we want to know is what you think, because we assume that you are a person of experience and training who has dealt with similar issues before. (Or we recognize that you are in a position of authority so that your opinion matters, even if it’s not terribly well informed.) To write an effective evaluation, we need to define our subject—what (or who) we are evaluating—and the criteria on which we are basing our evaluation. Then we need to present our observations and evidence. Finally we need to offer our opinion. If we follow that structural pattern, our opinion will sound logical and our evaluation will be easy to follow.
The third reason people write is to persuade. Persuasion means we are attempting to influence what somebody else thinks or feels or does. We’re trying to change our audience in some small way—to get them to support our policy, to care about an issue as we do, or to sign a contract and give us their business. Effective persuasion requires more than simply delivering a bunch of facts, and our opinion alone isn’t going to persuade a customer to buy from us. Instead, we have to structure our message so that we deliver the content in a way that produces the change in our audience’s thinking or beliefs or action that we want to produce.
There’s nothing sneaky or deceptive about the process of persuasion. Sometimes people confuse persuasion with manipulation or deception. They think it involves “tricking” the reader into doing something. Maybe negative attitudes toward advertising and political campaigns have led them to regard persuasion with suspicion. In my experience, technically oriented professionals—the same people who are most comfortable writing informatively—are very suspicious of persuasion.
In reality, persuasion is a straightforward process of identifying the reader’s needs, issues, or concerns, acknowledging their importance in terms of meaningful outcomes, then positioning your solutions in the context of the customer’s needs and outcomes, and finally presenting evidence that you can deliver the solution. That’s it.
I used to call this pattern the persuasive paradigm, but lots of my clients began calling it the NOSE pattern because the four elements of persuasive structure create the acronym NOSE. Let’s take a look at each element of persuasive structure in more depth:
NEEDS: Focusing on the customer’s needs or problems or business pains wins their attention. They’ll probably be surprised that a vendor has actually listened to them. They’ll also be less anxious to move forward.
OUTCOMES: Every business has lots of problems, most of which will be ignored. Why? Because management doesn’t see enough of a payback from solving them. You don’t want your recommendations to fall into the category of ideas that “just aren’t worth it,” so spell out clearly the outcomes or the impact on the organization that solving the problem or meeting the needs will deliver. Focusing on the customer’s pains will grab attention, but focusing on the potential gains will create motivation.
SOLUTION: Recommend specifically what you think the decision maker and his or her organization should do. Link your recommendation back to the client’s needs and desired outcomes. And actually use the words, “We recommend…” If you sound like you believe in your solution, the decision maker can feel a little more confident believing in it, too.
EVIDENCE: What makes you the right choice? How do I know you can deliver the solution you’re recommending on time and on budget? Have you thought through everything? Your goal in providing evidence is to differentiate yourself and demonstrate your competence. You might include product information, cost details, management plans, project plans, training options, documentation, delivery schedules, resumes, case studies, references, testimonials, awards your organization has won, whatever. Avoid throwing evidence in just because it’s available. If it's not clearly relevant to the deal and of interest to the decision maker, leave it out. For example, most of your prospects just won’t care about your company history beyond seeing that you’re reasonably experienced and solvent.
And that’s it. Putting your content together in terms of these four steps will produce a persuasively structured message. The important thing to remember is that persuasion doesn’t have to be a mystery. In fact, the key to effective persuasion is as obvious as the NOSE on your face. Visit santcorp.com to learn how you can automatically create persuasive proposals using Sant Suite.
May 18, 2009
The Seven Best Books on Persuasion
A while ago someone alerted me to a review of my book, Persuasive Business Proposals, on Amazon.com. The anonymous reviewer called it “the best book ever on persuasion.”
Look, I’m about as arrogant and self-delusional as anybody you’re likely to meet, but even I don’t believe that. But it did get me to thinking. What are the best books on persuasion?
That is our topic this time.
Regards,
Tom Sant
The Seven Best Books on Persuasion
Actually I first started thinking about this subject when Brian O’Connor, a friend and client who manages marketing communications and CRM for Scandinavia for a multinational corporation, asked me to recommend some books on persuasion. Which ones did I think were the best?
I responded off the top of my head, but since then I’ve been giving it more careful thought. Now, I’m ready to share—ta da!—my list of the seven best books (or at least seven books worth reading) on the topic of persuasion.
1. Robert Cialdini, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion is a classic. It’s fun to read, it’s based on solid research, and it’s easy to make the connections to business. Besides, Cialdini is Regents' Professor of Psychology and Marketing at my original alma mater, Arizona State University, so that’s kind of cool. Since the first edition of Cialdini’s book came out, there have been others that walked the same path but his is still the most interesting and complete, in my opinion.
2. Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People. Yeah, the old chestnut. It’s actually quite insightful, particularly on the relationship side of persuasion, and it remains relevant today. What he says still makes sense and it’s backed up by empirical data from recent research in psychology. What did Carengie say? Make the other person feel important. Develop a genuine interest in them, take a positive attitude, use the other person’s name, listen more than you talk, and when you do talk, talk about what the other person finds interesting. Simple stuff, but valid nonetheless. I wrote extensively about Carnegie and his ideas in The Giants of Sales because he’s extremely important to the development of modern sales. He was focusing before anyone else on the role of trust in persuasion—if we don’t trust someone, we’ll never buy from him or her. David Maister, The Trusted Advisor, and Jagdish Sheth and Andrew Sobel, Clients for Life, are solid examples of more recent books that cover the same territory, but Carnegie is just great fun to read.
3. Gerd Gigerenzer, Peter Todd, et al, Simple Heuristics That Make Us Smart. It’s not the most enjoyable read, particularly compared to the first two. Simple Heuristics is written in an academic style that’s often too dense by half. But it’s worth the slog, because it contains extremely useful and profound insights into decision making. And, after all, decision making is fundamental to what we do professionally. As proposal writers and sales professionals, our efforts at persuasion are meaningless if they don’t culminate in a decision and/or action from our client. Simple Heuristics explains the hierarchy of processes most of us go through as we make a decision, from simple recognition (I’ll take the one I’ve heard of before) to criterion-based (this one meets our specs) to rate-of-return analysis (I’ll take the one that delivers the most value to my group). These simple processes expl ain respectively why (1) you have almost zero chance of winning a bid if you’re responding to a blind RFP, (2) your proposal should contain a compliance matrix, and (3) you must include a value proposition backed up with evidence in every proposal you write. A similar book is Gary Klein, Sources of Power. Klein’s book is a little less structured, much less academic, and more focused on the seemingly intuitive processes of making decisions. It’s still relevant. Likewise, the new book from Dan Ariely, Predictably Irrational, deals with decision making and draws on research by Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman on decision making in the midst of uncertainty, for which Kahneman won the Nobel Prize in economics.
4. Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point. The books I’ve mentioned above are mainly focused on what goes on inside the skull of the individual who is being persuaded—the psychological aspects, if you will. Gladwell moves the discussion into the social sphere. How do social networks influence us to accept or reject an idea, a project, a person? As social networking becomes more of a structured tool for businesses to use in marketing, understanding this aspect of persuasion will become increasingly valuable.
5. Jay Levinson, Guerrilla Marketing. Speaking of marketing, I have always loved this book because it was the first one to show us that even the little guy could establish brand recognition, generate leads, and build customer loyalty—all without buying Super Bowl ads. Levinson was so far ahead of his time that he’s probably lapped all of us by now, but with the rise of the Internet many of his concepts have become even easier to implement. He has lots of followers and disciples. I put Seth Godin in this group [Permission Marketing and lots of others, many with goofy titles], along with Chip and Dan Heath [Made to Stick], for example. But the original is well worth reading.
6. Mack Hanan, Consultative Selling. In terms of sales processes, books that recommend a consultative methodology are built on a basic understanding of persuasion. I love Neil Rackham’s SPIN Selling and I learned a lot from Bosworth’s Solution Selling and Miller and Heiman’s Strategic Selling. But the first book I ever read on the subject and one of the clearest by far is Mack Hanan’s Consultative Selling. Once you finish reading Hanan, you’ll never again think it’s smart to focus on product features or to start your sales presentation with an overview of your company’s history. Focus on the client’s problem, quantify what it’s cost them, and show them how you can solve it: that’s Hanan’s method in three phrases and it’s dead on if you want to close business and gain a reasonable margin.
7. Edward Tufte, Visual Display of Quantitative Information, Envisioning Information and Visual Explanations. Okay, I’m cheating—I’ve listed three books by one author. But you need to look at them together to get the full impact of Tufte’s thinking. For many of us—especially if we’re writers by trade—the right hemisphere—the visual side of our brain—is a bit anemic. That’s something we have to address, however, because our customers process our message on the left (verbal) side of the brain, but they make decisions on the right (visual) side. Clip art, cluttered Excel tables, and other junk graphics just don’t work. Tufte has gained some notoriety in recent years for his vehement attacks on PowerPoint and similar programs. In his view, they corrupt the power to communicate and may lead to misunderstanding, superficial thinking, and manipulation. He rather convincingly cites the s pace shuttle Columbia disaster as an example, showing how the 28 slides presented by Boeing engineers misled NASA into a false sense of security. Chilling stuff, but it shows how subtle things, like the font size of a bullet point, can persuade, inform, or mislead an audience.
Some of the books I’ve listed here have nuts-and-bolts practicality and some are a little more theoretical. Their value to me is that they provoked new ideas. They’re the kind of books that make you look up from the page and say to yourself, “Hmmm… That’s interesting. I wonder if…” and then off you go.
Now it’s possible you may not have time to read all of these books. Or it’s possible that you won’t find them as interesting or as inspiring as I did. That’s okay. Call us. We’ve figured out some very practical ways of helping our clients create persuasive proposals and presentations and we’re happy to share them. In fact, we have a really great PowerPoint presentation we can show you that outlines all of our products and services.
Look, I’m about as arrogant and self-delusional as anybody you’re likely to meet, but even I don’t believe that. But it did get me to thinking. What are the best books on persuasion?
That is our topic this time.
Regards,
Tom Sant
The Seven Best Books on Persuasion
Actually I first started thinking about this subject when Brian O’Connor, a friend and client who manages marketing communications and CRM for Scandinavia for a multinational corporation, asked me to recommend some books on persuasion. Which ones did I think were the best?
I responded off the top of my head, but since then I’ve been giving it more careful thought. Now, I’m ready to share—ta da!—my list of the seven best books (or at least seven books worth reading) on the topic of persuasion.
1. Robert Cialdini, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion is a classic. It’s fun to read, it’s based on solid research, and it’s easy to make the connections to business. Besides, Cialdini is Regents' Professor of Psychology and Marketing at my original alma mater, Arizona State University, so that’s kind of cool. Since the first edition of Cialdini’s book came out, there have been others that walked the same path but his is still the most interesting and complete, in my opinion.
2. Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People. Yeah, the old chestnut. It’s actually quite insightful, particularly on the relationship side of persuasion, and it remains relevant today. What he says still makes sense and it’s backed up by empirical data from recent research in psychology. What did Carengie say? Make the other person feel important. Develop a genuine interest in them, take a positive attitude, use the other person’s name, listen more than you talk, and when you do talk, talk about what the other person finds interesting. Simple stuff, but valid nonetheless. I wrote extensively about Carnegie and his ideas in The Giants of Sales because he’s extremely important to the development of modern sales. He was focusing before anyone else on the role of trust in persuasion—if we don’t trust someone, we’ll never buy from him or her. David Maister, The Trusted Advisor, and Jagdish Sheth and Andrew Sobel, Clients for Life, are solid examples of more recent books that cover the same territory, but Carnegie is just great fun to read.
3. Gerd Gigerenzer, Peter Todd, et al, Simple Heuristics That Make Us Smart. It’s not the most enjoyable read, particularly compared to the first two. Simple Heuristics is written in an academic style that’s often too dense by half. But it’s worth the slog, because it contains extremely useful and profound insights into decision making. And, after all, decision making is fundamental to what we do professionally. As proposal writers and sales professionals, our efforts at persuasion are meaningless if they don’t culminate in a decision and/or action from our client. Simple Heuristics explains the hierarchy of processes most of us go through as we make a decision, from simple recognition (I’ll take the one I’ve heard of before) to criterion-based (this one meets our specs) to rate-of-return analysis (I’ll take the one that delivers the most value to my group). These simple processes expl ain respectively why (1) you have almost zero chance of winning a bid if you’re responding to a blind RFP, (2) your proposal should contain a compliance matrix, and (3) you must include a value proposition backed up with evidence in every proposal you write. A similar book is Gary Klein, Sources of Power. Klein’s book is a little less structured, much less academic, and more focused on the seemingly intuitive processes of making decisions. It’s still relevant. Likewise, the new book from Dan Ariely, Predictably Irrational, deals with decision making and draws on research by Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman on decision making in the midst of uncertainty, for which Kahneman won the Nobel Prize in economics.
4. Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point. The books I’ve mentioned above are mainly focused on what goes on inside the skull of the individual who is being persuaded—the psychological aspects, if you will. Gladwell moves the discussion into the social sphere. How do social networks influence us to accept or reject an idea, a project, a person? As social networking becomes more of a structured tool for businesses to use in marketing, understanding this aspect of persuasion will become increasingly valuable.
5. Jay Levinson, Guerrilla Marketing. Speaking of marketing, I have always loved this book because it was the first one to show us that even the little guy could establish brand recognition, generate leads, and build customer loyalty—all without buying Super Bowl ads. Levinson was so far ahead of his time that he’s probably lapped all of us by now, but with the rise of the Internet many of his concepts have become even easier to implement. He has lots of followers and disciples. I put Seth Godin in this group [Permission Marketing and lots of others, many with goofy titles], along with Chip and Dan Heath [Made to Stick], for example. But the original is well worth reading.
6. Mack Hanan, Consultative Selling. In terms of sales processes, books that recommend a consultative methodology are built on a basic understanding of persuasion. I love Neil Rackham’s SPIN Selling and I learned a lot from Bosworth’s Solution Selling and Miller and Heiman’s Strategic Selling. But the first book I ever read on the subject and one of the clearest by far is Mack Hanan’s Consultative Selling. Once you finish reading Hanan, you’ll never again think it’s smart to focus on product features or to start your sales presentation with an overview of your company’s history. Focus on the client’s problem, quantify what it’s cost them, and show them how you can solve it: that’s Hanan’s method in three phrases and it’s dead on if you want to close business and gain a reasonable margin.
7. Edward Tufte, Visual Display of Quantitative Information, Envisioning Information and Visual Explanations. Okay, I’m cheating—I’ve listed three books by one author. But you need to look at them together to get the full impact of Tufte’s thinking. For many of us—especially if we’re writers by trade—the right hemisphere—the visual side of our brain—is a bit anemic. That’s something we have to address, however, because our customers process our message on the left (verbal) side of the brain, but they make decisions on the right (visual) side. Clip art, cluttered Excel tables, and other junk graphics just don’t work. Tufte has gained some notoriety in recent years for his vehement attacks on PowerPoint and similar programs. In his view, they corrupt the power to communicate and may lead to misunderstanding, superficial thinking, and manipulation. He rather convincingly cites the s pace shuttle Columbia disaster as an example, showing how the 28 slides presented by Boeing engineers misled NASA into a false sense of security. Chilling stuff, but it shows how subtle things, like the font size of a bullet point, can persuade, inform, or mislead an audience.
Some of the books I’ve listed here have nuts-and-bolts practicality and some are a little more theoretical. Their value to me is that they provoked new ideas. They’re the kind of books that make you look up from the page and say to yourself, “Hmmm… That’s interesting. I wonder if…” and then off you go.
Now it’s possible you may not have time to read all of these books. Or it’s possible that you won’t find them as interesting or as inspiring as I did. That’s okay. Call us. We’ve figured out some very practical ways of helping our clients create persuasive proposals and presentations and we’re happy to share them. In fact, we have a really great PowerPoint presentation we can show you that outlines all of our products and services.
March 25, 2009
Automating for the Right Reasons
The old joke about proposal automation was that if you didn’t do it right, you achieved the dubious reward of producing bad proposals much faster.
But what if you did it right? And for the right reasons?
That is our topic this time.
Regards,
Tom Sant
Automating for the Right Reasons
Years ago I made a sales call on a public utility in Pennsylvania, one that was wrestling with the newly competitive, deregulated marketplace. I was there to present our proposal automation system. I had set up my computer and projector in a second floor conference room and was chatting with the division head who was our host when I heard a group of people stomping up the stairwell outside our door. One voice rose above the rest, a strident female voice, vehemently insisting, “I don’t care who else is using it, it won’t work here!”
In marched a small knot of people. At the head was the woman who had just bellowed her defiant prediction. She scowled, radiating all the warmth of a middle linebacker for the Chicago Bears. The division head cleared his throat and looked a little embarrassed. “Allow me to introduce you to the manager of our proposal operations,” he said.
I’d love to tell you a story about how I turned this situation around, but the truth is—No, it didn’t get better. Nothing she heard and nothing she saw mattered. She had already made up her mind. Oh, she had her reasons: “It won’t work because our business is different.” “Because our clients don’t want a fancy proposal.” “Because our industry requires that we do things the way we’ve always done them.” “Because…” “Because…” Just because, that’s why! What a fearful, closed-minded attitude!
Some people are just digital Luddites who try to save their jobs by defeating innovation. Generally, though, that kind of behavior is less common than it was 10 or 15 years ago. Instead, in today’s society people are more likely to be cynical about technology. And why not? They’ve seen millions poured down a porcelain chute called CRM and gotten very little back. Why would proposal automation be any different?
The problem with CRM has been that traditionally it’s been too abstract and amorphous a tool to be applied in a concrete way to specific problems. That’s not the case with proposal automation. Proposal automation, unlike other technical innovations that have been ballyhooed by the business and technology press, actually works. In fact, proposal automation is a paradigm example of a technology that produces improvements in both efficiency and effectiveness. And in today’s economic climate, every business needs to be more efficient and effective.
Efficiency is all about driving waste out of the sales and proposal process. Typical problems include finding the right content, assembling a draft quickly, coordinating the activities of a team of contributors, and getting the whole operation to follow a reliable methodology. Efficiency issues are not trivial. For a medium-sized company they can add up to hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars of effort spent in non-value adding activities. And I’m willing to bet that no sales manager in the world wants his or her sales people sitting in front of a computer, hunting and pecking, cutting and pasting, wrestling with the word processor. So automating the writing of proposals eliminates a major area of waste.
Other sources of inefficiency include:
1. Loose to non-existent control over the information going into proposals: One of our clients found they had 11 different databases containing product information and pricing, seven of which weren’t even being maintained any more! Unfortunately, sales people still went to them to cut and paste information for proposals—thereby offering products and services that couldn’t be delivered. Yikes.
2. Corporate Alzheimer’s: Somewhere somebody has the answer to the questions in this RFP. But nobody can remember where it is or who has it. So we’ll just reinvent the whole thing one more time, okay? No, not okay. It’s a waste.
3. The “ask Betty” syndrome: This form of inefficiency is common in smaller and mid-sized companies. One person, call her “Betty”, knows where everything is located—all the answers to all the RFPs ever answered in the past, all the case studies, all the team bios, everything… God forbid that Betty should ever get the flu, take a vacation, or retire.
4. Too many steps: In manufacturing environments, waste comes from handling a product without adding value to it. The same thing happens in proposal environments. By automating one of our clients, we moved them from 28 different steps involved in producing a finished proposal down to 13. That eliminates a lot of wasted effort.
Effectiveness? What about effectiveness, you ask? Well, the ultimate test of proposal effectiveness is whether it wins or not. Saving time is nice, but winning business is crucial. The greatest value of using proposal automation technology comes from improving win rates by implementing a consistent, structured process. By using a simple automation tool you give everybody the ability to put the right content into the right order so it delivers the right message—every time. In fact, that’s a key reason why our clients have experienced an average 29% improvement in win rate. They’re also able to create sales documents 36% faster.
If you’d like some help in making sure proposal automation improves both your efficiency and your effectiveness, give us a call. Our roots are in best practices and proven methodology. We know what it takes to write a winning proposal. And we know how to automate the process successfully. Trust me. And ignore that woman bellowing on the staircase. It will work here! See a demo of Sant Suite at santcorp.com/Demo.
But what if you did it right? And for the right reasons?
That is our topic this time.
Regards,
Tom Sant
Automating for the Right Reasons
Years ago I made a sales call on a public utility in Pennsylvania, one that was wrestling with the newly competitive, deregulated marketplace. I was there to present our proposal automation system. I had set up my computer and projector in a second floor conference room and was chatting with the division head who was our host when I heard a group of people stomping up the stairwell outside our door. One voice rose above the rest, a strident female voice, vehemently insisting, “I don’t care who else is using it, it won’t work here!”
In marched a small knot of people. At the head was the woman who had just bellowed her defiant prediction. She scowled, radiating all the warmth of a middle linebacker for the Chicago Bears. The division head cleared his throat and looked a little embarrassed. “Allow me to introduce you to the manager of our proposal operations,” he said.
I’d love to tell you a story about how I turned this situation around, but the truth is—No, it didn’t get better. Nothing she heard and nothing she saw mattered. She had already made up her mind. Oh, she had her reasons: “It won’t work because our business is different.” “Because our clients don’t want a fancy proposal.” “Because our industry requires that we do things the way we’ve always done them.” “Because…” “Because…” Just because, that’s why! What a fearful, closed-minded attitude!
Some people are just digital Luddites who try to save their jobs by defeating innovation. Generally, though, that kind of behavior is less common than it was 10 or 15 years ago. Instead, in today’s society people are more likely to be cynical about technology. And why not? They’ve seen millions poured down a porcelain chute called CRM and gotten very little back. Why would proposal automation be any different?
The problem with CRM has been that traditionally it’s been too abstract and amorphous a tool to be applied in a concrete way to specific problems. That’s not the case with proposal automation. Proposal automation, unlike other technical innovations that have been ballyhooed by the business and technology press, actually works. In fact, proposal automation is a paradigm example of a technology that produces improvements in both efficiency and effectiveness. And in today’s economic climate, every business needs to be more efficient and effective.
Efficiency is all about driving waste out of the sales and proposal process. Typical problems include finding the right content, assembling a draft quickly, coordinating the activities of a team of contributors, and getting the whole operation to follow a reliable methodology. Efficiency issues are not trivial. For a medium-sized company they can add up to hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars of effort spent in non-value adding activities. And I’m willing to bet that no sales manager in the world wants his or her sales people sitting in front of a computer, hunting and pecking, cutting and pasting, wrestling with the word processor. So automating the writing of proposals eliminates a major area of waste.
Other sources of inefficiency include:
1. Loose to non-existent control over the information going into proposals: One of our clients found they had 11 different databases containing product information and pricing, seven of which weren’t even being maintained any more! Unfortunately, sales people still went to them to cut and paste information for proposals—thereby offering products and services that couldn’t be delivered. Yikes.
2. Corporate Alzheimer’s: Somewhere somebody has the answer to the questions in this RFP. But nobody can remember where it is or who has it. So we’ll just reinvent the whole thing one more time, okay? No, not okay. It’s a waste.
3. The “ask Betty” syndrome: This form of inefficiency is common in smaller and mid-sized companies. One person, call her “Betty”, knows where everything is located—all the answers to all the RFPs ever answered in the past, all the case studies, all the team bios, everything… God forbid that Betty should ever get the flu, take a vacation, or retire.
4. Too many steps: In manufacturing environments, waste comes from handling a product without adding value to it. The same thing happens in proposal environments. By automating one of our clients, we moved them from 28 different steps involved in producing a finished proposal down to 13. That eliminates a lot of wasted effort.
Effectiveness? What about effectiveness, you ask? Well, the ultimate test of proposal effectiveness is whether it wins or not. Saving time is nice, but winning business is crucial. The greatest value of using proposal automation technology comes from improving win rates by implementing a consistent, structured process. By using a simple automation tool you give everybody the ability to put the right content into the right order so it delivers the right message—every time. In fact, that’s a key reason why our clients have experienced an average 29% improvement in win rate. They’re also able to create sales documents 36% faster.
If you’d like some help in making sure proposal automation improves both your efficiency and your effectiveness, give us a call. Our roots are in best practices and proven methodology. We know what it takes to write a winning proposal. And we know how to automate the process successfully. Trust me. And ignore that woman bellowing on the staircase. It will work here! See a demo of Sant Suite at santcorp.com/Demo.
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