No matter what your business actually makes or sells—hydroponic widgets, steamed whatsits, or time-tested thingamabobs—we know that you're actually a craftsman. How do we know? Because to sell those widgets and whatsits you have to build a proposal first.
Building a business proposal format that shows your business at its best is like making furniture or cheese or any other craft: doing it well takes some know-how and the right tools. Fortunately, unlike making a table, making a good proposal only needs one tool: the right proposal maker software (the one from IQX). With this tool in hand, it's easy to send out custom proposals that show real craftsmanship—and therefore show your product at its best.
Fortunately, the know-how behind this craft is none too complicated. Here are a couple tips to help make you a master.
1: The proposal is about the prospect, not about you.
If you were a different sort of craftsman—that tablemaker, say—you would never dream about making a table with yourself in mind: you'd think about the client. If they were quite tall, for instance, you'd build a table to accommodate long legs. Yet you'd be amazed how many people commit a similar mistake when they build a quote.
Too many people think that the building a quote is the time to put themselves front and center, to tell the prospect what makes their company so great. And while you of course want your prospect to know these things, @@you want to lead with your prospect's needs@@, showing them that you understand why they've come to you in the first place. That's just one reason it's crucial to send them a custom quote.
Fortunately, building a business proposal format with your prospect's needs front and center is easy with CPQ software. With it's simple and responsive templates, you can have your whole team building prospect-centered business proposals right away.
2: The craftsmanship is in the details: get the little things right
Just as the difference between a cheap home-assembled table and a work of art can be measured in fractions of an inch, so too can the difference between a proposal that fails and a proposal that closes. So when you're building a quote, @@make sure you take the time to get the little things right@@ with proposal maker software.
Our CPQ tool helps in lots of ways. It makes it easy, for instance, to standardize the text of certain parts of your quote across your sales team—and that means no more typos. The same goes for your template design.
But our tool helps you even when you're customizing the quote: because our software keeps up to date data about changes in cost across your business, you can make sure that every number in your quote is a number you can stand behind: especially the bottom line. That's the most important little thing of all, and getting that little thing right every time is the key to true business craftsmanship.
If you'd like to learn more about this topic or see IQX for yourself with a free demo, contact us.
