April 13, 2022
To send or not to send...
Some folks say you should present your proposal to the client in a live meeting, either remotely or in person.
This is a valid approach and I know plenty of people who use it successfully.
However, I am not a fan of this for several reasons.
Here are five:
- It would make me lazy in the actual sales meeting knowing that I’ll have another chance to “try to convince the client”.
- If I feel like the value proposition outlined in the proposal doesn’t speak for itself, I’m not going to be able to “pull a rabbit out of my hat” in the presentation. I either understand the value proposition or I don’t. And if I didn’t understand the value proposition by the end of the initial interview, I wouldn’t have written the proposal in the first place.
- Having spent the time to write the proposal, a part of me is going to want the client to accept it. If in the meeting they appear to be unconvinced, it’s going to tempt me to start pitching, which is death in a value pricing situation.
- Presenting the proposal live opens up the possibility of a real-time price negotiation, which is a high pressure situation that I would rather avoid.
- I don’t like meetings, so why have another one? ;-)
Here’s the thing...
If you’ve written a strong proposal, I don’t think it matters much whether you send it or present it, so I have always opted to email it because it’s less work for everyone.
If on the other hand, you HAVEN’T written a strong proposal, the solution isn’t to present it live. The solution is to write a better proposal.
Yours,
—J
P.S. This message is an excerpt from Lesson 4 of my Automatic Proposal workshop. If you’d like to be notified the next time enrollment opens, you can add your email address to the notification list here: NOTIFY ME »