You should always arrange to present your proposal face-to-face to the most senior people that will be deciding on the product your customer will ultimately purchase. By having the right people in the room at once, you will simplify the negotiating process while enabling you to get immediate feedback from the decision makers themselves. You will also be able to qualify the validity of your solution, the compelling event driving your customer and how it relates to their priorities, along with the time frame in which they need to make a purchase. Many times your proposal will be distributed amongst other executives further emphasizing the need for it to live on its own when you are not there to support the value of your product. Do not deliver your proposal via e-mail and hope or assume your customer will examine and understand all of the essential attributes and the value you are offering.

Following are some of the most important ingredients to include in your proposal:

• Executive Summary. This section should describe your customers priority, along with the challenge they are facing, and a brief, high level description about the uniqueness of your product or service and how it addresses your customers particular problems.

• Solution Overview. The overview should further elaborate on your solution with some facts and examples of how it maps to the particular challenges and overall strategy of your customer. You should incorporate items such as the goals and findings of any proof of concept completed, along with the names of the individuals involved on your customers evaluation team, and results of any other customer site visits or reference calls completed. If you had a partner involved, share their findings and recommendation or endorsement to further substantiate your solution. You should also indicate the time your customer invested and the steps completed to prove how your product is a viable solution for their company. This will build substantial credibility for you and your company.

• Implementation Plan. Show the high level project plan along with a timeline along with professional services needed for implementing your solution. For technical products, you should include a high level solution architecture. This will not only demonstrate the completeness of your solution, it will also show how you will get the job completed and validate exactly when the project needs to start to meet your customers deadline and will further confirm the compelling event. For example, if your customer needs a solution implemented in six months, and your project will take five months from beginning to end, that leaves one month to negotiate a contract, allocate resources, and kick off the project. Showing that detail will help support the fact that you and your customer need to get a contract signed and start the project without delay.

• Education Plan. The education plan (as required) should detail all of the instructional classes needed, timing of those classes, the curriculum summary, and the people your customer should have attend. This plan should be incorporated into the implementation plan above.

• Financial Investment Summary. The investment summary should clearly represent the total financial outlay for your proposal including a breakout of the fees of your products, services, any applicable training, along with the payment schedule. If there are any financial incentives or special discounts you are offering, make sure that you show exactly what they are, and the financial savings provided as compared to what the “normal” or “typical” pricing would be. It’s also helpful to show the estimated time frame for your customers return on investment as well as any hard dollar cost savings your proposal provides.

• Proposal Conditions. If there are special conditions tied to your proposal, be sure they are documented and reviewed during your meeting. These would typically be items that would help you meet your targeted close date, or help you with future commitments from your customer, or other items that would help you generate incremental future business, and should always be considered for inclusion. For example, you may have a due date for a signed contract, or a condition your client must satisfy such as volume purchases needed to preserve special pricing, etc.

• Agreement Framework. This is usually a description of the product names and quantities, along with professional services and education that are required for your solution and included in your proposal. Additionally, you should specify the contract vehicle to be used so that you can confirm the purchasing process, and the resources needed to get your agreement signed.

• Proposal Benefits. This section is just about the most important element of your proposal and provides the opportunity for you to tie all of the pieces together. You should summarize and highlight the overall benefits you are providing and briefly recap each of the previously mentioned items while reinforcing the completeness of your solution and any other exceptional elements.

After you have gone through the presentation of your proposal, your customer will have a clear understanding of all pertinent aspects of your solution and how they relate to and resolve their business problem. Furthermore, you will have much better insight into what’s needed to close your deal. Now that you’ve demonstrated how you have earned the business, be sure to ask for it.

By following these simple and repeatable steps, you will save time developing future proposals as well as increase your sales performance, while demonstrating your professionalism, reliability, and the unique value you provide to your customers.

Throughout my career while selling enterprise software solutions, I’ve carried out hundreds of deal reviews and still continue to on a regular basis. Whether you are a sales rep or a sales manager, you can be confident in your forecast by analyzing the key aspects of your sales opportunities. Furthermore, you will be able to easily determine whether or not a deal is going to close within the time frame you expect, and will also be able to quickly and easily pinpoint the business risks you have and how to mitigate them.

In most cases, what you don’t know about your own deals will cause you to waste time and resources, and by building a plan with the needed steps to closure, you will have a defined process to follow which will help you get your contract signed in the fastest way possible.

The following are some of the most important pieces of information and facts you need to gather to determine what stage your deal is at, along with the sales techniques to follow to close your deals:

• Is your solution a priority for your customer that’s driven by, as well as tied to a corporate initiative supported by executive management? Understanding and demonstrating how your product is linked to that priority will substantially accelerate your sales cycle.
• Have you presented a proposal clearly detailing the customers priority, how your solution addresses their main problem, the investment they require, the financial benefits and cost savings they will eventually receive, and the time and effort it will take to implement your solution? You will usually never get your deal finalized until your client has validated your proposal and confirmed your targeted close date.
• Have you identified the compelling event that will influence your customer to sign your contract by the date you are forecasting? There’s usually a deadline or event which is driving your customer to move forward. Without knowing about that event, or the business impact caused by missing their deadline, makes it more difficult to know when and why they will close your deal.
• Do you know exactly who the primary stake holders are that need to approve your deal and the funding for the purchase along with their approval process and availability? I’ve seen many deals slip at the end of the quarter because the primary approvers were not available or an approval deadline was missed. For example, some large purchases require board approvals which may only take place at certain times during the year.
• Is there an approved spending budget, and will the budget amount end up being lost if not exhausted. If the budget is not approved, is there an exception process that will be implemented? Financial constraints should be determined at the onset of a new product sales cycle to avoid wasting time on initiatives that have no approved funding.
• Do you know about what the competition is offering as well as what their particular strengths and weaknesses are and how they are thought of by your customer? Never assume that you are the only one your customer is talking to, as many companies are required to consider multiple suppliers before selecting a final one.
• With respect to your customers procurement process, have you confirmed who will manage and negotiate the business terms, how long it takes, how many people are involved, and who is authorized to approve and sign your legal contracts? Every company has a different process, and many times the people who you present and negotiate an initial proposal with do not have the final word. Many times, you will be referred to a purchasing team to finish your deal after you have provided your “bottom line” prices. Take the time to ask these types of questions to be sure that you understand the process upfront, and are not surprised by other people that step in and ask for more price reductions and additional terms, well after you thought you were finished negotiating.

Once you understand all of these essential elements and by following these sales methods, you will be in a much better position to demonstrate the value you can deliver to your customer, more accurately forecast when your business will close, and increase your sales performance with less time and effort.

Here’s a good example of how corporate priorities can turn into revenue for a smart sales rep.  A few years ago, the company I worked for had a corporate priority and requirement to automate the process of keeping track of our customers, managing information about each of our relationships with them, and streamlining the forecasting and other sales processes. This initiative was established at the president level and led by the executive vice president of sales. There was a twelve month deadline to find and implement a customer relationship management (CRM) application. If you were the sales rep supporting my company, and were selling a CRM solution, and knew about this priority and the associated deadline before any of your competitors, you would not only have a jump on your competition, you would also know that you had a very motivated customer with a very real compelling event.  As a result of this priority, my company purchased and implemented a multi-million dollar solution within the twelve month target.

Another example where this worked for me was with one of my customers who had a corporate priority to improve compliance and reduce risks. They had failed an audit because they did not have tight control over who had access to their financial systems. As a result, they had a requirement to implement an automated access control security system to lock down their servers and applications to their “authorized” users. By understanding their priority, I knew this was a critical and funded initiative. Since I also knew the importance of the project for my customer, and my company had a viable solution, I became their priority so they could understand how I could help them solve their problem. Furthermore, I was in early to complete a proof of concept with our security solution which resulted in a multi-million dollar sale for me and my team.

Here’s some of the added benefits derived from knowing my customers priorities and the success we achieved with this sale:

• My team was first to the table to help my customer determine the success criteria for their project which was based on our solution. This made it much more difficult for our competitors.
• I was able to directly map our solution to the corporate priority which in turn made me much more relevant and facilitated my access to their senior executives.
• I was able to clearly determine the importance and timeline for my customer which helped me get the best resources to support the proof of concept.
• My knowledge enabled me to accurately forecast a multi-million dollar opportunity since I had a very compelling event and knew about my customers deadline.
• I did not have to offer special financial incentives to close the deal and was able to maximize the revenue that me and my team received.
• The success from this project along with the added benefits my customer received, greatly increased the credibility of me personally as well as my company which led to many additional product sales.

As you can see, If you focus your time and attention directly on understanding your customers’ priorities, you will minimize or even eliminate time wasted with individuals or projects that are not really important for your customer. Additionally, you will be able to become your customers priority and increase your sales.

Effective time management

A simple sales tip to follow is to ask yourself periodically during the day whether or not what you are working on at that moment will help you close a deal within the month or quarter you are focused on. If the answer is “no”, stop what you are doing, and move on to a more productive activity that will.

If you demonstrate that you can help that person/company in one way or another, you will have a much greater chance to quickly identify and close new sales opportunities. Conversely, if your meeting is a waste of time for that executive, you will prolong and potentially destroy any sales opportunities you had, and it will likely ruin your chances for a follow up meeting. Here are the top 10 steps you should complete before, during, and after your meetings to ensure they are both productive and valuable for your customers.

1. Know the executive(s) with whom you are meeting. With a little bit of research, you can typically find out a lot of important information about your customer and should understand where they’ve worked before, the areas of success they’ve enjoyed, special interests they may have, groups they belong to, and other common contacts they may have with you or others in your company.
2. Understand their role and responsibilities. The best way to get this information is to ask others you know in their department/division, or at a minimum, search the website for executive profiles, presentations they may have done, or articles they’ve written. Knowing this will enable you to build credibility by referencing it during your meeting, and ultimately help you determine how your products would map to their interests and initiatives.
3. Schedule the right resources to join you and be sure they are briefed and prepared before hand. Make sure that anyone you bring is well aware of the above items as well as the agenda including their role and any of the topics they are to cover. Role play before the meeting to be sure everyone knows who, when, and how they are expected to participate.
4. Share your agenda with your customer before hand and confirm who else will attend. By doing so, you can be sure that the topics you want to cover are relevant while soliciting input for other areas or topics they may be interested in. This simple step gives you the chance to change course if your initial agenda missed the mark, and enable you to reach out to any other executives you were not aware were asked to join.
5. Prepare an executive summary presentation or discussion document to follow during your meeting. Don’t just wing it. Having a professional looking document or presentation to review will demonstrate that you have invested time preparing, will help guide your discussion to be sure all important points are covered, and will prove that you care and value your customer’s time.
6. Complete proper introductions. Make sure that everyone introduces themselves, and ask them to describe their role and responsibilities, and convey any particular areas they want to cover and what they want to get out of the meeting. Make sure you also briefly describe what if any relationship exists, and where and how both companies have worked together in the past. This is a great way to break the ice and build instant credibility for you and your company. Don’t assume the people in the room are aware of any prior relationships or successes.
7. Review the agenda items up front and confirm the amount of time you have for the meeting. Ask your customer to prioritize your topics and determine any others that need to be covered before jumping in. This ensures you review the most important items first, and less important ones last or not at all if you run out of time.
8. Ask open ended, relevant questions, and listen carefully and take notes. Make sure your valuable time is not wasted with you or your team doing all of the talking. The best way to identify new sales opportunities is to understand your customers challenges and how your products and solutions can help them. Don’t make the mistake of jumping into a hard core sales pitch before you have had the opportunity to clearly identify the value add you can provide. Periodically pause during the meeting and ask your customer if the content being reviewed is important and is resonating with them. If not, switch onto another more important subject.
9. Before the meeting ends, recap the items covered and determine next steps. Set aside time to briefly review and prioritize what you covered along with any action items that were agreed to. You should get concurrence for follow up meetings, and determine the focus areas along with any other individuals that should participate. Solicit feedback from all attendees to determine on the spot if they received the value they expected and covered the topics they were most interested in. Ask for guidance on how you can improve the next time.
10. Deliver what you promised. After the meeting, it’s critical that you follow through on what you said you would do. Send a thank you note to all that attended and document the action items and provide any information you promised. The value you can add begins when the meeting ends. You should also call each of the customers that attended to get their feedback. Many times in an open forum, individuals will not chime in during the meeting and might have valuable information to share in a private setting.

By completing these 10 steps, you will be guaranteed to have successful executive sales meetings, and prove to your customers that you are a valuable and credible resource for them.

By starting out with a plan, you will set realistic sales goals and focus your time and attention on the most important revenue generating and relationship building activities.

There are some items you should build into your sales plan that will help you determine where to begin.  The first step is to prioritize your customers or prospects.  By doing so, you will determine which customers you should focus on and ultimately meet first.

There’s a tremendous amount of information available you can obtain about companies large and small and a little upfront research will go a long way.  While sorting through your customer list, you should follow these important steps to gather the information to help with the process:

• Identify all pending sales opportunities and engage with those customers right away.  You can get this information from others in your company that have already worked with the same customers.  Establishing some quick sales will enable you to build solid relationships and jumpstart your success.
• Determine which customers are existing/former users of the products or services your company sells.  Knowing the value derived from your company’s products will help you sell more and build immediate credibility for you.  Additionally, you will build a list of key contacts you can call on to start prospecting for new business.  It’s much easier to sell to people that have used, recommended, or approved your products, than it is to establish brand new customers.  Typically, there’s a wealth of important information these people will provide to help you sell more products.
• For existing customers, develop an understanding of the high level terms of the active contracts including, products covered, renewal terms and dates, and special pricing provided. Many times, the renewal or expiration of an existing contract provides a compelling event and reason to include new products while adding additional value and revenue.
• Find out about and participate in pending service delivery projects.  One of the best ways to meet new contacts and build credibility for yourself is to work with the consultants from your company that are on site delivering services to your clients and begin to engage in project status meetings.  These consultants will have a wealth of information about the users of your products that you can leverage.
• Utilize the people in your company to facilitate warm and friendly introductions to key contacts they’ve previously worked with.  One of the fastest ways to begin building your own relationships is to leverage others’ knowledge and prior successes and relationships instead of starting from scratch.
• Learn about the products and services that your customers provide. The products that you sell most may very well be suited for specific industries, and therefore knowing the industries your customers fall into will help with the prioritization process.
• Understand the size of each company and their budgets and financial position to help you determine which ones might by likely candidates to buy your products and services.  Size can be measured by number of employees, revenue generated, or number of customers to name a few.

Once you have compiled this basic information, you can begin to dig deeper to determine which customers to focus on first.  I’ll have more information on the next steps to take in my follow up post.