10 irrational tips for writing winning proposals

If you are in a B2B company, your revenue strongly depends on the quality of the proposals you issue to your clients. Higher proposal conversion will lead to significant revenue growth, even up to 25%. To my horror, many companies write terrible quotes. This post describes 10 common misconceptions on writing proposals. I also offer 10 practical tips for writing much, much better ones. Substantial revenue growth is guaranteed!

Be aware, I am not going to describe what you should and should not offer in your proposals; that’s your job! However, I will give you 10 best practices on how to write down your offer. Most of these tips have their basis in psychology and neurology and build upon the established knowledge that a human being is not only a rationally but also a strongly intuitively and emotionally driven creature.

Let’s start with the mother of all misconceptions concerning proposals: a proposal is an informative document which tells the client what’s on offer and how much it will cost him. Wrong! Surely a proposal should explain what will be delivered and at what price, but that is what everybody else does, and it doesn’t contribute anything to winning the order (all other things being equal).

A proposal is a document (or a video, podcast, or any other media capable of getting a message across), which convinces your prospective client you are the absolute best party to engage with to fulfil his needs. It should be so good that your prospective client does not even get the idea of asking anyone else for a quote.

A big difference between a proposal stating only offered goods (or services) and price, and a winning proposal, is conveying the business value you are delivering. Business value could be savings on maintenance costs, savings on personnel costs, a more stable production process, less risks, et cetera. Your proposal becomes even more convincing if you add supporting quantitative data or evidence of your superior added value. And last but not least, use other client’s testimonials to add social proof to your claims.

Many proposals contain lots of so called ‘commercial’ or ‘business language’, with long and eloquent sentences full of ‘total solutions’, ‘one stop shopping’, ‘strategic partnership’ or ‘total cost of ownership’. Mostly meaningless and hollow phrases that every supplier uses.

Avoid management or business BS. Use normal, understandable and meaningful language which most people understand. Write short sentences. In case you really have to say something about your ‘total cost of ownership’ or a ‘strategic partnership’, make it as tangible and practical as possible. Once written down, read and rewrite it over and over again until it really says what must be said, it contains no management BS anymore and it has actual meaning. It can easily take 2 up to 3 times rewriting until you have reached that stage. ‘When in doubt, leave it out!’

Most proposals contain lots of information on what is being offered, but hardly on who is selling it. Customers are people, who do business with people. They do not only buy something, but they also – actually, predominantly – buy from someone. And that someone can be a determining factor, provided that he/she is presented well in the proposal.

By using images and quotes of real people in your proposal you give your offering a human face, which leads to much more confidence in your offering than only cold diagrams, charts and product images. You can use photos of your team at work, in the plant, or at a team meeting. Make sure your people look reliable, professional and sharp. However, do not overdo it. People like to do business with similar people, not with beauty contest winners or people that are way more successful than themselves.

Many proposals have no text. None at all. Just a list of article codes and prices. People who write proposals this way, claim that stories are for children, not for serious business men or buyers. Wrong!

The human brain loves stories. Even to the extent that we rather believe an engaging story which is total nonsense than a totally correct story that is told in a boring way. So make sure your proposal always has a story to tell,. Make it short and to the point, though. How has your product or service has solved a client’s problem recently? How is your project team formed around certain personal characteristics? Or, what is the origin of the way of working you are proposing?

Many proposals have only text, and nothing but text. Because “pictures are for children”. However, people consume information in many different ways. Some people like text, some visual images, some tables and numbers and some charts. And then there is the category that rather listens and watches to spoken word or video.

In many situations you don’t actually know who will read your proposal, let alone their preferences for information consumption. So, it makes sense to present your information in multiple ways: via text, visual images, charts, tables, and maybe even a little video or soundbite. Don’t make a mess out of it, however, be sure to offer your most important messages in a variety of communication styles. By doing so, you will enable your client to get your message in the way he most prefers.

Of course, a proposal is a business document. However, the way in which customers use it to base their decisions upon is not ‘business like’. The human brain happens to take decisions far more quickly and more often on a purely intuitive basis rather than by rational thinking and logical deduction. Even in formal tender procedures the rational decision criteria are often being tweaked just as long as and as many times that are needed to have the intuitively taken decision matching with the rational decision that ‘follows’ from the formal criteria.

So, make sure that, on top of the rational features and benefits your proposal provides, you also adhere to your buyer’s emotional or intuitive side. You can do this by not only describing what you will deliver or perform, but also how and why you will do this. This well known TED video provides some great back ground info as to why this works.

Getting your (potential) clients to ‘feel’ the (emotional) driving forces or motivations within your organization makes you stand out from most other organizations that forget to do this or simply don’t’ believe in this concept. On top of standing out, it also makes your proposal more ‘human’, and as already said, humans buy from humans.

Of course, a proposal is a business document. However, the way in which customers use it to base their decisions upon is not ‘business like’. The human brain happens to take decisions far more quickly and more often on a purely intuitive basis rather than by rational thinking and logical deduction. Even in formal tender procedures the rational decision criteria are often being tweaked just as long as and as many times that are needed to have the intuitively taken decision matching with the rational decision that ‘follows’ from the formal criteria.

So, make sure that, on top of the rational features and benefits your proposal provides, you also adhere to your buyer’s emotional or intuitive side. You can do this by not only describing what you will deliver or perform, but also how and why you will do this. This well known TED video provides some great back ground info as to why this works.

Getting your (potential) clients to ‘feel’ the (emotional) driving forces or motivations within your organization makes you stand out from most other organizations that forget to do this or simply don’t’ believe in this concept. On top of standing out, it also makes your proposal more ‘human’, and as already said, humans buy from humans.

Many companies use colours in their proposals to make their document look nice. They haven’t given it much more thought. What a pity!

People are extremely perceptive to colours. The colours we see do not only influence the feelings we get from looking at something, but they also influence what we see first and even if we are willing to put in additional efforts to continue reading or looking. Wrong use of colour can lead to immediate ‘zap’ or ‘turning the page’ behaviour.

Use colour in your proposals to stimulate the feelings or moods you want people to get from your proposal. Blue is very business-like but also radiates a certain emotional distance. Orange is a lot warmer and more personal. Green links to quality and sustainability but can also be boring and dull.

By using colours, you can direct your readers to what you want them to see first. Should you want to frame your readers thinking, make sure that the information that provides the mental frame is seen first by giving it a very distinct colour.

Colours can be applied to pieces of text, boxes, images, charts and all possible visual objects you can think of. For further reading check out this interesting post about the psychology of color.

Yes, it would be great if your customer would take the required time and effort to read your proposal carefully. However, this happens less than you would expect.

So, make your proposal easy and quick to read and to understand. Use contextual headlines, paragraph titles, bullet lists, visuals, short sentences, separate text boxes, etc. Do everything you can to enable your customer to get as much valuable information as possible in the most easy and fast way. Considering his busy schedule and limited time, he will thank you for that.

Some of the clients we help in improving their proposals respond with the above stated remark. The question is valid: Is all the above psychological manipulation? That may be the case, but then again, all sales meetings, team meetings and basically most human interaction is meant to get a message across or to persuade someone to do something. As long as your motives are pure, I don’t see the problem.

And yes, clever customers will notice that you have made an effort to prepare a good looking, easy to read, trustworthy and well thought through proposal. And they would want their own companies to prepare equally high quality and convincing proposals. With equally high success rates, because your success rate will definitely improve significantly once you have started to use the tips in this post.