Proposals

What are your proposals like? Are they auto generated by your CRM/other platform? I know it will vary by industry, but what kind of payoff do you feel is worth a custom proposal? 


I woke my ass up at 5 to get a jump on one and instead I am posting on Bravado. so that should give you a temperature for my current state. 
💪 Motivation
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CoorsKing
WR Officer
3
Retired King of the Coors Knights
Legal language is mostly auto generated for us but I have to add in SKUs and price manually
IndianaShep
Politicker
1
Director of Sales and Marketing
Yeah...they let me do the legal language. To their own peril.
CoorsKing
WR Officer
4
Retired King of the Coors Knights
Lol I would mess that up so bad. There are things I can add or remove but it’s all pre-written and I can just click “add” 
IndianaShep
Politicker
1
Director of Sales and Marketing
This is the way
CuriousFox
WR Officer
3
🦊
All manual by yours truly.
IndianaShep
Politicker
1
Director of Sales and Marketing
Can you come do mine? Pretty please. For a Scooby Snack?
SaaSam
Politicker
2
Account Executive
Maybe I'm a piece of shit but, my proposal for a recently closed 900k deal was a short two-paragraph email. 

Probably depends a lot on your audience, lawyers read a lot and I find they appreciate skipping over formalities and getting to the point as quickly as possible. 
IndianaShep
Politicker
1
Director of Sales and Marketing
I’d say 90% of my deals are this way. But sometimes I have to fully flesh out a custom proposal. It’s laborious.
SaaSam
Politicker
1
Account Executive
All boils down to reading your audience. Some guys are going to want some elaborate professional-looking proposal engraved into plates of gold. Others are fine with a two-minute conversation and a handshake.
IndianaShep
Politicker
0
Director of Sales and Marketing
Absolutely. It honestly seems to inversely scale to deal size, too.

I sell writing, editing, and training so the proposal sometimes serves as both a business document as much as a sample for my company's product. 
DungeonsNDemos
Big Shot
1
Rolling 20's all day
Have used autogenerated in the past via CRM but they were not pretty. Currently just using an excel sheet and editing for SKUs.
IndianaShep
Politicker
0
Director of Sales and Marketing
Yeah, I use HubSpot and it is absolutely BONKERS that you cannot edit the proposal? It is such a good CRM elsewise, but wtf man.
Pachacuti
Politicker
1
They call me Daddy, Sales Daddy
Lots of boilerplate with about 25% customizing per proposal.
IndianaShep
Politicker
0
Director of Sales and Marketing
What parts are you customizing?
Pachacuti
Politicker
0
They call me Daddy, Sales Daddy
Items specific to the customers pains as discovered through the discovery process. Pricing as well and some technical items related to their backend software systems I would need to integrate with.
ounceoz
WR Officer
1
US Sales Director
Whatever you do, review on a call. Don't just send it over
IndianaShep
Politicker
1
Director of Sales and Marketing
I prefer to send an unsolicited and unformatted notepad doc with no punctuation. ;)
Rallier
Politicker
1
SDR Manager and Consultant
Ours are generated in Salesforce. It really have no idea how it works on the backend, but all I have to do is fill out a few forms and boom it's ready to go
Blackwargreymon
Politicker
1
MDR
Legal language is mostly auto generated for us but I have to add in SKUs and price manually
TennisandSales
Politicker
0
Head Of Sales
All legal garbage is auto generated and I am just punching in what the are buying and how much and what the cost is. 

Thatsalesdude
Politicker
0
Account Executive
Do it all myself. Get onto the call with the prospect, cry during the pitch so they know how passionate I am. 
FattySnacks
Politicker
0
Senior Account Executive
We use Conga
Justatitle
Big Shot
0
Account Executive
Mine typically take about 20 minutes to build but they have to go through an approval process which can take 1-4 hours depending on how fast the approvers approve it...
RealPatrickBateman
Politicker
0
🔪Amateur Butcher🔪
Templated proposal for structure. Then I add in specific details and points that speak to the specific client concerns or solution. Legal Language is set (unless redlined and approved by legal). IMO I hate autogenerated templates that pull info from macros or connectors, I just don't trust it. 

In the past, when my companies have had autogenerated props, I generally made my own and sent those because they usually look like shit otherwise. 
Ackerman123
Executive
0
Enterprise Sales
Standard deck with value props, logo slides, implementation outline, and "fill in the blank" (for me) areas with the quoted pricing for our multiple service offerings.
Dealerdon
0
Account Executive
We use Proposify, you can have pre populated snippets and templates which shaved hours off our previous process. I can pump out $30,000 proposals in under 10 minutes and make it look custom to each client. Hope this helps
4

Did a couple discovery meetings, sold the value, gaged interest, submit proposal ----> GHOSTED!

Question
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16

How do you deal with demo no-shows?

Question
20
10

How do you guys deal with prospect ghosting after the proposal has been sent?

Advice
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