Posted by Jon
Chatting to a Sales Director earlier in the week. His salespeople don’t have the luxury of a proposal team to lean on – instead, they write the proposals themselves. (We’re helping him to fix that!).
We chatted about the tactics that the account managers deploy when struggling to find material. All of the the usual suspects apply – shouts of “has anyone written a proposal recently” carry across the sales floor as they cut and paste anything that looks even vaguely relevant, so as to fill the scary white expanse of paper in their proposal between each question and the next.
Chatting to a Sales Director earlier in the week. His salespeople don’t have the luxury of a proposal team to lean on – instead, they write the proposals themselves. (We’re helping him to fix that!).
We chatted about the tactics that the account managers deploy when struggling to find material. All of the the usual suspects apply – shouts of “has anyone written a proposal recently” carry across the sales floor as they cut and paste anything that looks even vaguely relevant, so as to fill the scary white expanse of paper in their proposal between each question and the next.
Material is grabbed from past tenders; white papers are cannibalised; chunks of the corporate intranet are gleefully downloaded; that old sales presentation gets stripped of suitable quotes; buddies are pressed to give favours. Never mind the quality – simply getting an answer can be a major achievement.
“It’s even easier here,” our Sales Director friend commented. “If they don’t have an answer to a particular question, they simply delete it and hope that the customer won’t notice.”
Wow! Who needs libraries of pre-written proposal content, and Pragmatech-style content management tools, when every keyboard has a ‘Delete’ key!
“It’s even easier here,” our Sales Director friend commented. “If they don’t have an answer to a particular question, they simply delete it and hope that the customer won’t notice.”
Wow! Who needs libraries of pre-written proposal content, and Pragmatech-style content management tools, when every keyboard has a ‘Delete’ key!