Archive for March, 2010
60,000 = a rough ballpark* for the number of words a customer will read when reviewing four to six contractors’ sales proposals.
1 = the number of contractors a customer will select as their final choice in a bid process.
Of course other factors go into customers’ selections. However, the bulk of the details they’ll receive are in proposal documents.
Are 60,000 words a lot for customers?
Like everyone else, customers are busy. Selecting a contractor, while important, is time consuming and requires a ton of extra reading. Consider this, there are:
- 4,543 words in The U.S. Constitution
- 7,500 words, or less in a typical short story
- 60,000 to 80,000 in a typical mystery novel
- 418,053 words in “Gone with the Wind”
- 770,000+ words in The King James Bible
There are a lot of words swimming around in customers’ heads when trying to select a contractor. Excel, though great for comparing numbers on pricing and staffing, doesn’t capture text nuances well.
What’s it mean for selling service contracts?
Contractors’ sales proposals must do the heavy lifting. It’s the place to communicate their unique service value.
Winning a bid isn’t based on using the fewest words or the most. Inundating customers with 1,000s of wasted words, bludgeoning them with data, sends readers skipping to the pricing page in an attempt to stay awake.
The answer is balance
There are two parts to this kind of balance in sales proposal development.
First, there is balance needed in providing RFP answers in as concise and reader-friendly manner as possible – respecting customers’ 60,000 word reading load.
Second, there is balance needed in presenting your solution consistently in answers to customers’ RFP questions.
#1 Concise & reader-friendly sales proposals
The oft-quoted “less is more” wisdom is rarely followed. It takes confidence in your sales people to believe you truly understand customers’ service pains and business issues.
When sales people are in doubt, in goes the kitchen sink.
Relevant, schmelevant. Any and all proposal content is jammed into the Word document, resulting in proposals running needlessly to 20,000 words, or more.
Even when you’re confident you understand the customer’s situation, your proposal needs to be reader friendly.
This means breaking up long text paragraphs into smaller, digestible bites, by using headings, bullets and tables. Simple flowcharts and process maps quickly and more effectively communicate information than pages of dense text.
#2 Answering various RFP questions with a unified solution
This is a sophisticated balancing act, but one that pays hugely when done. There’s an opportunity for contractors to consistently present their service solution when answering RFP questions.
While contractors must always answer the question, it can be done in a way that repeatedly presents a unified, though-out solution, one that gains traction in customers’ memories.
Not all RFP questions are the same, there are two types: Qualification and Application.
Qualification Questions
These questions ask for generic data about the contractor bidder, such as:
- How long have you been in business?
- How many employees to you have?
- What was your last 3 years’ revenue? etc.
Contractor answers are simple and straightforward. The answers are what they are, and the info should be readily at hand.
As you can imagine, qualification questions are rarely the determining factor in contractor selection. If a contractor is being allowed to bid, it’s hoped they’ve been pre-qualified, which isn’t always the case.
Application Questions
Customers ask these questions to learn how a contractor will work for them, specifically how that contractor will be structured, their processes, measurements, tools and delivery.
In short, customers are asking “tell me how you plan to do what you do, but for me, here at my sites!”
To persuasively answer application questions, contractors must have designed their solution for that particular customer situation.
This means, contractors must:
- Lastly, answer the application RFP questions by referencing their unique service solution for that customer, but before that, contractors must…
- Design their unique service solution for that customer (like a blueprint), but before that, contractors must…
- Analyze that customer’s service pains & business situation, but before that, contractors must…
You can see that your sales people must be gathering the real information before the RFP comes out and Procurement drops the cone-of-silence over customer contacts.
Inherent obstacle presenting a complex solution
The last obstacle, and perhaps the largest, is to present a relatively complex solution in the proposal document. There are many moving parts in a service solution, and those customer-asked for details can quickly lose customers – remember their 60,000 word reading load.
Overcoming this obstacle is the final key to successful proposal development, and we’ll take a look at it in our next blog.
______________________________
* Based on a quick, informal survey I made of the word count in a number of contractors’ proposals to RFPs. On average these proposals contained between 10,000 to 15,000 words.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Chris Arlen
President, Revenue IQ
March 26th, 2010
As a consultant, I’ve seen an unintentional decision playing out among large service contractors (those with dedicated sales resources) and smaller firms as well. Most of these firms are committed to improving sales, but they’re focused almost exclusively on improving efficiency, not effectiveness.
Sales effectiveness and efficiency can sound like vague generalities, but deciding which to improve first greatly affects the size of results and when they’ll be seen.
Yet most service contractors say they’re working on both at the same time – they’re multitasking to improve sales effectiveness and efficiency.
Multitasking is a myth
Multitasking, whether in computers (single core processors) or humans, is in reality a swapping of attention/activity. It’s one thing, then another, then back to the first, giving the appearance of two things being done simultaneously.
Unfortunately, human multitasking doesn’t produce the expected results. The brain shows severe interference when even very simple tasks are performed at the same time.
And that’s the case with service contractors. The efforts to improve sales are not really getting done as successfully as they could if addressed one at a time, in order.
Definitions first
Before making a case for placing either sales effectiveness or efficiency first, let’s define them.
Effectiveness is the capability of producing the desired sales result, i.e. winning the bid, getting an appointment or a return call, etc.
Efficiency is making good use of sales resources, not wasting them, which translates to producing lots of sales activities, i.e. lots of bids, cold calls, direct mailings, etc.
Simply put, effectiveness is about winning each attempt regardless of what it takes, and efficiency is about producing a lot of attempts with minimal effort or waste.
The point is…
The purpose of both sales effectiveness and efficiency is to raise revenue – more is better, and earlier is better than later.
But because resources are always limited, a choice has to be made of which aspect to work on first: effectiveness or efficiency.
Effectiveness first
Logic wins out.
By improving effectiveness first, more of the early opportunities that present themselves will be won. Efficiency should be improved too, but only after effectiveness has been raised to optimal levels.
By making the intentional choice to first improve effectiveness, contractors will:
- See larger revenue faster
- Fund later improvements for the efficiency of sales activities
- Increase results (revenue) exponentially as a higher win ratio is more efficiently generated (when efficiency is optimized after effectiveness)
How to improve Effectiveness
- Uncover the voice of your customer via qualitative research (this is what your ideal customer is seeking & values)
- Acquire feedback from lost bids, closed customer accounts, departing employees
- Upgrade proposal content, templates & appearance (from informational to persuasive proposals)
- Invest in sales training
How to improve Efficiency
- Automate proposal production, such as with SalesProposals.com (this is an affiliate partner)
- Manage prospect / customer data in CRM (Customer Relationship Management) solutions via online services or company applications
- Automate tracking & reporting of sales activities
- Measure throughput, activity & effectiveness
Early, fast wins through intentional decisions
Get intentional about which aspect of your sales efforts you improve first. You’ll be positioned for the larger, earlier, and easier wins. That equates to record revenue increases.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Chris Arlen
President, Revenue-IQ
* Acquire feedback from lost bids, closed customer accounts, departing employees
March 19th, 2010
I’m recovering from the flu and as you can tell by this post’s title my crankiness hasn’t left. So here are a few gripes about business dealings as seen from the customer’s POV (point of view), that’d be mine.
And if there are business lessons here, they’re about how we should be mindful of what we say, or do to our customers. Or we’ll get a message from them saying “What’s Wrong With You?” (which I’m fully expecting after this post). Here’s what we’ll look at:
- Framing the Conversation with a Sledgehammer
- A Bill by any other name, would still smell…
- The Pit of Despair: Phone Message Options
Framing the Conversation with a Sledgehammer
Watch for messages with titles that leave no doubt as to which side of an issue the publisher is on. Here are a couple of examples framing different sides of the same topic (politics).
#1 CNN’s special programming called “Broken Government“
If you watch CNN, you’ve probably seen their graphic of Broken Government as they present an issue, or in the upcoming window on screen.
By framing the conversation in the title this way it leads one to think:
Broken Government = Current Administration is broken = Obama’s presidency is broken
I searched and couldn’t find CNN running this special programming during the Bush presidency. So, the way CNN has framed this title says they’re against Obama’s presidency (my observation).
However, CNN’s implication of government being broken highlights several underlying assumptions:
- Government is something that can be fixed
- Government was fixed at some time in the past
- CNN knows when Government is fixed
Those assumptions put me into rebuttal mode with:
- What if the nature of Government is to be constantly changing, always fluid?
- What if Government will never be fixed because it’s unfixable, like water?
- Is there a trusted source that could tell us when/if it’s fixed?
#2 Moveon.org’s email: “Washington’s Broken”
Here’s one from the liberal citizens’ movement Moveon.org. The same sledgehammer approach to framing the conversation. This time the rationale goes like this:
Washington’s Broken = Must Fix It Now Or Bad Things Happen = Take the Action We Want You To
One can identify the same underlying assumptions, and my rebuttals that go to this messaging. It’s just trying to get the audience to do something different than CNN’s messaging.
Takeaway for Businesses
When framing the conversation is done heavy-handedly, it becomes manipulation. And when it’s that obvious, it raises hackles and throws objectiveness and credibility out the window (some might say it shoves the BS meter off the charts).
That’s a shame because there may be valuable information to be gained if one starts with an open mind.
For your customers: when composing messages, titles, banners, headlines, etc. seek some level of objectivity. Otherwise you’ll lose that which you’re seeking: customers’ open minded attention.
A Bill by any other name, would still smell…
Comcast provides a bill online, Ecobill, and you can discontinue the paper bill. They”re greenwashing it as an ecologically responsible way to pay.
That’s really stretching the green thing. Yes, I’m not receiving paper, and that makes it green. But the company is saving millions in not printing and mailing these dinosaur bills.
When is doing something that’s just plain better for a company’s bottom line going to get pushed in customers’ faces as doing something for the environment?
Takeaway for Businesses
A little more honesty upfront and you can still keep the self-serving catch phrase.
In Comcast’s case, if they’d included a little honesty that they were saving money, then the message would be more believable. Ecobill could have stated they were passing those cost savings on to customers by keeping their costs down (see, didn’t even cost them anything).
The Pit of Despair: Phone Message Options
Here’s a great example of developers not working with users for a better interface.
Of the many different phone services that have voice mail options, few get the order of instructions right. There are many different phone services, not all have you press the same key to just leave a message.
Some services say just hang up, or press #, or press 1, or press 79, or press.
You get the idea, there’s a different instruction with different services. Not all have you do the same thing.
Here’s the problem. Almost every service doesn’t tell you what that key to press to leave a message UNTIL the end of a long list of other options, such as review, revise, delete, priority, etc.
And leaving a message is probably the most common choice 95% of the time. So why wait to the end to tell us that? Start the instructions by telling us how to do what we want to do 95% of the time?
And while I’m at it, why don’t all the phone services get together and decide on a common key for leaving a message, or replaying, or re-recording, or appending, or deleting, or…? Create a standard messaging system protocol, make it easier on all customers.
Takeaway for Businesses
It’s almost too obvious, but getting customer input in the development phase is crucial, even for a facility service offering. If not through focus groups, then one-on-ones with friendly customers/prospects.
Time to Rest
Hoping to return to some form of normalcy shortly and shake the flu. Maybe this post has prodded you to consider where in your customer communications or interactions you’re getting it maddeningly wrong.
~~~~~~~~~~~
Chris Arlen
President, Revenue IQ
March 10th, 2010
