Proposal Playbook: Part 1

Proposal Playbook: Part 1

Kelly Kennedy: ​Welcome to episode 81 of the business development podcast. We've been getting tons of questions about successful business proposals. So we've decided to do a four part series called the proposal playbook. Today is part one. You're going to love it. Stick with us.

Intro: The great Mark Cuban once said, business happens over years and years value is measured in the total upside of a business relationship, not by how much you squeezed out in any one deal.

And we couldn't agree more. This is the business development podcast based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and broadcasting to the world. You'll get expert business development, advice, tips, and experiences, and you'll hear interviews with business owners, CEOs. And business development reps. You'll get actionable advice on how to grow business brought to you by capital business development, capitalbd.ca let's do it. Welcome to the business development podcast, and now your expert host, Kelly Kennedy.

Kelly Kennedy: Hello, welcome to Episode 81 of the Business Development Podcast. Thank you so much for tuning in with us today. Before we get into today's episode, I just wanted to give a gigantic thank you to Mitch Jacobsen for Episode 80.

Patience is part of the journey. Mitch is the CEO of Rviita Energy Tea, local Calgary success story. Absolutely amazing. It was so cool to have him on to tell his story, his journey, his risk, his reward. If you haven't had a chance to check it out yet, please do. Go back. One episode. Episode 80. Patience is part of the journey.

I was made aware this week of a really, really, really cool thing. We showed up in a top five from FeedSpot for professional development podcasts in Canada. So cool to make a top five list did absolutely nothing to get on. It just obviously got checked out and found it. And it was so cool to end up on a top five list from feed spot.

So thank you. Feed spot. We appreciate that. Wanted to also give a quick little follower push. If you are listening to this show and you have not yet subscribed, whether you listen on Apple podcasts on Spotify, please do give that subscribe button a hit, it really helps us to grow this show to to be.

Basically recommended organically. Obviously telling your friends, your family, your colleagues helps us immensely as well, and we appreciate it. But please do. If you have not yet subscribed to the Business Development Podcast, take two minutes today, hop on your podcast platform of choice, and give us a like, a follow, and heck, even a rating if you don't mind.

That would be greatly, greatly appreciated. Like I said. Helps us to expand this show in this next phase. We are, we are over a thousand followers on Spotify now. I think we're pushing 300 on on Apple podcasts. So Apple podcasts, my Apple podcast listeners, I need your help. Give us a follow on Apple podcasts.

Leave us a rating, a quick review. Definitely helps us to continue to grow this show and reach new audiences. And I appreciate it immensely. So thank you so much for doing that for us today. Today we are doing something that I have not yet done. And, I haven't done it yet because I hadn't really thought about doing a series, but I was sitting down with my fiance and we were chatting about kind of what could we do that's new and, and fresh for the show.

And I thought we're going to do a four part series on proposals. That's something that I think is really important. We've gotten a ton of questions on it. I've struggled with how to address it in a single show, which has been why I really haven't gotten around to it, but heck, why not? Let's just do a four part series.

I think that that could be very, very beneficial. To a lot of people, including, you know, me even a little earlier in my career where I hadn't done a lot of proposals yet and it is something that we've received a lot of questions on. I actually have a community questions question for this month, which led me down the path to say, maybe I should consider doing a series on proposals.

So yeah, we're just going to do that. We're going to jump right into it. So. This is going to be four part series and we're just going to get into the elements of a successful proposal, what to consider, what you need to know in order to deliver something that is going to win. It's going to win. I know it's something that in business development, you may or may not be involved in the proposal process.

I know with some companies, business development is heavily involved in the proposal in creating the value proposition, being able to lay it out. And especially if you have a shared role, like, you know, like I did for many years, I did operations. and business development. So it was my job to not only find the business, but then to deliver an effective proposal or service agreement that the customer would buy.

So I've learned a lot about proposals. I still am learning all the time. You guys know this. I literally talked about this a while ago where, you know, we're revamping our business model because the proposals we were doing, they weren't meeting the client needs. So it's like, You know, I've done a lot of them, many, many people have done a lot of them.

Nobody is a expert in proposals. There's nobody who's like, Yes, I can build a proposal that will win every time. If you're out there, you are worth a billion dollars. So, if you're out there, feel free to reach out. But I haven't met anybody yet who will say that their proposal wins 100 percent of the time.

It's just... It's just hard. That's the truth. Proposals are challenging, but there's certain elements of them that will increase your likelihood of success if you do them right. And so I'm hoping my goal with this four part series is to maybe make you think of something that you haven't thought of yet.

thought of before, which is super beneficial to me and my business when I hear something or learn something that I hadn't thought of or when I get feedback from colleagues or people in my, in my trusted circle to help me create better proposals or to help me build a better value proposition or heck, maybe even to show me what the best value proposition is.

I think a lot of people are too close to their businesses and they don't even necessarily understand the value, the true value. That their company provides. I know that I was one of those people. When I first started capital business development, it took me a while to understand what the true value that I provide to the world is.

And I think that this is the case for a lot of businesses, whether they sell a product, whether they sell a service, there's multiple layers of value. To what you do, not just the one thing that you may be built your product or service for. I think there's multiple things and we don't necessarily even see them until we get that valuable customer feedback or until we can see the results or the fruits of our work or our labors, right?

When you can finally see the results of the fruits and the labors, I think it really identifies, okay, there was more to this than I thought, and that was definitely a realization that I, that I came to, not just in Capital Business Development, but now in the Business Development Podcast. It, it, I, I did not know the value that this show would provide to the world.

I couldn't have known. It took, It took time, it took effort, it took feedback from you, our lovely listeners, it took feedback from our amazing guests. And, you know, I'm learning all the time, and you need to be open to learning all the time, because you know I talk about it all the time on this show. We're only experts in what we do until yesterday.

Tomorrow's a new day. There's new services, new technologies, new products that we just weren't aware of, or... Heck, you know, customer perception changes. Customer needs change. We have to be open and willing to learn. And I think in proposals, it's absolutely no different. We have to be open that what worked yesterday is not necessarily going to work today.

However, there are things that we can do. There are steps, there are processes that can determine or help us to better determine how to provide the best proposal possible with the highest. likelihood of success. And so my goal with this series is to touch on as much of that as possible. And I do hope that you guys provide me feedback at the end of it.

Is, was it valuable to you? Was there something I missed? Is there a reiteration that we can go back to? I am not beyond going back and saying, Hey, you know, after some thought, I think this could have been done differently, but I'm going to do my best with the knowledge that I have to set you up with the best likelihood of success with your proposals moving forward.

Okay, so part one, part one of the series is going to be called who are you? Okay, so let's start out. I talked about it briefly. Proposals are challenging. You will never be perfect at them. I am still learning. Right. We are all still learning. I've sent hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands of proposals in my business development career.

I am still learning. And I think that that is absolutely critical to being successful at proposals to know that every proposal. is different. Every value proposition that you create is different. Every customer need is different. Your one size fits all product or service doesn't exist. Okay. You have to make sure that when you are doing proposals, you are open to learning about your customer, about yourself, about what you deliver, and being open to being open to the fact that you may not know.

Everything, right? We don't always know how we are perceived, how our products and services are perceived. Heck, even how they are necessarily used. You may have built your product or service for one use, but you might find that down the line, your customers are using them for different things. Okay. Things that maybe they weren't even intended for in the first place and that were, it wasn't identified.

Okay. So it is critical to understand that we don't know everything and we need to go into every proposal, understanding that there are. Other things that we do not know, there are needs that the customer has that we are not aware of. There are use cases for the product that you are not necessarily aware of.

And if you can go into it with that idea and that openness to have a conversation and to truly understand what it is your customer needs and is using your product or service for, or the benefit to them, it's going to make you more effective. The more information that we have, the more effective. You are going to be all right, so let's get into the first part.

Do you know what you do? How does your product or service help people? You would be surprised how many companies are not actually aware. What it is they do fully, you know, I've, I've been in so many companies where you talk to them and you ask them, Hey, like, what do you do? And it's like, Hey, we can do anything.

We can service all these industries and we have products and services that do this, this, this, this, and this, and it, it services this gigantic wide gamut. And. Great. Amazing. But is that really what you do? Right? I think it's really important as a business to identify one, two or three things specifically that you do incredibly, incredibly well.

And then you need to understand What is it about those products or services that truly help your customers? What is it about those products or services that set you apart from your competition? What is it specifically that you do? You should be able to write down one, two, three things. At least that you do great, that you do amazing, that you do better than Everyone and that you can, you can define those services, you can really define what that service is, what it takes to execute that service, you should know beyond a shadow of a doubt what it is that you do.

And I think before you could ever create a very effective proposal, there's no way to do it if you are not clear about what you do. And so I think that the first part of this series had to be focused on you. your business. What is it that you do? And we really need to get rock solid about this, right? You know, I did, too.

I'm literally speaking from my own experience, right? When I started capital business development, I knew effectively what business development was. I knew that I could do it. Well, I didn't have all of the steps to find. I knew how I did it. What I didn't realize later was It was my process. It's, it's my process.

It's the way that I do business development that made me truly effective. And once I defined the steps of my business development process, I was then able to define the deliverables and what it is that I provide that no one else can provide to my client or, or that I do better. It took me to truly understand the steps of my service, the implementation.

What is it that I do? What services do I provide? What order do I provide them in? What is it about that order that makes it more effective? What are the additional services that I provide that are, that provide a value to my clients, right? What are the intangibles? What are the things that are maybe hard to measure, but they still provide a value?

It's important that we really get rock solid about who we are as a company, what our products and services are, what our main products and services are, I should be very specific, what it is about those products and services that are beneficial to our clients. What are the use cases to our clients? What are the use cases that maybe we're not aware of to our clients?

This is where we need to really understand what we do. We need to define our business. What is it that we do? Who do we serve and why do we serve them? And why are we the best at it? I think that's where you have to start. You can't just go out and provide a bunch of proposals to your client because how can you speak to, and we're going to get into this in future parts, but how can you speak to what is going to be beneficial to your client?

Why you're the best option. If you are not even clear about what it is you do, if you're not even clear about what need you serve or what solution you provide, it's very important to understand your value to the world as a company before you can effectively provide a great Value proposition or proposal to a customer.

Okay, so we're going to start there. So what is the benefit of your product and service? And remember, I talked about this. It may not be obvious. The benefit that you come up with may or may not be the only benefit. I think there's a lot of situations where customers are using your product and service in a different way than you intended.

Which is why it's very critical that if you are new to business, if you're new, if you're a new product or service, you're a new company that you were consistently getting feedback on, Hey, what are my people doing? Or what is my product or service doing? Or what effect has it had on your life? How are you using it?

How is it, how is it benefiting your company? These are all very valuable questions that we have to be asking our customers in the beginning, because like I said, even with capital, it took probably. I would say for me, two to three solid contracts before I truly understood the value that I was providing to my customers.

I knew that I had a service that people needed, I just didn't know how needed it was or what my true value was. It took multiple iterations where I was providing a service to a customer, we were getting results, I was obviously then recording those results and taking my own statistics and data from them.

But it takes time and it takes experience and it takes effort. And it takes a conscious decision to try to understand the value you have to your customer. Okay, so it's really important that we really understand how our product or service benefits our customer before we could ever create a value proposition to convince them that what we do is what they need.

Okay. So, first, what is the benefit of your product or service? Maybe obvious, maybe not obvious, okay? We need to be intentional with feedback. So, like I said, we need to be asking. So if you are new to this, heck, even if you're not, When was the last time that you asked your customers what they thought of your product or service?

Or when was the last time you asked your customers, Hey, how is my product or service benefiting your company? I know how I think it's benefiting your company, but could you let me know in your words what the best, what the value is of my product or service or how it has affected your business or how it's made things better or how it can be improved, right?

This is where that feedback aspect comes in. And like we did a show last week, just about feedback and the power of feedback. It's absolutely critical. And it's very critical that we have this feedback ahead of future proposals and we're taking it as often as possible. And we're taking it seriously so that we can truly understand our value to our customers.

Okay. Do you have statistics on your products and services to demonstrate effectiveness? Okay I talked about this. At Capital in the beginning, we didn't have the statistics. And you know, most companies don't. So don't feel bad if this is you. Don't feel bad if you're like, Kelly, you know what? I get what you're saying about the statistics, but we just don't have them.

Great. Today's the day. Today's the day. Figure out what statistics are important for you in order to define success, right? How do we define success? We need to figure out what statistics are important. At Capital, there's a, there's a few numbers of statistics that are important, but some of the ones that I track is how many digital introductions have I sent?

How many direct contacts have I sent? How many meetings have I accomplished on behalf of my customers? You know, how many reach outs have we had? We're trying to always take as much data as possible because from that data, you can over time generate averages, statistics, and, and those statistics are very, very beneficial.

And, and heck, you know, in some cases, like especially with capital. Because we work with everything from industrial construction to robotics to, you know, I mean, I have bids out for IT for insurance companies. Like we vary the whole gamut because business development is so wide. The reality is that the statistics for it are going to be different depending on the industries we're serving.

Like the reality is if I'm selling safety services, it's much, much easier for me to get meetings than if I'm, if I'm selling mechanical services to large oil and gas companies. Like, the reality is, what takes me maybe a week to book meetings and safety might take me six months to book in the maintenance area if I'm going for oil and gas.

It's just, the statistics are different. But if you're not recording it, how can you know? How can you know that in this industry, on average, we get X number of results in this amount of time? These are all very critical things for you to understand. Because if you are delivering a product or service and you have to create a value proposal and a customer, you're going to be building a proposal based on a customer need, you need to know what it takes to meet that customer need.

And so statistics, feedback. These things become absolutely critical. It is important that we are recording data. Okay. It's not enough just to say like, Hey, I, you know, on average, we do this. How can you even get to that on average? If you don't have the data, you can't just be pulling numbers from the sky.

So it's very important that we have statistics on our products and services that demonstrate our effectiveness in an industry that we are trying to serve. Okay. So these are things that you need to consider. How can we get these statistics? Statistics can be collected in reviews, right? Reviews are, are statistics, right?

They're, they're customer statistics on you, what they thought of you. Reviews are a great one though, because they really do give you that feedback, positive or negative, that help you to really identify your value proposition or where you need to improve. Obviously with capital, I'm tracking my statistics on a weekly basis.

Okay. So we provide what I always like to say is a weekly scorecard or a weekly report to all of our clients. I guess in some cases moving forward, it'll be a bi weekly, but either way, it doesn't matter. It's, it's tracking data. And I talk about this earlier in the podcast episodes where I was talking to my business development people and my business owners, and I was saying that if you are not keeping the statistics on the effectiveness of your business development, how can you know if you're improving, how can you know if you're doing okay?

Like, you just don't know. You have to be able to track this. And I talk to my business development people, and I'm talking to you now. You have to track your results, okay? I know that that can feel challenging if you're not doing it. I know that it can feel scary. How can you know how you're doing? How can you know if you did better in January or February?

How can you know? Like, aside from just saying, I think I did better, or I think I had more meetings. Like, the reality is, it's not enough. It's not enough to be flying by the seat of your pants. You have to be tracking this data. And this data has to be tracked, not just for business development, but for all of the things you're selling.

You need to know, you know, what your sales numbers are on various products in order to know if it's effective or not. Like you need to be able to work back and figure out the data. The data is absolutely critical in understanding your value proposition and being able to provide a value proposition that is accurate and truthful and effective and statistically.

Accurate. Okay. This is going to be absolutely critical. So we need to do that through reviews, spreadsheets, spreadsheets, like I said, tracking my tracking, my digital introductions, tracking my phone contacts, tracking my success rate in meetings, and heck, even tracking how many of those turned into an RFP RFQ.

These are all information that you need to be tracking. They're all data that is going to going to determine how effective you are, how effective that product or services and it's critical sales data, right? Sales data also very, very critical. What proposals Did they buy? What proposals failed? Why did they fail?

Right? It's important that we're getting feedback on these things because if we don't get feedback and we don't know why you won or why you lost, how are you supposed to improve? Right? So a lot of this is about you. It's about you and your business. The step one in effective proposals is truly understanding who you are.

As a company, right? What is it about you? What do you do? That's different. One of the things that is very, very important in 2024, it's really been important always is you have to, you have to be able to understand what it is that you can guarantee your customer. Okay. There has to be some level of guarantee for your customer.

It is not reasonable to ask your customer to buy something from you if you do not stand behind the service or the product that you're selling, okay? It's just not acceptable. You have to be able to give a certain level of guarantee. Now, I talked about this. How are you supposed to give a guarantee if you don't have any statistics?

Like, heck, if you have a product and it fails every four years, that's a pretty solid statistic that your customer needs to know or that you can guarantee your product for. Hey, you know, we guarantee a warranty on this product for at least three years because statistically, we know it, we know it lasts at least four.

These are things that you need to know if you're going to deliver a certain number of serve of results, right? You need to be able to say, yes, we can hit X number of results and we will stand behind that or, and we'll work until we do it, or we'll give you a money back guarantee. There needs to be something, there needs to be some skin in the game on your part.

It's not fair to ask your customer to assume all the risk. It needs to be a shared risk, a shared value, a win win situation for your customers. Okay? You cannot do this if you cannot give a guarantee. So you need to get real clear about what you can guarantee, What you cannot guarantee and make sure that you were letting your customers know what it is you were willing to guarantee out of this proposal for them, whether that's, you know, a warranty on a product or whether that's a certain number of results that you're willing to stand behind, but you need to be able to give some type of guarantee and guarantees are, are, are possible when you have the statistics.

So this is where I'm kind of pounding statistics down your throat. You need to understand what it is you do. And statistically, you know, How effective it is or statistically what you can back it's going to be important moving forward. Okay. Okay. We need to be able to define Deliverables clearly and not only define them.

We need to accomplish them This is you know, this is more for the the next episode, but it's very very critical that we are defining What it is we are going to do for our customer, what it is our product or service can actually do for our customer. Once again, doesn't matter if our customer doesn't need it, right?

Like, this is where understanding what it is we can actually do before we get into the proposal phase is absolutely critical because we need to know what it is our product does or what our service does, what benefit it has for our customer before we can before we can Promise them anything. And then it's also important too that we are confident in our ability to accomplish it.

It's very, very important that if we are delivering a proposal whether that be to deliver a certain number of products or whether that be to deliver services on behalf of your business, that your business can actually do it, okay? You know, I've seen companies bite off more than they can chew more than once and they knew it when they signed the contracts.

They knew that it was going to be challenging or that they might not be able to do it or that they were going to need additional resources. But they did it anyway, they signed it anyway, and they may or may not have completed the, they may or may not have completed the project, right? And so it's absolutely critical that we are only agreeing to proposals that we can actually deliver on, right?

This comes down to credibility, this comes down to what kind of business do you want to be. But I don't think there's any of you out there that got into business thinking that, Oh, well, you know, we'll just wing it and do our best and may or may not complete the projects, right? Like that's not the way to do this.

So it's important that before we agree to any type of project, that we are confident in our ability to execute that project. At Capital, I will not take on a project that I don't think that I can do, or that I don't think that I can be effective at, right? That where's the benefit? There's no benefit for me because my customer is going to be pissed off.

They're going to be upset that we weren't able to meet the deliverables, that we were not able to help them in the way, because they're going to pay some money at least. And I'm going to look like an idiot because I agreed to something that I wasn't confident that I could do, right? There's no win. It's really important that in all scenarios of business, especially in products and services and business to business, That there's a win win scenario and that everything is transparent and everything is out on the table so that your customer can make an informed decision, a buy or no buy decision on your product and service, and, and that you're going to be able to deliver on that buy or no buy decision.

Okay. So it's just, it's just critical that we know what it is that we can do. Okay. And that we define all deliverables clearly and that we can accomplish them. And then obviously we need to know how our value proposition aligns with our customers needs. Okay really critical. And you know, we'll get into this in the next part because the next part is going to be very much based based on what are the next steps in regards to to understanding our customer need.

Okay, but it. You know, we need to know what value we provide ahead of time, like where, where our product and service is going to provide benefit to our customer in a value proposition before we can even remotely create a great proposal, right? Proposals have to speak to customer need and not just speak to customer need, but speak to how your product or service can best fill that customer need.

Why you're the best option possible. Okay. And if we do this correctly, if we do this, right, We are going to be successful, but it takes effort. It takes conscious effort in, in understanding our own value proposition truly as a company. What is it about us that makes us better than our competition that makes us the best fit for this customer?

Right. And believe me, there is one. Right. If you have a product or service, there's something that you do best. There's something that you do that's better than all else. But until you really focus on what that is and learn that, and maybe that takes some outside help. Maybe that takes, you know, an outside consultant, somebody specializes in value proposition to really help you to narrow that down.

But believe me, until you can truly identify your value proposition and what that means for your customer, You are not going to be able to make an effective proposal. And then we need to know our own limits, right? I talked about this briefly before companies biting off more than they can chew. How many customers can you even have?

Right? It's not unlimited. We both know that there is a limit. There's always a limit. You know, if you were successful on five proposals, would that, would that put you in a tough spot? What are the types of companies that you want to work with? You know, Not all proposals are created equal. Not all companies are created equal.

Not all your target clients are created equal. Who are the best clients for you? How many of each could you even sustain? If you're targeting the top of the top, can you even take on more than two? It's really important that we know our own limits as a company before we get into value propositions, okay?

Because the reality is... Maybe this proposal isn't even worth doing. Have you thought about that? Not all proposals are worth doing and until you take the time to learn What is it that you're best at? What's going to make the most sense? How are you supposed to know, right? You need to know what it is you want.

before, before you can do a good proposal. You need to make sure that the company you're doing a proposal for is a client that makes sense for you, right? You can't know this until you know yourself, until you know your business. Once you know yourself and you know your business and you know your limits, you will be able to do better proposals.

And the last part, who is your ideal customer? We talked about this briefly just a minute ago. We need to identify the best customers possible because, heck, even if you can work with a hundred different customers, maybe there's only four or five who make sense. Maybe there's four or five who would be the best of the best.

And if you only have so much time, if your company is only capable of taking on so much business, and we all are in that spot, we need to make sure that we are taking Only the best opportunities for our business, the ones that we can be the most successful, the ones that we can deliver the best value, the ones that we can have as a win win.

These are absolutely critical and we need to know ahead of time who are our ideal customers. Alright, that's the end of part one. Part two, we are going to define success. Thank you so much for sticking with us. I wanted to take a minute and just chat about our sponsorship program. We do sponsorship advertising. If you would love to sponsor the Business Development Podcast, I would love to have a conversation with you.

Please reach out. podcast@capitalbd.ca and let's have a discussion. Shoutouts this week. Theresa Odey, David Fair, Aaron Haberman, Steve Knight, Alexander Heise, Justin Hammond, Louise McCarthy, and Shelby Sullivan. Thank you so much for your consistent support of the Business Development Podcast. We appreciate you greatly.

Until next time, this has been part one of Proposal Playbook. Thanks for listening to the Business Development Podcast. We'll catch you on the flip side.

Outro: This has been the Business Development Podcast with Kelly Kennedy. Kelly has 15 years in sales and business development experience within the Alberta oil and gas industry and founded his own business development firm in 2020.

His passion and his specialization. Is in customer relationship generation and business development. The show is brought to you by Capital Business Development, your Business Development Specialists. For more, we invite you to the website @ www.capitalbd.ca. See you next time on the Business Development Podcast.