Proposal Playbook: Part 4

Proposal Playbook: Part 4

Kelly Kennedy: Welcome to Episode 87 of the Business Development Podcast. And on today's episode, we have Proposal Playbook Part 4. We're talking follow up and considerations. Stick with us. My gosh, this is a mind blowing episode. Stay tuned.

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 87 of the business development podcast. Thank you so much for joining us today. Holy crap. What a week on so many levels. I can't, I honestly cannot even believe the week that we have had. You know, not just for the podcast, but just my life in general.

Amazing news. My son is here. Shelby was absolutely amazing. I cannot believe how powerful and strong my beautiful fiance is. And our little baby boy, Jett McKenlyn Kennedy was born on December 3rd on my actual birthday as well. So I share a birthday with my son just to just for icing on the cake. It's just been an absolutely bonkers week and we were ecstatic here around the Kennedy household.

And man, that was just one amazing, amazing thing. You know, after another, we had an absolutely mind blowing week. We'll get into it before I start the day. I just wanted to give a gigantic shout out to our Sunday's guest episode. It was balancing reward and sacrifice with Adam O'Brien, president and founder of Bitcoin Well, or sorry, CEO and founder of Bitcoin. Well, and it was an absolutely next level episode. If you've ever had questions about crypto, it was basically a big gigantic crypto 101. And I learned a ton and Adam is an amazing human and it was just such a cool experience to have him on the show. So thank you, Adam, for joining us on such a monumental week and monumental is the week.

It was my gosh, we, we crossed a hundred thousand downloads last week, everyone under 10 months we did it in under 10 months and our Spotify unwrapped came in and holy cow. That it just opened my eyes to how big our community is. We have an absolutely gigantic community. We were number one for over 7, 500 fans.

So if I am speaking to you and I made your number one spot for 2023, you guys are amazing. I appreciate you. The business development podcast could not be what it is without your support and your consistent listenership and your sharing with your friends and family. I appreciate you guys so much. Thank you so much from the bottom of my heart.

It truly touches me that you guys come back every week and listen to our shows. Honestly, honestly, it blows my mind and I can't tell you how much I appreciate that. We were top 5 for over 17, 000 fans! Holy cow! 17, 000 of you! I made your top 5 list for 2023. That means you guys come back every week for at least a show and I appreciate that immensely.

Like I said, I had no idea, you know, you know, we always hope. I think from a podcaster standpoint, we definitely hope there's lots of you out there listening, but there's no good way to really see that. And it's cool because these numbers are really just from Spotify. But ultimately what this means is that.

You know, when you combine all the platforms, there's a lot of you out there. There's a lot of you business development podcast listeners. And I appreciate you immensely. I appreciate growing with you, learning with you, and frankly, teaching you as best as I can to help you guys excel in your professional careers.

And, you know, that wasn't it. We were top 10 for over 20, 000 fans. It was closer to 21, 000. For the actual number and yeah, it just it totally it totally blew my mind. It blew my mind. I I couldn't believe it. Thank you for all the kind words for crossing our hundred thousand downloads. So many of you reached out and congratulated us and yeah, that was a heck of an accomplishment.

I can't believe that we've hit that level and you know it. We couldn't do it without without all you, you know, the reality is this isn't about me. This 100, 000 isn't about me. I didn't make those. I didn't make those listens. You guys did. I didn't tell your friends. You guys did. And I can't do this show without you.

And I appreciate you so much. So I want you to know that I'm thinking about you. I'm thinking about all of that effort, all that time that you guys put in with us. And I appreciate it immensely. And I sure hope that we can continue to deliver and that you keep coming back and telling your friends. Coming into 2024 because we really appreciate you.

And that's how this show grows. I would. Oh, and just to give you an idea, just to give you an idea of what the difference is, I guess in some levels, I kind of always wondered, you know, I thought that most people that listen to our show would also follow us. That is actually not the case. Most people don't follow you.

I did not know this lessons learned in podcasting. So for those of you looking to start a show in 2024, do not base your success based on how many followers you have. It's not really relevant. The reality is it takes a special person to follow you. It takes an even more special person to reach out and send you a message and let you know that you're doing amazing.

The reality is, is that we've probably had hundreds of people reach out and tell us how we're doing. We have, you know, we have over a thousand followers between our Spotify's and our Apple Podcasts. I think we're closing in here on on 1, 300. But, the reality is that there's way more, there's way more people out there listening.

So if you guys are on the fence about starting your own podcast in 2024, and you're like will anybody listen? Yes. People will listen. People care what you have to say, and I encourage anybody who's on the fence about it, about picking up that mic for 2024 and doing something different, just do it. Pick up the mic, talk to the wall, because you know what?

In 10 months, could be you crossing 100, 000 downloads. Could be you with 7, 500 people listening every week, right? Could be you with 20, 000 total people in the top 10. That's a big deal. That's a big deal. And you know, you can't get there without people. But if you're wondering if people are going to listen, put out great content and just keep coming back.

Stay consistent to it. Stay consistent to yourself and your fans. And people will listen. And you guys know I'm real. You guys know that for me, that's what's important about this show. I don't, I don't bullshit. I don't, I don't talk about what I don't know. I don't talk about things that I haven't experienced.

And I just try to give you the best information I can to help your businesses grow based on my own experience and the experience of my guests. And you know, what we will make a commitment for is that we will keep trying to get better and better and bigger and bigger guests with more and more great information to help take your businesses to the next level.

I will make that commitment to you. And I will keep trying to provide relevant topics that are going to just give you that edge, right? At the end of the day, we want to give you that edge. And that's what I am going to do with the business development podcast. Wanted to let you know, I know some of you were asking about community questions, sorry, we, you know, we did this proposal playbook series and just due to the nature of it, the timelines available, I opted to just kind of keep going, so in some levels, yeah, we skipped, we skipped November community questions, so if you guys submitted for that, please don't feel bad, I haven't forgot about it I'm going to do a community questions episode here in December that's going to be a joint episode, so it may be a little longer, but we're going to try to hit up all of the community questions that we missed in November here, Here in December, and I'll do that probably around the middle of the month.

So just to give you an idea when that's going to be coming out, we'll have a community questions episode for December, middle of the month. What does that mean for you? It means that you got time. So if you're hearing this episode today and you're wondering, Hey, I got some business development questions.

I have some business growth questions and I want to send them to Kelly, get them on community questions. You have time. If you get me questions and they're in before that date, I will make sure that I add them to the list and we get them addressed for you during community questions. So you can send those to podcast@capitalbd.ca that's podcast@capitalbd.ca subject line, community questions, and I will get those addressed for you. So thank you for your patience. Been a crazy, wild, exciting month. One of the best months of my entire life. And I'm playing catch up to you. So I, I, I do apologize if you guys were waiting and wondering where community questions was it is coming.

I promise. Okay. All right. So just before we get into today's show, why don't you just let you guys know as well, we are looking for new sponsors for 2024. Okay. So if you are a business and you're looking for someplace to put your trust in, to to advertise with the business development podcast. We want to hear from you.

We have packages available starting at 700. We have shows available starting everything from three shows all the way up to like 35, 40 shows or custom packages, depending on what you want. So feel free to reach out. Let's have a conversation. We want to hear from you. We want to grow with you and we want to help your business grow.

So if you're looking for a place to sponsor with. For an advertise with for 2024. The Business Development podcast wants to hear from you. You can get me again at podcast@capitalbd.ca, or you can always send us stuff directly to to our Capital Business Development info at Capital Business Development, or go to our website, capital Business Development and reach out to me via contact form.

No problem. We'll make sure we get it addressed one way or another, but we do wanna hear from you and we wanna know what it is you guys are looking to do for 2024. 'cause we want to grow with you. Alright, holy cow, I know, I know, some of these entrances are getting a bit long winded, thanks for, thanks for sticking with us, my gosh, I am over the moon, I am so happy to be a dad, I can't even, I can't even, I've been a stepdad for years, and I've wanted to be a father, and it is just so, it blows my mind, and, and Jett Kennedy, our little boy, he's so cute, it's it's amazing, I'm so touched, and so many of you reached out and gave me, you know, kind words for those of you that were, were in the know, And I appreciate you all.

I appreciate you all. And you know, I just wanted to give one more quick shout out to our sponsors here. Hypervac Technologies, atWork Office, Office Furniture, and Maverick NDT. You guys are amazing. The support that we've gotten from our sponsors has been awesome and couldn't, couldn't, couldn't appreciate you guys more.

You know, not just as sponsors, but, you know, at this point, they've all become pretty close with us as well. I would call them friends and I appreciate them immensely. Alright, alright, sorry, let's do this. So we are at Proposal Playbook Part 4. You guys really love this series. And hey, I appreciate it. I appreciate that.

I love it too. Love, love, hate. Love, hate, because Proposal Playbook was hard. Let me tell you, Proposal Playbook is not an easy series. Why? Because proposals are hard. We know the stakes involved in our proposals. We know that it takes hard work and effort. But I do hope that the information that we have provided you through the series has given you just a way to reevaluate the way you're doing proposals.

Maybe evaluate what you're doing right. Maybe what you're missing and how you can improve and see if we can't win some more proposals together. And, you know, we've gone through it. I'm going to be doing some recaps this episode because I think it is a lot, and I think part four is really about follow up and considerations, so that's what I'm going to do.

So what we're going to ultimately do is we're just going to run through briefly what we talked about part one, part two, part three, and then we're going to get into the follow up and considerations part for part four. For and close it off. And that will be the end of our very first series, which was called proposal playbook.

And I appreciate it. Yeah. I appreciate the feedback on it. I know people, people have really liked this one. So do you let me know if there was, if there was something I missed, or if you think that if you think there was a topic that I may, maybe should have covered, if you think that there's maybe an addendum or something that I could have done differently or, or elaborated on, get back to me and I will work to address it for you in a future episode, which we can tie back to this at some point.

Okay. All right. So, Proposal Playbook Part 4. It's on follow up and consideration, but let's chat about some takeaways from the other parts, okay? So in Part 1, real quick, what did we address? We addressed who are you, right? We cannot do a good proposal until we know who we are. What are we capable of? What are our statistics?

What is success? How do we define success? How can we show that success? We need to know ourselves, right? We cannot start a proposal from a place of not knowing ourselves. You know, you can try to service a need for your customer, but it's really hard to service that need if you don't know exactly how you meet that need.

And I get that some things we're learning, keep in mind, this is something that I didn't know upfront either. So if you were a new business and you're still learning your value proposition, this is okay. This is okay. It's okay to not know exactly who you are and I want to speak to my new businesses today because we all start there.

The important thing is, is that you start to learn. You start to learn. You actually take your statistics down, right? Like at Capital, let me give you an example. In the beginning, we didn't have the statistics on how many meetings, how many digital introductions, all these things that, what did they lead to?

What we started doing is we started taking weekly reports. And I talked about this in the very beginning, everyone. Weekly reports, especially in business development, are critical. Not just for your client or for your company, but they are critical for your own statistics, so that you can measure yourself.

So that you can say when I put in X input and I do it consistently and I do these other inputs, I typically get X output and we can start to figure out what are the statistics to the outcomes we want. Once we have the statistics, the outcomes we want, we can start to really, really dial in on how we're going to help our customers because we know ourselves, we know who we are and what we do and how we do it and our process and our procedures and our policies and all the other fun stuff.

But. It all matters. It all matters. Because if you can't figure out who you are, how can you go into a good proposal and tell a customer how you're going to solve their problem? You can't. You just can't. You really have to know yourself and your capabilities before you get there. And so that was really what we talked about.

We talked about know what you do, know your statistics, know your limits, how much you can actually do for how many realistic results you can actually achieve. And then obviously know your customer, right? We have to, we have to do some digging into who is our customer. Okay, in part two we went into defining success and scope.

And if you guys remember, what did I talk about? Part two was the most important part of the whole series. So part two, if you guys want to have a whole bunch more success and you guys are cherry picking, because I know there's a few of you that are cherry pickers, it's okay. I do that too. Sometimes if you are a cherry picking and you were looking for the nugget, the true nugget of this series, it is part two.

So part two is the really critical part. And it was about defining success and scope with your customer. It was really asking the hard questions. It was drilling in on defining the successful outcome for your customer. What is it that they really want? And remember, what did I tell you? Most of the time you need to work with your customer to figure this out because they may not know what they really want.

And I know that sounds silly. I know that that can seem like, well, what do you mean? How could they not know? It's not that they don't know. They have an idea, but they need you as, as an expert, as a professional to come in and say, Hey. Here's the things you might not have considered. Can we just sit down and define success together and really narrow in on what it is you want to do?

Obviously with capital, business development is a really easy one. If people are hiring us, what are they hiring us for? They're hiring us because they want to grow. So the key metric that I really need to understand from a customer, I need to understand a few, but, but the really, the big thing is, look, what do you want to do?

Right? In the next year, what do you want to do? Do you want to grow by a million dollars? Five million dollars? Ten million dollars? Five dollars? Right? Five dollars probably don't make sense, but you know what I'm saying, right? Like, we need to get down to what are the actual goals? And maybe these aren't all necessarily financial goals.

Maybe it's we want to expand into a new area. And we want to have X number of customers in this area. Great! These are all great goals, but we need to identify them with the customer so that we can help them achieve an impact. Outcome. This is a big problem in business development. It really is because most companies will hire a business development person and just say, Hey, go find us business.

That's your job. You know, find us partnerships, find us business. But most business development people are chasing their tail because no matter what, they're never successful. They're not. And I know I'm speaking to you guys right now. I was you. You know, I was you. That has to change. That is a paradigm that doesn't have to stay that way.

Okay. I had a, I actually had a conversation with a friend earlier today and we were talking about how capital, the way that I do business development is I do it with goals and outcomes because I want to accomplish success. I want to exponentially provide value for all of our customers, right? Like that's the goal.

That's always the goal. No matter where I go, I want to provide exponential value to our cost. Well, that's a heck of a goal, right? It just is. It's not always easy and it doesn't always make sense. But how do I do that if I don't know where we're going? And so I know like, you know, when I work business development as a, as a manager, as a You know, as just a rep for many years, it was, you know, just, you know, do the best you can get as much as you can.

And that's great. But what it really means in the sad part for most business development people is they don't know when they're winning or when they're losing. They don't know. They just don't know success. And so we just live in this crazy world where it's like, Oh, that was a big win. That was a great meeting.

Great. Celebrate for two minutes and get onto the next one. Right. And it's just, it's so short lived and it's, and it's a little bit sad. I'll be honest for a lot of business development people. I know business owners, maybe as well, if you're not really celebrating your wins, okay. It would be a lot better and a lot easier for you to know if you've hit.

your wins if you knew where you were going. And so speaking to my business development managers, and maybe not my business development managers, because I know you're answering to people too. Speaking to my founders, my presidents, my people setting the the corporate growth goals for the year really involve your business development teams in this.

Okay. It's, it's one of those things where they need to know. Yeah. What you want to accomplish what the goals is, and they need to know statistically what is a customer worth so that then they can work backwards. They can say, You know what? Okay, based on our success rates, I think we can hit this in 20 meetings, 25 meetings, 30 meetings, whatever it works out to be.

It gives them some targets, and then they can start to break that down over the course of a year, and they say, Great. We know exactly where we need to be. We know what's winning. We know when we're in the green. Right? It's important that we're painting pictures where people can understand success because so much of sales and business development falls into a gray area where no one really knows what the hell's going on or, or what is successful and so that's what I'm working to change with capital.

That's the best way to do it. 100%. I want to grow my, I want to grow my clients and I want to grow them to something that we've agreed on and that makes sense. And that we can both say, yeah, we made it. We made it. That was, we hit the goals that we wanted to achieve together. Right? I agree. I agree.

That's such a better place to be. And so really part two was talking about that defining success and scope with your customer, with your company, with whatever it is you guys are going for really critical to understand the end goal and work backwards from the end goal. Right? So we talked about defining successful outcomes.

We talked about identifying the need and the parameters of success, right? Creating alignment between client need. And how you're going to meet it because it, you know, I mean, the reality is not all, not all solutions are a hammer, right, right. There might be multiple things required to accomplish success.

And so it's important that we understand potentially all of the variables that are going to fall into making us successful. Right. But these are all things that we're doing with our, with our client or, or , you know, with, with whoever we're trying to create success with, maybe that is literally within our organization and another, another department, but what it is is it's aligning.

yourselves together. It's really working together to to create a successful outcome to pick what a successful outcome would be. And then you can work backwards on how to deliver it. We use deliverables to meet objectives and define success. So obviously there's, there's steps, right? Like the reality is Rome wasn't built in a day and neither is business development.

It takes a long time, but there are. There are steps, there are milestones, there are goals that you can set up month by month or year by year or whatever, however long you're projecting, right? So we are able to, to use deliverables to then meet those objectives and to find success. We can, we need to understand the value that we provided to the customer.

This was like really the big, very, very important part of that conversation where what we were talking about was If you don't understand your value, what your service, what your product means to the customer, like what it truly means, does it mean the success of their product? Does it mean 10 million in growth?

The difference between it? You need to understand as best as you can. And we talked about how, yeah, that's not always going to be easy to find out. I never said it was going to be easy. Everybody right. I've told you this from the beginning, guys, like business development is detective work. It's not. easy.

Nobody's going to hand you the win. You're going to have to work for it a little bit, but it's always attainable, right? It's always a few questions or a good conversation away. And so it's important that what we are trying to do is get as much information about our customer, about the success of the project, about what their goals are ahead of any proposal.

And then we can base the proposal based on accomplishing. That goal. And, you know, like I said, this might be a services based proposal where what you're doing, you're supplying a pump, but maybe that pump. Is the difference between the project being successful or not? Well, it would be kind of important for you to know that, wouldn't it?

Right. It's important for you to know what the value of your product truly is to the customer. And yeah, not always going to be easy. Not always going to be forthcoming. But use probing questions, ask lots of questions, don't be afraid to make another phone call and have another conversation ahead of the proposal.

If you don't think you have all the information you need. Okay. That's okay. It's okay. Nobody's gonna, nobody's gonna get mad at you for, for being inquisitive and saying, look, I just want to be thorough. I just want to make sure that I have all the details and all the information so I can put together the best possible proposal for you.

Nobody is going to tear you apart for doing that. If anything, I would be honored if somebody would take a little extra time to make sure they get it right the first time, trust me, this makes way more sense on both sides. So don't be afraid to make that to make that phone call and to really get to the bottom of, of what is the value?

How do we, how do we meet that goal for you in the best possible way? Right? And then remember, everybody, the other takeaway from this was a proposal is all. A good proposal is not cut and paste. It is custom. Okay? It is custom. And I know that there are a few of you that are like, Ah, crap. I hate writing proposals.

I know. Okay? I know. It's not easy. But once again, most of the time, things that are easy aren't worth it, are they? You want to win the good proposals? Create custom proposals for your customers based on the information that you guys discussed. And make sure that your pricing reflects that too. It's not just a cut and paste.

price sheet. Remember, I told you that a proposal is not fixed pricing. It is a custom price based on the deliverable that you have to accomplish. It's, it's always going to be a custom thing. Okay. It has to be because not everybody's needs are exactly the same. They're just not. They're just not. Okay.

And so if you are just sending cut, cut and paste pricing, what you're sending is a rate guide, not a proposal. And you might as well just take off all the fluff. You might as well just create a rate guide and say, Send it out with every email because you're gonna need to, because they're probably not gonna be that successful because a good proposal involves collaboration.

It involves teamwork. It involves work on both sides of the customer. And you to come into alignment to create something that totally makes the most sense. Okay. And that was the end of part two. And then we moved into part three, which was our proposal structure. And remember my caveat with the proposal structure was you did not have to follow my structure.

My structure is just an idea or a guideline or a way that I like to do it at the moment. I'm not even saying that this is going to be my proposal structure forever. No, because I've already changed it once, right? And very likely I will change it again. What I was getting at with it was, though, is that there are, there are things that you have to have inside of the proposal structure.

There are things that are must haves. And so that was the real takeaway from that was that there were some must haves that we were going to have to discuss. That we were going to have to make sure we're in there. And so that was the takeaway I wanted you to take. So remember, no particular order. You can do it whatever way you want.

Just make sure that you have these elements inside of it, okay? So my first part was a client overview. Who is your client? Right? We need to show that we know who they are. We've done a little bit of homework. We know what they, what they are, what their accomplishments are, where they have a competitive advantage, where and where maybe the challenges might be in providing a solution for them.

Show that we truly understand who our client is. So your first part, or at least my first part, is always a client overview. Just shows that I, I've actually done some homework. And this is good because you should do some homework. You should. Know who you're going to be working for or with. Okay, it is critical.

It's, it's important. All right. Our part two was our agreement overview. This was the real critical part. This is the part where we summarize the areas of focus. We outline the understanding of their problem. We outline any known challenges and goals. And then we move into our execution plan and strategy.

How are we going to accomplish those goals? And what timeline? What are our solutions? And what is our ROI? Remember this, everybody, ROI, return on investment. How is, what are you going to do for them, whether it's a product or service, going to either make the money or save the money or accomplish a project on time?

Okay, you need to do one of those three things. You need to make the money, save the money, accomplish a goal on time that is critical that they can accomplish on their own. Okay, you have to show how the heck your service, your product is going to financially help your customer. I know, I know, I know. I have a few rolling your eyes like duh Kelly.

I know. But it's not. It's obvious. It's not that obvious. Okay? It's not that obvious. There are a lot of people that haven't thought about this part. They're just like, yeah, I have this great service. Like, why wouldn't they want it? Well, they're not going to want it. And I faced this problem too. If you cannot show them why it's beneficial to them.

Financially, people. Financially. Okay? People can look at something and be like, oh yeah, that sounds like a good idea. But unless it's going to make the money, save the money, or accomplish a project or goal on time, well, you know, you're, you're, you're in trouble. And I hate to say that, but it's true. And, and I was in trouble because I made this mistake and I lost like, I think I told you guys like three back to back proposals.

It was pretty heartbreaking a little bit. Because I know, you know, I mean, I know, you know, proposals are tough. Proposals are hard and you put your heart and soul into them and you send them out into the world and you pray, right? Right. But you know, like the reality is, is that you need to gear them towards a solution that is financially viable.

Okay. Financially viable, you are in business. This is not for the goodwill of the world. There are people buying something from you and you have to show them that it's either going to make the money, save the money or accomplish a goal or a need like that they cannot accomplish without it. Okay. It is very critical because this is what is going to influence a buying decision.

In business, in business. I'm not talking about B2C, and we're not talking about emotions. We're not talking about, I want the latest and greatest, you know, electronic, or the latest and greatest Google Glass, or whatever we're talking about, right? This is different. It's not, it's not the same value. That's like an entertainment value.

That's a personal, intrinsic value. In B2C, it works very well. In B2B, which is, you know, what we're always talking about on the show, You have to show financial value. Financial value, and this is possible. This is possible even if you're selling Manpower services, you just have to show somehow financially that you make more sense than them hiring an employee internally, internally, or that you make more sense than them not outsourcing this, or if they're gonna outsource this, your company still makes the most sense because even though you're gonna pay the same price, maybe you get X, Y, and Z extra value.

But either way, you have to tie these proposals back to ROI. What are they going to get? For it, absolutely critical, critical. If you do not have this, you are going to lose most likely. Like that's just the truth. You have to be able to spell it out for them in an easy to understand way. ROI. Okay. Has to be part of your proposal structure.

Alright, then we move into deliverables. Remember this part we have to be thoughtful and committed. Why? Because this is what you're promising. This is what you're saying you are going to do and it's not intangible. It's, it's something that you're going to deliver to them in a specific timeline or in timelines in an order and they are real.

Like these are not pie in the sky. These are what you're actually going to do. They are what you are going to accomplish for, for your customer. Or the steps that you are going to take and the timelines that you are going to take them. It is absolutely critical that we are putting realistic, realistic deliverables, okay?

Because they need to be measurable. They need to be defined. They need to be tangible. They need to be achievable, realistic. And the most important thing they need to be done in a timeline. It cannot be open ended. It has to say between this time and this time, we're going to get this done between this time and this time, we're going to get this done.

And then between this time and this time, we're going to finish the project. That is what you need to commit to. You need to commit to a set. deliverables in set timelines, and they need to be realistic. So this is a place where I need you to take some time, be thoughtful, and don't over promise, right?

Do what you say you're going to do. So you're better off to under promise and over deliver than you are to over promise and be scrambling to get it done. All right, and then we talked about a guarantee. 2024, everyone, you gotta guarantee something. And trust me, there is something you can guarantee. There just is.

There is. And I know that we're reluctant. I know. I know it's a scary thing to stand behind your product and service because none of us want to be held accountable if we fail. I get it. I get it. I get it. But trust me, you're gonna know if you're struggling way before you fail. And if that's the case, you know what?

Maybe that is a readdressing something with your customer and saying, Hey, you know what? We are actually struggling to meet this. Is there something that we can do? Can we adjust this? What do you think? That's way better. That's way better. Then to then to just, you know, to not be able to meet whatever your guarantee is, but I guess what I'm what I'm suggesting here is that you need to guarantee something you need to either guarantee a warranty on your product or service, you need to guarantee that you're going to accomplish some level of performance, right?

It does not have to be the whole level of performance. It does not have to be the whole contract. You don't have to guarantee the whole contract. Mark my words, you don't. But you do have to guarantee some level of performance and you should and you can. So yeah. Make sure that you look, dig deep into what you can deliver with regards to your service and product offerings.

What are the things that you can say, yep, for a hundred percent, we can meet this and that you're going to stand behind. Okay. This does not necessarily mean that you're going to say, well, money back guarantee if I don't get it done. What it, what you could say is, yeah, you know, we, we are confident we can accomplish this level of performance in this timeline.

However, if we do not, we will continue to work for free until we do. That is a guarantee. That is still a guarantee and it's one that they, that still accomplishes the goal. So what I'm suggesting is find out what you can guarantee and put it into your proposals. Okay. It's 2024. It's time to stop hiding.

You have a great product. You have a great service. Stand behind it. At Capital, we stand behind it. I do give a guarantee. Is it always going to be the exact highest goal of our customer? No, because that might not be realistic, but I will guarantee what is realistic and still shoot for the stars. But the reality is you have to guarantee something because they are paying you.

They are paying you for. A service or a product and you need to make sure that in your proposal you are saying I stand behind my product and service and we are going to accomplish what we say we are going to accomplish for you and if we don't, here's how we're going to rectify that. Here's how we're going to make sure that we either meet that need or find another solution that is amicable to both.

Okay, very critical and it needs to be up front in the guarantee. Okay, all right. And then we talked about our investment options, right? This is, this is the important part where we have kind of our pricing structures. They need to be in there. You know, statistically three, three is a good number to go with.

It doesn't always have to be three. It could be one, could be two, but people do like three choices. So three choices may be where you want to start, maybe where you want to take a look at. Remember, These can be different packages. This doesn't necessarily have to be the same thing. It can be the same package over different timelines.

There's multiple ways for you to structure your investment options. Okay. The reality is that capital, we can do things in compressed timelines, or we can do things in a longer timeline. So sometimes we have the exact same package. It's the exact same deliverables, but it's over different timelines, depending on what would work best for the customer.

Right? And so that's a way to do it. You can add other things to your packages, but just make sure that you have a nice section in there for your investment options. Okay. All right. And then obviously we want our terms and conditions inside of the proposal. Why? Why? Because we don't want any surprises.

Okay. We don't want, if you start to change things up or you have this great proposal, then your terms and conditions are garbage and you know it, well, that's going to put you in a tough spot, right? It's better to negotiate your terms and conditions as part of the proposal than to be like, Oh yeah, let's go ahead and send us the service agreement.

You send the service agreement and. Crickets because there's no way in heck they're signing your terms and conditions, right? We don't want that. So make sure that if there's anything that's out of the ordinary or that may, you know, may cause hesitance for your customer, make sure it's part of your proposal.

Because then when you reopen that proposal discussion and you get into a negotiation stage. You can negotiate those things. And then they just say, go ahead. And when you send the service agreement, there's nothing, there's no surprises. It's just, yep, we're signing it. We're moving forward. Right? You don't want surprises.

You do not want surprises in your proposals. Okay. Proposals should be very obvious. Your customer should have already known a little bit about them. obviously we talked about it. The pricing structures, we should really be talking about ahead of the proposals. We should be talking about the deliverables.

We should be clear about, about the, about the project. So that ahead of the proposal, you have a follow up meeting before you actually send it and you say, Hey, we've evaluated, we either can or cannot move forward with this proposal. Here's what we think it's going to be like. What do you think about that?

We think it'll cost potentially this amount. We can get it done in this timeline. Here's the deliverables we think we're probably gonna have to look at. What do you think? That makes way more sense to have that conversation ahead of the proposal. Right. It saves you a hell of a lot of time, right? Cause you're going to know right there if that, if you're out to lunch or if they're like, yeah, we're in that, that sounds awesome.

Send us a proposal, right? We want to make sure that we are sending only successful proposals as often as possible. So we want to really be screening these ahead of time. So remember how many meetings did I say you should probably have at least. Two meetings ahead of the proposal. One first meeting discovery meeting.

Second meeting should be obviously the followup from the findings and what you think this could cost and what you think the deliverables could be and, and your, and what you could accomplish on their behalf. And then if they say, yeah, that sounds great. Send us the proposal. That's when we should be sending the proposal.

So you should have likely two meetings ahead of a proposal that is just going to be better all around for everybody involved. Okay. All right. And so that took us to the end. I did, I did add another part briefly in that conversation saying you could have the service agreement attached. We've done it that way for a long time and it's worked well for us.

Although you don't have to, you don't have to have the service agreement as part. It might be too much. You know, I've, I've heard it both ways. Love it. And hey, we don't want to review the whole service agreement just with the proposal. So you can decide what's going to work best for you. But Up to at least terms and conditions should be part of your current proposal.

Do let me know if you guys had any like feedback on that. If there's anything you guys might be doing a little differently that, heck, maybe I haven't even heard of, right? Like this is gonna be a learning experience for me too. So I want to hear back from you guys on this proposal playbook and what you guys Thought of the steps that, that I, that I outlined.

And if there was anything that you thought was great, and if there was anything that you thought maybe wasn't so great or could be changed, heck, I'm open to feedback. You guys know that I love feedback. And I'm not beyond saying that I know it all. I, I, I do not know it all. I do not know it all. I know enough to be dangerous, but I am always learning.

You guys know, I talk about this all the time. I'm an expert until yesterday in business development or whatever I'm an expert in. The reality is tomorrow's a new day and things change. All the time. And we have to be open to feedback. We have to be open to learning and proposal playbook is no different.

And if I get to a point where I recognize that I missed something, or I think that there's a better way to do this, I will revisit this and I will say, you know what? Back then I thought this, but now I think this, I am not beyond that. I am not beyond coming back and saying, you know what? I think I did it wrong in this spot.

playbook series and let me know how it worked for you. Let me know. I would really love to hear it. All right. And so part four. Now we're getting into just follow up. So this is this part is pretty easy. Obviously, I kind of went through the original parts just to bring us up to today and where I wanted to talk about.

So what are some of the of the situations for proposals that maybe we should consider? Okay. In my mind, we want to deliver proposals physically. Whenever possible. Okay. I love to do this. I do this for all of my clients that I can do it for. I do this for capital. If I am local and I create a proposal, I like to, I like to physically bring it and hand it over in a nice presentation folder.

I just think that that's professional and it's really well done. It adds a personal touch to it and it, it just, it allows another quick moment for for conversation. Do I necessarily pin them down there? No. Yeah. I absolutely do not. I just say, look, I know there's a lot in here. You don't have to review this right now.

I just wanted to hand it over in person. I usually have a quick conversation with whoever I'm dropping the proposal to have a great little conversation with them, thank them for their time and let them know that I'll follow up in a week or two. That's it. That's all you got to do. You don't have to like pin them down and say, read this proposal right now.

Absolutely not. You do not want to do that. But a nice hand delivered proposal is beautiful. It's a beautiful thing. I love doing it. I do it for capital and I've done it on behalf of many of my clients. If I was helping them with some of their proposals. So it's just a great way to go about doing a proposal.

So whenever possible in person, can you follow up with a digital copy? Absolutely. And should you absolutely yes. Because that might need to be forwarded around that might need to go across the country. Who knows, but a nice hand delivered proposal to the people that are local. It's just a really nice touch, everyone, and you should definitely look at doing it.

All right, and we want to follow up within a week unless otherwise agreed to. So this is kind of my caveat. One week is a great follow up for a proposal. It gives people a lot of time to review it. The only time that I would say go a little longer is if you had a conversation with them, and they said, hey, yeah, maybe give us two weeks.

If they ask for two weeks, give them two weeks. But if nobody said anything, there's no timeline. One week is the rule. follow up within one week, but make sure that you give them at least a few days to really review it because you know that some of these proposals are big deal. They cost a lot of money.

There's a lot of considerations. There's weighing it. Make sure that you're giving them an adequate amount of time to really review it ahead of your follow up. So like I said, I think one week is a great time to follow up. Give it a week. Okay. And then two weeks if, if maybe it's specified or there's another another request, right?

Okay. So we want to do that. We want to follow up in a week. We want to try our best to identify the sticking point. You guys know this. There's going to be a sticking point. There always is. There always is. There's always something. And you may have got an inkling of it. When you had the conversation with them in the second meeting, when you guys were clarifying goals and you were going over pricing considerations, there might have been a moment when they paused.

Or maybe if you were in person, maybe they will go back to Dr. Jack Schafer from the author of the like switch, right? They might purse their lips, right? If they purse their lips, you know, you've hit the point of contention and you need to have a conversation about that. So remember try to identify the sticking point, and if you can identify the sticking point, open the conversation.

Don't, don't just bounce over it. Say, Hey, you know what? I noticed. that you had a little bit of hesitation around this, this one part. Do you want to maybe talk about that? Just open the conversation, start talking about it, keep them in it. Keep them in it and help them to find a solution, help them to find their way out the other side, or you can help them find out or find their way out.

Maybe it's something that's an easy thing for you to fix. They don't know that. Remember that they don't know what you can fix and what you cannot fix as part of your proposals. And so. Sometimes it's easier, and so we need to make sure that we are taking some time and trying to really identify those sticking points and address them head on.

Don't run from them. Don't hide behind them. Don't don't miss that moment when you see that lip purse. Have the conversation. Okay? All right, let's talk about being afraid to call. Anybody out there been afraid to call after a proposal? Is it just me? Is it just me holding my both hands up? Oh, gosh, I've been there, man.

I've been there. I've sent proposals and been like, Oh, God, I don't want to follow up on this. I don't want to do it because we were afraid, right? We don't want that. No, we don't want that. No. But let me tell you what, unless you make that call, you can't address the no, you can't address the challenge. And if you don't address the challenge, let me tell you what, it's a definite no.

Okay, if you can't address the challenge, then it's a no for sure. So let me tell you what, it's not a no until you hear a no or until you get a no email. So as far as I'm concerned, I need you to be brave. And I'm right there with you and I have to give myself this pep talk too. But be brave. Follow up after that week.

Say, hey, you know, I haven't heard from you yet. I just wanted to follow up on that proposal. Is there anything that we can address for you? Are there potentially some sticking points that we can address? Let's have a conversation. Open the dialogue. Okay. Don't be afraid. I know. I know. It's scary. Like I'm right there with you.

I'm human. I'm human. You know, I, I put my heart into that proposal to you. Right? Nobody wants to be node. Right? But the reality is that you have to follow up. It shows bravery. It shows strength. It shows that you know what you're doing. You're committed to providing a solution for this customer. And even when it's hard, even when you don't want to, I need you to pick up that phone and make that call because let me tell you what, yeah.

Sitting and waiting anxiously for that phone to ring is worse. I know it doesn't feel like it in the moment, but trust me, just sitting on that customer and waiting and not not not taking action into your own hands is much, much, much worse. So just be brave. Pick up the phone. I know it's scary, and that's why I'm addressing this.

I know I'm addressing this because I know there's a lot of you that send proposals and you never follow up on them because it's scary. I get it. I get it, but you're losing proposals be, you know, maybe even over things that would have been really easy, maybe over like literally a two minute conversation.

Hey, do you mind just changing this term or we can't agree to this under this timeline? Could we, you know, either condense the timeline or, or stretch it out a little bit like little things, it could be little things, but your customer might be like, well, I don't want to rock the boat. I don't want to call them and ask them to change, you know, their proposal and you're thinking like, man, if I would have just known I could have just made that real quick change and that would have been that.

See, this was the realization I came to that really inspired me to change my proposal structures. Because what I realized later was, had I just done things a little bit different, had I just made a couple little changes, focused a little harder in on a couple things, I would have been, I would have won. I would have won all these proposals I'd lost.

Yeah, I just, I didn't get the knowledge. And you know, there was a couple that maybe I didn't follow up as deep as I should have followed up on to really come to the end of it. And I lost. And. I don't want you guys to end up in that same space, and it really comes from a place of bravery. You just need to believe in yourself.

You need to I believe in you, okay? I believe in you. You have a product and service that people need, trust me. I know that this paperwork side of it sucks. I know that this proposal side of it sucks. But remember, it's just the gate. It's the gate. You gotta get through this gate. Because if you can't get through this gate, you can't share your great product and service with the world.

You can't do it. And so we have to be brave. We have to follow up. We have to tackle the challenge head on, and we have to address it as best as we can. If you do this, you are going to win more proposals. I promise. I promise you. Don't be afraid. Pick up the phone. And give them a call. Be brave. All right.

And then, obviously, don't be afraid to make changes. We just talked about this. There might be, you know, not even there might be. There's very likely going to be some changes required, okay? Your proposal's not perfect. It's just not. We're one person trying to solve a two person or a multi person solution, right?

It's a collaboration. Proposals take two. Which is why I was saying, guaranteed, most likely, when you send the proposal, you're gonna have to follow up and address some points of contention. This is just, this has been the case with like every proposal we've ever won at you know, at any of my clients, frankly, for that matter, and including Capital.

It's a two way communication because I can't get it right. I'm one person. I'm, I'm saying, Hey, I think this is the best way to go about doing that. But the reality is it takes two people to sign a proposal, doesn't it? Right? There's two of you. And what that means is you need to make sure that you are addressing it in the best way possible for your customers.

And so it's really important that you are open to changes. Being made to this proposal. Okay. Be open to it. Welcome it even because let me tell you what, the more changes that you're making, what do you think is happening? You guys are getting more in alignment. What do you think happens when you guys reach alignment?

You and me both know you just, you just want a big project. Right? Right. So we have to get into alignment. The best way to do this is by. Collaboration by being open to having a conversation and making a few changes. Make sure that you let the customer know that you look forward to working with them. Okay.

Be friendly, be it, be the great human. I know you all are, you know, show them your humanity. Be like, look, you know, I'm pumped. I'm really excited. I can't wait to do this. You know, reach out to me. Let me know how we can make this work. That's a great line to use. Let me know how we can make this work. Let me know how we can collaborate.

I want to be a teammate. I don't want to be in this for one project. I want to be in this for a hundred projects. I want to be a partner. How does this work? Show them you're, you care, show them you care. You don't want a one and done, right? You want a life, a lifelong partnership here. As long as you have a company, you want to be working with this organization.

Show them that, show them that you want to be a trusted partner. Be human, let them know you're psyched. You can't wait. You can't wait to work with them. Okay. Remember that proposals are always a starting point and changes likely will need to happen. Right? We talked about this briefly before. It's a starting point, right?

The first time you send that proposal or you hand deliver that proposal, that is point one of the negotiation. And it is a negotiation. Mark my words. Proposals are always a negotiation. Everything in them is negotiable. Okay. Everything in them is negotiable. Trust me, even you may not recognize it, but there are ways for you to still make money.

Even if you have to change your pricing around a little bit, mark my words, everything in your proposal is negotiable. And if you show up to the table in that, in that openness and say, look, you know, let me know what, what are you thinking? Create a custom solution, right? We talked about this proposals or custom solutions.

This is why the rate guide thing doesn't work because if you show up with the rate guide thing and you say, Hey, Here's our rates. They're not going to call you unless everything lines up perfectly. Cause they're going to feel like, well, we can't work with this guy. He's already said, these are his rates.

He's not like they're, they're not likely to show up and say, you know what? Like in this case, these rates aren't going to work for us. They're just not going to call you. If you come to them and say, you look, you know, here's our, here's our round one of the proposal. Give it a review. Let's open up a discussion.

You let me know how we can make this work. My gosh, you are just setting yourself up for a win. You're setting yourself up for alignment. So your proposal is a starting point. Changes. are likely needed to make it happen, okay? What if you lose? Okay, let's talk about what if we lose, or what if we get told, sorry, we don't want to move forward with this right now, or this isn't a good time.

Don't be afraid to try again. I know, I know. It it can feel like a slap in the face. I had one of those a couple months ago. It kind of hurt. But, don't be afraid to try again, okay? The reality is One proposal is just one proposal. And if your client says, no, that doesn't mean we're out. It just means not today.

It just means not today and that's okay. Okay. Don't be afraid to put them on a call list and say, you know what? I'm sorry. I'm sorry. This didn't work out this time. We've recognized the points of contention. Hopefully you've had a quick followup discussion with them to say, Hey, you know, like, what could we have done better?

I know we lost this, but let me know what we could have done better. The next time we'll make sure we get it done for you. Keep that, keep that conversation, learn a lesson. There's probably a lesson to be learned and follow up in six months, right? Put them on a call list and call them back in six months and say, Hey, you know, we made this proposal for you six months ago.

We'd love an opportunity to try it again. Do you got anything else that we can we can come up with? Mark my words. This is going to work well for you. This is going to work well for you because so many people, they lose that proposal. They never call that customer again. They just say, I'm done. I'm out.

I'm out. We lost. I can't do it. Mark my words, put them on a call list, call them in six months. You'll be working for them. You'll be working for them. There's always another opportunity and you need to look at it that way. A loss isn't a loss. It's just a not right now. Tomorrow is a new day and that customer, they're going to give you another try.

Just don't give up on them. Give them another try in a six month time. It's okay. Losing is okay. It's part of the deal, but we have to learn our lessons from it. There is a lesson learned in every proposal loss. And if you can learn that lesson and you can try again, you are just going to be more and more and more successful over time.

Okay? If you win, ask for feedback. Right? We don't do this, do we? No, we don't. And I'm guilty too. But let me tell you what, I am. I am now. Hey, you know, it's amazing. We're psyched to be working here. What was it about our proposal that made you say yes? What was it about our discussions? You know, tell me. What was it about this process that you said yes to?

You know, we don't even think about this, do we? We don't think about asking the wins. What is more valuable, asking the person who you won, why you won, or asking the person who you lost, why you lost? They're both valuable, but let me tell you what, I think I would rather know why we won, right? What did we do great at?

What was the thing that you said yes to? My gosh, ask why you won! I know it sounds kind of like silly and a little bit like, Oh my gosh, we're so excited, why did we win? But, think about it. What is more valuable? Why you won or why you lost? Even though they're both valuable, who knows? Maybe the, maybe the reason you lost wasn't 100 percent the reason you lost, or at least the reason they gave you isn't 100 percent the reason, but I'll tell you what, the person who says why you won will give you 100 percent why you won.

So don't be afraid. Don't be afraid to ask both sides. They're both important. Ask why you won, when you win, and then, and then, you know, use that information to move forward with, right? So we need to ask for feedback, whether we win or whether we lose, I want you to incorporate that into your businesses.

When you win, ask for feedback. When you lose, ask for feedback, but no matter what, ask for feedback. It's absolutely critical that you know why you won and why you lost. If you can, we need to learn lessons from each proposal. We need to be open to feedback. We need to solve our clients challenges, provide tremendous value doing it.

And we will watch our success rates. Sore. Shoutouts this week, Aaron Haberman, Steve Campbell, Blake Hellyer, Colin Harms, Rodney Lover, Mckinley Hyland, Louise McCarthy, Amin Samji, Tawhid RN, Catherine Warren, Jason Chakkalakal David Delvin, Jesse Schewchuck, Esther Hall, Steve Austin, and Eyad Bazerbashi. You guys are awesome.

Absolutely amazing. Everybody reached out to me this week with, with a hundred thousand downloads. Oh, and I know I totally missed the other part. We had our, our largest single day, our largest single day on the business development podcast ever. My gosh, what was that number? It was huge. I don't even have it here, but it was absolutely bonkers.

I want to say it was like. Like almost 900 people. No, it was 980. Sorry. It was 980 people in a single day. So we had two back to back days. One was 854. The other one was 980. We didn't quite reach a thousand in a day, but holy moly, what a week. What an absolutely amazing week and I have all of you to thank for it.

And I just want to take a minute here before we close the show today and just say, if you've been with us since the very beginning of the business development podcast, my gosh, you know, I can't even tell you from the bottom of my heart. I appreciate you immensely. Thank you so much for trusting me with your business growth advice.

Thank you so much for telling your friends and family. Thank you for following us and for just. If you're just hanging out with us every week, you know, I know we put on a show twice a week, and I know some of you are with it for all of it. We had some of you that you guys were 0. 5 percent listeners. We were like, we were your number one show by a lot.

And I appreciate you guys so much. Thank you so much. Thanks for doing this with me. Thanks for joining me on this journey. And I hope that we can continue to grow your businesses week over week, month over month, and year over year. And I really, really look forward to doing this with you into 2024. Until next time, this has been episode 87 of the Business Development Podcast.

This closes Proposal Playbook. Until next time, 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.

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