Proposal

Bringing it all together

The culmination of your efforts, your chance to persuade the prospect to give you the contract. Needs to do a lot of hard work to sell you above all others, while you’re not in the room.

	Pre-2020	Post-2020
Audience	No insight into how much the customer has engaged with the proposal	Greater acceptance from customers to new approaches and more willingness to view online content, over ‘traditional’ documents Greater awareness of powerful stakeholder groups Content/tools now need to address specific needs of each group Proposals may be redeveloped several times with support from coach before being shared across all stakeholders
Content	Traditionally, standard Word docs or pdfs. Sometimes PowerPoint or InDesign for additional design Often either cut and paste from previous versions, or standard templates outputted by sales platforms At worst, generic content, with customer name swapped out and little true customisation Over-reliance on technical solutions at the expense of persuasive content	Quality and value of content still more important than ‘shininess’ of doc or originality of medium Analytics informs alignment and honing of content and sales process
Technology	Delivered as email attachments, giving less opportunity for more creative supporting materials	Sales embracing agile tech to produce shorter, more creative documents, more aligned to their digital engagement with customers Huge uptake of video and other new ways to explain complex themes simply Use of technology can help ‘track’ engagement Analytics is key: Who is reading my content and in what depth?

Eyeful-Sales Engine Alliance Customer projects

1. Global software company (£23bn) SalesIQ

Creation and delivery of a bespoke executive summary writing module for their global sales academy. Delivered in person in the US in March and then re-purposed to on-line for October due to pandemic.

2. Travel technology provider (£2bn) BidIQ

Supported Asiapac team with a major bid that harnessed HTML for an interactive submission document to ensure they stood out. Contract value of £9m.