An effective proactive proposal is neatly packed by the sales team with the support of proposal’s team experience and skillset. The combined effort aims at driving competitive advantage for organizations that invest in proactive proposals.
A decade ago, Businesses focused on conventional tender processes and RFP. The time has changed as now businesses are involved in proactive sales processes. This process includes producing branded collateral, for instance, infographics, handouts, slides, posters, etc.
The Challenger Sale, published in 2013 analyses over 6,000 buyers and concludes that the most effective seller challenges traditional methods and their customer’s assumptions. To execute this method, the seller must know their customer’s industry and business, then they would be able to share insights and make compelling suggestions.
What are proactive proposals?
Proactive proposals are submitted proactively without a formal request and are aimed at meeting customer’s needs by bringing them value. This is how the proactive proposals influence the customer’s thinking.
Why must Proactive proposals drive your RFP processes?
For the proposal world, RFP drives the most processes and decisions. The organization must look out for the key accounts that you want to target, or you can onboard Professional Bid Managers to keep you ahead by placing your organization on the top of the industry.
Bids and Beyond, a bid management company has helped medium sized businesses to Fortune 500 companies in proactively positioning the bids to drive RFP process. Read more
Strategic Proposal Capability Maturity Model
We’ve listed down the 5 ways to be proactive proposal player to win the businesses
1. Confirm Customer Interest
Write exclusive proactive proposal, it’s ideal if the individuals from the key Target account have shown interest in such a proposal. Identify and then confirm this customer’s key issues and address them in your proposal. Your key accounts want to be acknowledged, don’t serve them standard content that is generic for any customer. They want to know how well you understand their needs and are ready with the right deliverables. Be mindful that you portray a solution that they likely value, a prompt solution to immediate problem outweighs soliciting solutions from other sources. Being proactive will get you award without competition and improve your win probability
2. Design to achieve your Objective
Collate information as per the customer:
For a traditional buyer provide a pdf or word proposal which has an executive summary along with detailed explanations of the services and how it is relevant to their needs.
A “just-send-me-a-price-quote” buyer would want the main points of the executive summary outlined followed by the pricing information as requested.
3. Graphics with Action Captions
Visuals are one of the most persuasive and therefore effective ways to convey information. Graphics with the right color palette are appealing to the evaluator, focus on precise yet memorable captions that elaborate the graphics.
The approach must be to evaluate the self as to what makes your proposal stand out using the text and visuals. At the same time, avoid redundant information and include action captions to explain graphics.
4. Limit appended materials
The more information you’ll attach the more it will dilute the message you are trying to convey. Excess appended information wastes your time in preparing it and the evaluator’s time in reading it. Instead, label how to view or read additional material in the proposal.
The more information you’ll attach the more it will dilute the message you are trying to convey. Excess appended information wastes your time in preparing it and the evaluator’s time in reading it. Instead, label how to view or read additional material in the proposal.
Start using active voice, deliberately, in your proactive proposal. Passive statements are wordier and not acceptable in the writing practices across industries. “The project is being designed…” or “The document was written by…” It is difficult to comprehend and the lack of punch and precision leaks into professional writing. Read more on Effective use of plain English in Business Proposals.
Conclusion:
Don’t let your sales professionals wait around, talk to our Bid Consultants USA at Bids and Beyond to use proactive proposals for your advantage. Schedule a call with our Bid managers to know the best practices in bid consulting services which can drive the required formal process to a buying decision.
consult@worxwide.com 
+1-571-365-0400 
