“Add personality to your proposal and send it so that the client can digest it on their time schedule.” – Todd Caponi in today’s Tip 600
Are you using video for your sales proposals?
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Transcript
Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today Todd Caponi is back. Todd is the author of the award-winning (best of 2020) book, The Transparency Sale, a top-rated keynote speaker & trainer as Principal of Sales Melon LLC, and he’s also Managing Director of Chicago’s VentureSCALE. Here he is with today’s tip:
Todd Caponi: Hey everybody, Todd Caponi here to share what I think is a, not so obvious tip around the use of video in your selling efforts. So the “obvious” is obviously used in prospecting, which I think is a great tool. You’ll see a lot of posts around how to leverage video to bring personality to your prospecting efforts. I agree with that as long as it’s done in a personalized and valuable way versus a record one video, send it to a hundred people, of course.
However, what about downstream in your selling efforts through the process? Now let’s think about what’s going on in the world right now. Obviously we’re still in this case where all of our buyers are remote. So consensus selling was obviously always hard, but consensus buying just became a lot harder. Didn’t it? I mean, your buyers don’t have the benefit of just running into somebody in the hallway or grabbing coffee in the break area or on their commute if they take the train or whoever that works, to be able to build that consensus within their organization. So what did they do? Well, now it requires a formal conversation every time they’re trying to build consensus.
Now let’s think about your proposals for a second. What do you typically do when you deliver a proposal? Well, one of two things,. Number one, we either send it and hope for the best and maybe we’ll get a call or we try to schedule a call to go through it later, or we require the buyer to get on the phone with you. You send it live, go through it live.
Well, I think there is an in-between step that not only adds personality to your proposal, but it allows the buyer to maintain control and use it in building consensus within the organization. And how do you do that? Well, absolutely, you can use a video for that. Here’s what I do.
So I will typically send over a proposal and with it, I will include a short three-minute video that goes along with it. That explains what they’re getting. So in this example, I would record a video just like this and say, Hey, Mr. and Mrs. Client, here’s the proposal based on what we talked about. First of all, thank you for even considering me for this event, but based on our recommendation, I’m suggesting two pieces to this. We do a keynote and then we do a breakout that goes into kind of a workshop style. This proposal lays it out. So I’ve explained that concept and then I’ve explained in it, as you can see here, the two different pieces where we’ll start with transparency and then we’ll do a workshop on the transparent negotiation concepts. I then will walk that buyer through the different pieces of the proposal, including the logistics that are required to make sure that we’re prepped. And it’s fully customized a little bit about expectations. Of course, I walked through the pricing and how that’s all laid out and determined. And then as a tool for the client, I will include a little piece that helps them with the ROI or justification if they need it. In many cases they do. And then a bio as they’re sharing and building consensus within their organization, who is this Todd Caponi guy all in one place. And I explain it just like that in this video that goes along with my proposal.
So I think that this is a super easy thing that you can do that will set you apart from your competitors, add personality to your proposal and send it so that the client can digest it on their time schedule. But more importantly, that removes friction from the consensus buying process, which right now is so vital. So give it a try. I would love your feedback, love to know how it goes, and good luck with your selling efforts. Thanks.
Scott Ingram: Next you’ll want to buy a copy of Todd’s book, The Transparency Sale, and then connect with him on LinkedIn and we’ll have links for you to do both of those things as well as the video version of this tip, which seems awfully appropriate, at DailySales.Tips/600
Once you’ve done that. Be sure to come back tomorrow for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!