Every business provides some form of product or service that must be pitched to clients, customers and investors. Regardless of what you have to offer, putting together a sales proposal can be a difficult task. The creation of a compelling pitch can be an immensely intimidating undertaking.

Don’t make the mistake of carelessly putting something together with very little thought or consideration. Here are a few tips that can help those who may be struggling in writing one.

Tips to Create a Winning Sales Proposal

Focus on customer objectives

Recognize, first and foremost, that there is always an underlying objective that drives a person’s purchases. For your sales proposal, it helps to focus more on why customers need a particular product or what challenges they hope to overcome. In understanding the motives behind their purchases, your sales proposals will be more accurate and therefore lead to greater success.

Focus on the results of the deliverables

When it comes to a sale’s true value, remember that customers pay for the results, not simply the product or service itself. Make use of proposals to help articulate the results that they can receive. The deliverables can always be described later.

Focus less on your own offer

One mistake salespeople make when writing proposals is focusing too much on what they have to offer to potential customers. They often list down the basic features and benefits of the product or service in question.

Yes, what you offer is amazing. Yes, in some cases, the customer would have to be a fool to pass it up. No, this should not be emphasized over everything else. The why of the purchase should take precedence over the what in most cases.

Keep it short but sweet

Another way to make sales proposals effective is to get right to the point and keep it short. Multiple pages are not necessary and can even be detrimental; customers are more likely to just skim through them. The best course of action would be to limit your proposal to just a single page or two pages at most.

Offer the right amount of options

There are some sales proposals that choose to offer just a single option. Having only one option is not desirable as it leads the customer to feel pressured. Two options is only marginally better. It still provides a limited choice, and customers might feel cornered by the proposal.

The best way to do this would be to offer at least three options; in this, you give your customers a bit of breathing room as far as choices are concerned. This also allows customers to feel more in control of the situation.

Make the proposal a contract

At the bottom of the proposal should be an area where prospects are allowed to sign. This effectively makes it a contract agreement of sorts. This simple technique is quite useful as it increases the likelihood that a potential customer will engage in business with you. Should your sale be particularly complicated, know that you can always elaborate with a more complex contract later on.

Practice Makes Perfect

The more you put tactics such as these into practice, the better your crafted sales proposal becomes. Well-made proposals can not only land you more deals, but they also lead to larger sales and may even be worth using proposal templates. Most importantly, your customers will feel good about the whole experience, having received what they wanted or needed. They are also unlikely to feel any regret about having given you the time of day.