[00:00:01.930] – Speaker 1
All right, gang, we’re going to get started in just a moment. All right, well, I’m going to go ahead and get started. Everybody, welcome back for our fifth and final session called Creating and Presenting Winning Proposals. So this is where we close the deal, right? So welcome back. Good to have everybody with us. I see more people kind of joining in. So I’m James Kernan. I’ve been telling you little bits and pieces about me as we’ve gone through all five weeks. So thank you. And I won’t bore you all to death by continuing to do that, but I’ll be the presenter and coach today.
[00:01:06.420] – Speaker 2
Welcome.
[00:01:07.510] – Speaker 1
So I’m going to go through very quickly, just a program overview. Today’s primary session is session five, and that’s where all the content is. I’ll be digging into that. Make sure you download your workbook. There is a ton of extra materials in the workbook this week specifically that I don’t have time to go into detail today. So there’s a lot of additional detail there. Make sure you read through your workbooks and always download the related handouts. Then we’re going to go ahead and wrap up, and I’ll open it up for some Q and A. So some quick housekeeping friendly reminder how we can communicate during today’s session. You can ask questions in the question and answer box in the control panel. So I’ll be asking questions today because I want to make this as interactive as we can. So please make sure that you’ve got your Q and A box open and get ready to answer some questions and ask questions as well. We’ll make this both ways. So here’s where we’re at session five and the program objectives. So we first started off with session one, where I gave you a copy and already done for you playbook.
[00:02:27.610] – Speaker 1
Now the playbook in an edible format, so you guys can just jump right in, slap your logo on it, put your own fingerprint on it, and customize it. Moving forward, I gave you a playbook in the handouts of session one, really done by design to increase your appointments, your sales efforts, and get everybody, regardless if they have a sales title or not, get everybody on the same sheet of music. It’s so incredibly important in your organizations. Number two, understand the value of what the prospect wants. Three, how to better qualify prospects for the importance of a sales process. And five, how to give prospects options to close more deals. We’re going to talk about that today. Okay, so here are the five different sessions that we’ve gone through. The Creating Your Sales playbook, I just talked about that in session one, appointment setting. So that’s really where we built our campaign plan. And I gave out several different handouts around how to create and get appointments. Okay, that’s important that you guys session two is probably one of the most important ones that we have. Session three was how to run a sales meeting. I’ll talk about that a little bit more today because this is the third and final meeting in the seven step sales process that I teach at Kerning Consulting and that I feel like the most effective in our industry.
[00:03:57.570] – Speaker 1
And this is really I’ll show you that here in just a little bit. And then session four and session five we’ve talked about. So I’m going to just dive right into it because we’ve got a lot of content. So I love this comment. If you don’t ask, the answer is always no, right? The answer is always no. So in sales, we’ve got to always be asking for the order. And to me, there is a right way to do it, and there is a wrong way to do it. I remember vividly when I owned my own MSP. We are in San Diego now, my age myself. So don’t start laughing, you younger folks. But there was a I think it was called enable at the time, and this was when managed services really kind of started taking off. And this was back around about the 2002 time frame. And it was the very first time he met with me. They hadn’t even given us pricing yet, but he was there pitching their new RMM platform. And I was only in the meeting for 30 minutes. And at the very end of the meeting, he looked at me and said, are you ready to go?
[00:05:05.700] – Speaker 1
Are you ready to sign on the dotted line yet? And I respected him for having the nerve and the gumption to ask that question. But two, I just said, look, you haven’t even given me pricing yet. I don’t understand your value proposition. So the answer is no. But it made me think, and I respected that guy for asking that question, even though I disagreed his timing. And so that always stuck with me, and I wanted to share that with you. It was kind of funny. So here’s where we’re at. So I talked about the value based selling, seven step sales process. Prospect, qualify, needs analysis, value proposition, proposal, proposal close. There’s negotiation. Sometimes the 6th step is very fast, and then the 7th is closed. And I added an 8th step because I think it’s important. We don’t want to just sell to people that like us, trust us, and know what we do one time, right? We want to continue to sell to them for the rest of our lives. So that’s the ongoing sales. And we talked about that in our last session. So this is where we’re at now. This is basically the proposal meeting.
[00:06:23.810] – Speaker 1
The proposal meeting. So we’re basically at step five and six and seven to be the third and final meeting with the client. This is where these steps are really combined. Okay, so before I dig into things, and I outlined a lot more detail in the workbooks, so be sure to download the workbook. But I want to go into a little bit of the terminology and the acronyms. Our industry is hilarious because it has so many I asked this question so many times, hey, is there a book that lists all the different terminology? There are so many different words and terms and then the acronyms are just ridiculous. We’re all MSP and what does that mean? We’re all laughing about that. But when you really think about it, for those of us that have been in the industry for a long time, there’s acronyms for everything. And I wish somebody, if anybody knows of a book, by the way, because I do a lot of recruiting and training for new business development teams, and I would buy that book and every single person that I’m involved with onboarding, I would make sure they get that because especially if they’re from another industry, it’s brutal.
[00:07:36.830] – Speaker 1
Long story short, let me start with a little bit of the terminology. So as it relates back to proposals in closing the deal, too many TLAs, three letter acronyms. I love it. You’re right on, Jim. So RFP is request for proposal.
[00:07:55.510] – Speaker 2
Okay?
[00:07:55.970] – Speaker 1
RFP’s Request for Proposals. I’m not going to talk a whole lot about RFPs and RFIs in today’s session. Most people say no, and they decide as a business practice not to respond to RFPs. But I would encourage you to consider to do that, okay? And tell you countless stories about my organizations always responded on proposals, especially if we were involved in creating the whole opportunity in the project in the first place. You registered the lead with your manufacturer. You created the opportunity. The proposal is really written around you. So there’s tricks of making sure that you can win projects like that or customers like that, but I’m not going to go into detail on that today. But request for information comes before the request for proposal. They’re seeking information to find out from different companies if you have the talent or the ability or maybe the certifications to help them with the project. And they ask lots of questions to help give them answers to determine if these are the right steps that I’m required to do. Okay, so that’s RFI Request for Information proposal is really just a sales proposal. I hope everybody gets that one.
[00:09:18.460] – Speaker 1
Sow is a Statement of work. In many cases, people write a statement of work almost like a project plan that will have some of the legal lingo in it might have a Gantt chart, which is a timeline of milestones like, I’m going to get these things or these tasks or these milestones done by certain dates. Many times that’s included in a statement of work. And on big sophisticated clients and on big sophisticated projects, that’s part of what you’re submitting. You’re submitting a statement of work along with your proposal to win their business. This okay? For those of you that don’t have a statement of work, feel free to email me. I’ve got a mini version called a Statement of Actions, which just kind of a mini two page plan. The Statement of Work sometimes are 15 page documents and I’m happy to share some examples with you if you ever need that. So that’s something else. And then PSA means either managed Service agreement or Master services agreement. There are two different meanings on that. The Master Services Agreement, I’m going to show you an example today and as part of the handouts in the online class you can click on that link and you’ll be able to download the template that I’m going to give you.
[00:10:45.600] – Speaker 1
I’ll show you in today’s session. But the Master Services Agreement typically is either a one, two or three page document that just has the basic T’s and C’s of what you’re providing. I’m a fan of not having too much legal mumbo jumbo in there because that becomes a problem for sales and just delays the whole transaction. But you do need terminology in there that will protect you and kind of sets the terms of engagement. So the master services agreement. So there’s a managed service agreement? That’s what I was just talking about. The Master Services Agreement sometimes is all encompassing for all the work that you’re doing for the client and in many cases you do multiple projects, hopefully soon. This is a great campaign idea. The Microsoft Server 2012 End of Life is coming up in the next twelve months, right? And what that means is all the support, the patches, things like that are no longer supported by Microsoft. So it’s going to create enormous vulnerabilities and security risks for people and the hackers are already writing things to attack that and exploit that as soon as they can. So we need to be on the front end curve.
[00:12:05.740] – Speaker 1
Use that as a marketing campaign to upgrade your current clients and charge them for those projects and then also use that to attract new prospects and ask those questions that could be part of your first visit with them. Do you have any 2012 servers? And by the way, did you know that those are end of life for support, creating enormous vulnerabilities? But I’m sure that your current providers take care of that for you. Hint, hint, you get what I’m saying, so stay tuned on that. So that’s a little bit of the terminology here. So here’s what today’s agenda looks like. I’m going to go into the three key elements for every successful sales presentation. I’m going to talk about best practices on proposals, how to write proposals. I’m not really going to elaborate too much on that. There’s some good write ups that I’ve included in today’s workbook and I want you to check that out. That’s in the event that you are responding to an RFP, for example, you’re going to build an RFP library, hopefully over time. The very first one you ever write is a little daunting because they ask lots of specific questions and you have to give specific examples.
[00:13:19.840] – Speaker 1
Then you mix in a little bit of marketing fluff. In all my organizations, we always had a library of templates available, making future RFPs much easier to respond to.
[00:13:30.950] – Speaker 2
Okay?
[00:13:31.540] – Speaker 1
But it’s important. I would recommend reading through that part of the workbook. Today, I’m going to talk a little bit about overcoming objections and then trial closes. How to ask for the order and also how to present with confidence. Confidence in sales is so critical to your success, and we’re going to talk about that. And then I have an example. Managed service agreement at the end of today’s class, and then also a sample proposal. For those of you that you don’t have a proposal template, I’ll give you a template. I’ll send that over as one of the handouts for today.
[00:14:10.550] – Speaker 2
Okay?
[00:14:11.200] – Speaker 1
So a lot of content, as you can tell. I’m going to go into the bulk of this, so feel free to ask any questions as we go along.
[00:14:19.480] – Speaker 2
Okay?
[00:14:20.770] – Speaker 1
So to me, the three parts of a successful sales presentation is really three parts. So the first part is a slide presentation. You’ve seen me teach our class. I like presenting off of a graphical interface, prezi PowerPoint. Most people are visual learners, and they understand things a lot better when there’s some type of handouts and or some type of graphical presentation, instead of just handing them a price sheet. With your pricing, you can build value so much better. You could elaborate on your successes as an organization, build credibility in the slide presentation, but the whole point is to present that you’re a credible resource for them. Number two, that you understand the business challenges that they have and you understand their goals and objectives as well. But you’ve got a plan to resolve those business challenges with the use of technology.
[00:15:24.030] – Speaker 2
Okay?
[00:15:26.990] – Speaker 1
I’m sorry. That’s the slide presentation. In some cases, you can go ahead and put your pricing up there to make it easier, or you could just hand out your proposal in the proposal meeting and so forth. The proposal presentation is basically your proposal template that I’ll share with you. To me, it has a little bit of marketing fluff in there on purpose, but it also has the meat and potatoes of what the pricing is. I’ll talk about this a couple of times today. I like giving options for customers, okay? If you quote them one thing, you’re forcing them into a yes no answer immediately. But if you give them options, hey, we’ve got a good, better, best, and here’s what I would recommend and why, okay? That’s consultative selling. That’s value based selling. So I like presenting options. I’ll talk about that here in just a little bit. And then there’s an optional ROI summary, like a total cost of ownership, a cost analysis. And I’ve been a business owner for 25 years of my life, and I’ve been a sales professional my entire life, okay? And I will tell you one thing. It really boils down to this.
[00:16:40.060] – Speaker 1
I need to be able to demonstrate to my prospect that I’m either going to make them money with what I’m proposing, or I’m going to save them money with what I’m proposing. And if I can’t explain that in a simple way to my customer or my prospect, then I have no business being involved in the sales process in the first place, okay? Sometimes we might luck out and they might come to you and say, oh, I just won the lotto, and I want to buy all your goods and services that you have to offer because you’re really cool. That rarely happens. They look at things from a business perspective, think of how you process and analyze what you spend your money on as a business owner, when you spend your money and how you put a lot of thought into that. Typically, sometimes there’s emotional or impulse buys, but I want to educate you to think like us business owners do when you make a decision. So it really boils down to, can I demonstrate how to save them money or make them money by making this investment in this project?
[00:17:48.180] – Speaker 2
Okay?
[00:17:49.180] – Speaker 1
And that’s where the ROI summary comes in, and I’ve got an example of that for you as well. So let me talk a little bit about the slide presentation. Just some quick bullet points. Number one, I like delivering the sales presentation with a slide show, okay? We’re just talking either prezi or PowerPoint. Just like the assessment. Deliverable is a really powerful example. Red is failing, green is good, and yellow is warning. You’re kind of walking through the different facets of what you found in your assessment with this prospect or your customer. And again, I like using slides, not just to add words. It just helps you stay on message. And if you’ve got templates built out on this, it’s really easy to build these out. So I always prefer to do a sales presentation with the slide show. It’s how the big consulting firms do it as well. And I’ve been in the industry for a long time and feel it’s a best practice. So you need to remind the prospect of what their needs are and the implications of failing to address them. So remember, in value based Selling, as we walk through the sales process, it’s important that we are asking good questions and we are really good listeners.
[00:19:11.640] – Speaker 1
You need to have an understanding of how they use technology in their business to help them make more money or save more money. You need to understand what those issues, challenges, and concerns are and help put solutions together. When you have an understanding of how they’re using it and then where it’s falling short or where they need to go, then selling becomes fun and it becomes a lot easier. It’s that business conversation and not a technology conversation. You want to offer options while guiding the clients toward what you want to recommend. Remember the power of us consultants. We don’t want to just give one option. We want to kind of give a good, better, best type of scenario, make a recommendation to say, if I were you, here’s what I would do, and here’s why. That’s what makes the difference in value based selling. And people are going to listen to your recommendations might not mean that they are going to go that direction, but statistically, that’s the direction they go. I’ll share some stats here in just a little bit, okay? And then as you go through your sales process and the different meetings, talking about overcoming objections and doing some trial closes, I’ve got a slide on that I want to dig into a little bit more.
[00:20:31.550] – Speaker 1
So I’ll talk about that more than a minute. So how many of you go ahead and answer yes in the QA box, but how many of you have read this book from Allen Weiss Billion Dollar Consulting? If you haven’t, it’s a great book. I’d recommend pick it up. It’s a great book, and I love the philosophies that Alan has here, and I’ll share a couple of the bullet points with you. But he really talks about formalizing the prospects authorization to buy and confirms the option that they have selected as part of how you communicate with them. You’re pointing out that you understand their pain and then you’re guiding them to a solution that you want by offering them options and wedging or boxing them in is what I call it. And then it reminds the prospect of their current needs and your approach in addressing them along with pricing for the option that they had selected. So one important piece is make sure that when you’re proposing things, that The Juice has to be worth the squeeze. If they have a pain point and they need to upgrade a server, they’ve already told you they’ve got a minimal budget.
[00:21:49.170] – Speaker 1
Everybody’s driving, and you go out in the parking lot and you can see that the equipment is really old and they don’t invest in technology. Those are all red flags. And you’re not going to want to come in there with a $250,000 server upgrade project because that’s probably not going to happen. So The Juice has to be worth the squeeze. And think back of yourself and how you make your own decisions. Always remind yourself of that. That should be kind of a guiding principle. Your rule of thumb. What would I do in this scenario with the facts that I just presented back based on my assessment or my questionnaires? Here’s what I’m recommending that they do. Does this make sense from a total cost of ownership standpoint?
[00:22:36.150] – Speaker 2
Okay?
[00:22:36.430] – Speaker 1
And that’s kind of the gauge for me. That always keeps us honest, right? So that’s important. So out of the book, some of the proposal tips. Here’s tip number one. Remember, we’ve talked about this before, but focus on business outcomes, not technical outcomes. You want to make sure that you’re not burying yourself in the weeds with kind of the speeds and feeds of how fast the server is. That’s an old school selling. That was called features and benefits. The features of this is X, Y and Z. Well, I don’t really care if it’s fast, I don’t really care that it’s shiny. What does that mean to me, the customer? Oh, well, it means we’ll process and compute faster, increasing productivity by 25%. It will increase your revenues because your staff is taking longer to do computing tasks.
[00:23:34.230] – Speaker 2
Okay?
[00:23:34.730] – Speaker 1
That’s what I need to hear. So I think that’s really important. Focus on the business outcomes, not the technical outcomes. Reflect on the strategic value of your solutions, not the technical feature. And this kind of goes back to what we talked about in session, one of understanding your value proposition.
[00:23:53.670] – Speaker 2
Okay?
[00:23:54.070] – Speaker 1
What are you guys really good at? What are your strengths? One of those strengths hopefully, is your ability to listen and look at how a prospect is using technology and to help architect a solution that will resolve their issues, challenges and concerns, right. Their business pain or their problems. That hopefully is a value add and you need to always be pushing that illustrate a meeting or achieving overall business or business unit objectives. That’s really just making sure that you understand what their goals and objectives are as a business and you’re putting a solution in place or a technology plan that’s going to help map and bridge the gap of where they want to be and where they’re at. Now that’s our responsibility as technology consultants.
[00:24:45.880] – Speaker 2
Okay?
[00:24:47.130] – Speaker 1
And then transform the technology dependent customers to technology strategic clients by being part of their roadmap. Right. Create a plan for them. Architect something. They don’t have to buy everything the first day you meet them, but if you have a three year plan or a five year plan, you can implement it in phases, maybe every six months, every twelve months, every 18 months. That’s the type of thing refreshing their technology, adding storage, moving things to the cloud. There’s all sorts of things that can go into that strategy, but they need a strategy that’s one of your primary value ads is our expertise. Right? So that’s tip number one. Tip number two, make sure that you always add a copyright and confidentiality statement in the footer of the proposal. So go ahead and you can say yes, but how many of you had seen proposals from other competitors that a prospect or a customer gave you and go, oh, here’s their pricing, here’s their proposal, let’s see if you can beat it.
[00:25:55.670] – Speaker 2
Okay?
[00:25:56.380] – Speaker 1
It happens all the time and in my 30 years of selling, I’ve seen countless times of that floating around. I’ve even seen it on the backside of people sending me copies of my Sows or my proposals that we have sent over to a customer, and it somehow comes back full circle where I can see it and I know where it comes from, right? Because the customer’s name is all over it. So make sure it’s not going to stop them from doing it. But it’s your work product. Copyright it and put a confidentiality statement in there. I think that’s by far an industry best practice and will certainly help make you more professional. So that was sales tip number two. Tip number three. It really kind of covers a couple of components here. I think there’s ten, but a situational appraisal. You want a short description of the customer situation and why there’s a sense of urgency of addressing it. We talked about this in running your sales meetings from meeting number one and meeting number two. It’s always important. Ask lots of questions, make sure you understand their situation so you can repeat it back in your proposal, just like we did in the assessment review presentation.
[00:27:21.990] – Speaker 1
You called me in to look at X, Y and Z. We looked at X, Y and Z, but also ABC, and here’s what we found. Here are some of the vulnerabilities and challenges. You’re kind of pointing out that what you know of the situation and what you know of their issues, and then we can architect a solution in place. I hope that makes sense. The engagement objectives are pretty simple. What’s the outcome of where we’re going with this? The strategy? It’s really just a brief overview of how you achieve these engagement objectives. Sometimes that’s the project plan. Hey, we’re going to implement this project in three phases, and normally customers will appreciate that because you have a full understanding and a phased approach. Also the performance measurement, how positive outcomes will be evaluated, almost like goals. And I like timetables, milestones, and part of the project plan and how you’re going to get there. I talked about this a minute ago about the juice needs to be worth the squeeze. In the book, he talks about value on investment, or most of us know ROI return on investment. I was a finance major, so this just came naturally for me.
[00:28:47.400] – Speaker 1
But I always wanted to know how much something would cost and what’s the business impact if I didn’t do this versus if I did do this and how long will it take me to recover or start making money or start saving money on that investment. So that’s why I like using some of those cost analysis tools, TCO tools, and one of those I’ve shared with you. And that’s always optional, but to me, it can become a no brainer. There was a big project I was involved with, and it was big, so I’m going to throw some big numbers out at you. But a client of mine in San Diego County was a big client called Cardinal Health. That was their name at the time. And I was up in a business park out in the community just outside of town. That’s where I lived. We had just bought a building, 14,000 square foot building. 5000 of it was just office space, but we had tons of warehouse space in the back. But because we were primarily an MSP and did a lot of security, I didn’t stock products. So the warehouse was completely empty. I think there was a grill and a basketball hoop back there for our parties, but I won’t tell you that story.
[00:29:57.880] – Speaker 1
So my point is, this customer called me over and said, hey, take a look at this warehouse. I want you to give me some ideas of what we could do with this. And I went over and it looked like it was the biggest warehouse I’d ever seen in my life. It felt like I was inside the Houston Astrodome, and it had pallets of these horribly shrunk wrap. They were computers. Most of it was computers. It had some printers, some displays and monitors. But I couldn’t believe how much equipment they had in there. And I said, what am I looking at here? What is all this? And they said they’re national help desk. Okay, so what this company does, Cardinal Health, they basically take OEM computers and they bundle their software on and create these kiosks that are inside hospitals all around the world. And they’re a US. Based help desk would try to diagnose what the issue was over the phone. And if they couldn’t figure it out, they would just send them a brand new computer. All the old computers would get brought into these regional distribution centers, and then everything ultimately ended up in San Diego.
[00:31:15.630] – Speaker 1
And that’s why I was looking at this graveyard. And I knew that there was a lot of really good equipment in there, but for whatever reason, it didn’t pass the Help desk test, and they ended up just shipping out new equipment. So anyway, long story short, I put together a project proposal for them of like, hey, look, I’ve got the room and the horsepower. We’re going to do factory refurbishing program. And all these servers, they were all servers. And if I can’t recertify them back into a warranted state, then I’m going to dispose of them for you and give you a certificate of destruction and delete all the data and destroy the drives for security purposes. So I put this project plan together. It was a proposal, and it was about a $6 million proposal over a three year time frame. But the ROI was I think it was about $11 million just in the very first year of what they were spending on all this new computer equipment. They were going to pay me to factory recertified all the stuff that is owned by them anyway. And there was huge ROI on it. And it was a no brainer.
[00:32:27.890] – Speaker 1
I sent out that. Proposal to, like, six different people in the executive team. I put it in FedEx envelopes, and in the bottom of my cover letter, I wrote, who all Cc’d this so everybody’s boss would see who else got it. And it created quite a hoopla, of course. And anyway, long story short, there were a couple of companies that went through a trial period, and my firm won it, fortunately. So these ROI summaries are really important, especially in big dollar projects. So I just wanted to share that with you. Certainly it was worth with your time. So on the back half of this, here’s something else I want to share. Just as a best practice. I like providing options, right? So we’ve talked about this a little bit already. Instead of the customer making a decision of should I engage? You’re forcing them into a yes no. They’re thinking about how should I engage?
[00:33:25.270] – Speaker 2
Okay.
[00:33:26.180] – Speaker 1
I always like doing a minimum of three options. There are different strategies on this. I just like using the good, better, best.
[00:33:35.580] – Speaker 2
Okay.
[00:33:36.390] – Speaker 1
Or if it’s a no brainer on what exactly they need to do, then you could turn right around and give them that, but also give some additional options, like a la carte options, like French fries on the hamburger, so to speak. If you know they already want a hamburger and that’s what they need. Okay, I hope that makes sense. I like wedging the prospect with a range of prices. Remember, we talked about this in the training number three, about how to run your meetings and how to do an assessment review. I call it that wedge technique, or kind of boxing them in. You have a high price, the middle price, and a low price. And normally that’s going to fall inside their budget and or what they’re already spending, and then you can upsell them from that standpoint. So here’s something interesting that I found. So if you give three different options, the inexpensive option is number three. That’s the one that we don’t want to sell anyway, right? But we’re doing it to put this, the ceiling, the middle level, and the floor price. We’re making the range as wide as we can. Normally, 25% of the time.
[00:34:50.660] – Speaker 1
That’s what a prospect would go with. 60% of the time is really the medium, the middle of the road. That is important to know. And then option one is like the high end. It’s like your all you can eat plan, for example. That’s 15% of the time. Here’s my point. 85% of the time, they’re going to pick option one or two.
[00:35:12.470] – Speaker 2
Okay?
[00:35:13.260] – Speaker 1
So statistically, that’s where we want them to go anyway. Not with our least expensive option, but this is what makes it really important. I like explaining it this way. Here’s a good, better, best option.
[00:35:26.720] – Speaker 2
Okay.
[00:35:27.950] – Speaker 1
Here and here. But I would recommend this one in the middle. And here’s why. And then you’d go into how this is going to address their issues, challenges and concerns of the business objectives that they gave you early in the sales process. That typically works extremely well just from a best practice standpoint.
[00:35:48.530] – Speaker 2
Okay.
[00:35:49.510] – Speaker 1
It’s really important to have a timeline. So the sense of urgency, if there’s no reason for a customer to say yes, then many times they won’t.
[00:36:02.110] – Speaker 2
Okay.
[00:36:02.670] – Speaker 1
So it’s really important to make sure that you talk about the timetable that it will take to take over the account to do the project or do the project plan successfully. Elaborate. And I always liked exaggerating a little bit of it’s probably going to take this long to get A, B and C done. And you can use this as a trial close as well, but it’s important to explain what the timeline and the schedule would look like to set expectations with the prospect and then I’ll talk about the trial close in just a minute. But the idea would be if you know what their timing is, let’s just say they have a software renewal that’s due by a certain date and you need to go install some servers and update their software and upgrade their network infrastructure. But you need to have it all done by a certain date. That’s perfect because then you can drive your whole proposal in your timeline around that expiration date, if that makes sense.
[00:37:09.120] – Speaker 2
Okay.
[00:37:09.690] – Speaker 1
And I like using it as a trial period because, hey, I understand your time frame, but my project queue is really busy right now, Mr. Prospect. But I tell you what, if I can get a commitment by Friday, I can guarantee that we’ll get these things done and get this over to you. But I need acceptance by Friday to get you plugged into our project too, because I’ve got a lot of other things already ahead of you and I could get you worked in and that trial close typically works really well in that type of scenario. So the accountabilities make sure you assign the responsibilities between the prospect and the It provider for the bigger shops. This is a perfect example of when you would propose project management.
[00:37:56.730] – Speaker 2
Okay.
[00:37:57.280] – Speaker 1
And many of you probably don’t have a project management practice in your business. You just do it for free today. But in the evolution of most MSPs, as you start getting bigger and more sophisticated and do bigger projects, it’s okay for the owner or the service manager or a lead engineer to also be a project manager. But you guys should be charging your customers for that, for setting up the meetings and verifying that all the equipment was delivered on time or doing the research on your statement of work or some of the product compatibilities, for example, you should be billing for that time. And I like outlining the responsibilities of, okay, you’re responsible for X, Y and Z and we’re going to do A, B and C. And then it’s a good way of setting expectations, and it’s also a great way to upsell them. I’ll take care of these for you. If you guys are too busy or you don’t have the horsepower to do that, it’s a great way to grab additional hours on projects. So here’s the key point, really. One of the main things on this section, number nine is the fees and payment terms and conditions.
[00:39:05.760] – Speaker 1
This is where you have the kind of the wedge, the good, better, best. This is in reverse order, but option one, $2,400. Option two, 3200. And option three, 4400. That’s the good, better, best.
[00:39:20.370] – Speaker 2
Okay?
[00:39:21.010] – Speaker 1
And in many cases, you could come up with whatever payment structure you want, ideally on all services. I always liked collecting 100% of the money up front. Most bigger companies are not going to do that. They’re used to being billed over a period of time. So I would do 50% on acceptance. So when they sign your project plan, or when they sign the proposal, you’re going to collect Cod or credit card. You’re going to need to collect 50% upfront, and then you can build them for the remaining term. If it’s a really big project and most of you probably don’t run into that, I would do milestone billings.
[00:40:01.110] – Speaker 2
Okay?
[00:40:01.500] – Speaker 1
Don’t wait until you’re at the end of a six month project before you send the invoice. Do milestone billing. So you get money each month because it costs you money to do what you do.
[00:40:14.070] – Speaker 2
Okay?
[00:40:14.620] – Speaker 1
And you can create prompt payment discounts. We used to call them prepaid blocks of time. So, hey, I’m estimating it’s going to be about 100 hours for this project. I’m going to offer you a 10% discount on what the normal hourly rate would be, but it’s a prepaid block of time and you get this 10% discount because you pay for it upfront. And that was always an easy way in a best practice for people to engage.
[00:40:46.610] – Speaker 2
Okay?
[00:40:47.320] – Speaker 1
And then acceptance. I like making it official. In outlining this. And you can have this in your agreement, or you can have this on your proposal, but your signature below indicates the acceptance of this proposal and your agreement with all of its provisions in terms specified herein.
[00:41:06.690] – Speaker 2
Okay?
[00:41:07.180] – Speaker 1
That’s kind of all encompassing, a little bit of legal mumbo jumbo, but it will help professionalize your proposal. And it sets expectations that once they sign, then you can execute billing and you can get rolling with the project.
[00:41:24.640] – Speaker 2
Okay?
[00:41:25.210] – Speaker 1
So those are part of those tips that I wanted to share with you that are good, best practices. So the presentation really is there’s the PowerPoint presentation that really is you understanding what their business goals are and what the outcomes will be if they follow through on your good, better, best recommendations. And the outcomes can be very different based on what path they go down. But I think that’s always the best way to explain things in a PowerPoint presentation format. The proposal. Most times, you can have a hard copy and hand that out during the presentation. I don’t like handing out the proposal in the very beginning of the meeting because everybody’s going to flip back to the last page and look at what the pricing is, and you can kind of read the vibe in the room. I would do that in the middle of the meeting or towards the tail end of the meeting.
[00:42:21.890] – Speaker 2
Okay.
[00:42:22.530] – Speaker 1
But your pricing should be in the presentation, so you’ve already set expectations of what the number is. So why would people want to flip back when you hand that out to them?
[00:42:32.750] – Speaker 2
Okay.
[00:42:33.380] – Speaker 1
And then again, the optional cost saving analysis or ROI, that’s something optional that I would only do on larger projects. Okay, so let’s talk a little bit about a couple of other areas here. Overcoming the objectives, the objections. And in many cases, the objections are kind of falling into these categories. There’s price, need, time, product, or source. And if you’re a small shop, for example, and I was in this scenario when I bought my first MSP all by myself, I was 100% owner. We only have three people, but I came from a big company where we were almost 500 people, and we had a lot of horsepower behind us. And I remember thinking, all my big clients, SAIC, NASA, University of California, San Diego, the whole UC system used to buy all their Dell Computer equipment from our organization. And it’s like, why would they want to do business with a company that only has three employees?
[00:43:44.770] – Speaker 2
Okay?
[00:43:45.650] – Speaker 1
So I needed to think outside the box and make ourselves look bigger and better. So in my presentations, I had a picture of a three story building saying, oh, this is our headquarter office here in San Diego. There’s an impressive picture. I didn’t say word. Suite 325 on the top left part of that one window that’s way up there, that’s my office, and the rest belongs to other people. I wasn’t lying, and I wasn’t misleading anybody. I just said, this is a picture of our building. And that’s just kind of an example of that’s a normal objection that was going to come up, and I wanted to address these during the sales process so I can overcome those. But pricing, if the client finds your pricing and services to be just too expensive, then that’s bad news. That’s why I like giving a range. Right. The need the client really isn’t looking for services that you’re offering. Normally they are, or you wouldn’t be meeting with them in the first place.
[00:44:49.450] – Speaker 2
Okay?
[00:44:50.140] – Speaker 1
So if you walk out the door from a sales meeting and you’re scratching your head, they really don’t need anything, well, that probably means you didn’t ask enough questions.
[00:44:59.470] – Speaker 2
Okay.
[00:44:59.870] – Speaker 1
Or you didn’t ask the right questions. Why did you invite me here today? What else do you want to talk about? I’ve got an agenda that I want to talk about, but why have you invited me here today? What’s going on? And you’re going to force their hand to start really opening up and being honest with you.
[00:45:18.230] – Speaker 2
Okay.
[00:45:19.010] – Speaker 1
The time I talked about the time elements, really important. So through the sales process, make sure you’re asking what their timetable is on what they’re going to buy and who they’re going to buy it from, because you need to know that deadline, because you can use that to help close deals. The product, they don’t think that your products or services are right for them. That goes everything back to the value proposition of you understanding what their challenges are, and then you’re going to address them through the solution that you’re proposing. You’re going to give them options. So normally you can overcome those by using that technique. And then the source, the client isn’t convinced that you’re the right provider for the company. That goes back to my example I just gave you a minute ago, me only having three employees. These guys are too small. They’re not the right vendor for us.
[00:46:08.560] – Speaker 2
Okay.
[00:46:09.220] – Speaker 1
And there are different ways that you can maneuver around that. So I like anticipating the common client objectives and in the very beginning of the sales process, start addressing those, whether you’re asked or not, by demonstrating what I just shared with you.
[00:46:26.490] – Speaker 2
Okay.
[00:46:27.790] – Speaker 1
So here is something else I think is important. I wanted to include this in today’s session as well. What’s the normal follow up strategy? Okay, what is your follow up strategy? It’s pretty funny. Most people don’t have one. It’s like when I have time, I’ll follow up with the prospect. After I met with them, I proposed my pricing. I go back to my office. I got 50 other things to do. And when you carve out time, oh, I got to follow up on that proposal I did last Friday. By then, it’s probably too late. Okay, so tip number one, just remember, over 75% of sales require a minimum of five follow ups. Minimum, sometimes many more. And 44% of sales people give up after just one follow up. So many of you right now in today’s class are the owners and the sales people. You care a lot more than the average salesperson, so obviously you’re going to follow up more than once. But I think it’s important to get in the mindset it’s going to take some time for me to follow up on this.
[00:47:34.760] – Speaker 2
Okay.
[00:47:37.570] – Speaker 1
So the other key thing is when you’re meeting with them face to face, remember the tip and technique I shared with you before you leave your proposal meeting. Say, hey, when would be a good time for me to schedule time to either come back in and meet with you, or maybe we schedule a zoom or a team’s video meeting for me to answer any questions that you may have on the proposal. And I would recommend setting up that appointment before you leave. Right. And set it up as soon as you possibly can. I would always follow up on a proposal meeting within 24 hours.
[00:48:14.770] – Speaker 2
Okay.
[00:48:15.510] – Speaker 1
If they didn’t say yes in that meeting every day that goes by, the likelihood statistically of them saying yes goes down dramatically each 24 hours, increment.
[00:48:27.010] – Speaker 2
All right.
[00:48:27.360] – Speaker 1
So at a minimum, you’re going to want to call them or email them a follow up with the proposal. And really all you’re doing is, hey, I want to follow up with you to see if you have any questions from yesterday’s proposal meeting. I feel like we addressed your needs. We met the budget. I gave you some options. I feel really good about the options I gave you, but do you have any questions?
[00:48:52.870] – Speaker 2
Okay.
[00:48:53.610] – Speaker 1
It’s as simple as that. I would make sure that you try to follow those basic tips that will help you as a follow up strategy. And I’m going to talk about here in just a minute about how to avoid ghosting when they just go dark on you. That’s happened as well. So here’s something important. When you’re in the whole sales process, I think you should sprinkle in. Trial closes throughout the entire meeting. You’re trying to earn the whole process. Normally paid assessments in paid proof of concepts are really good ways to get the customer qualified, first of all, reaching in their pocket. It might be a normal fee of $2,500 or $1,500 for you to do an assessment, but you can discount that down to $250. It’s really important from a strategy standpoint, if you can offer something of value, even if it’s a very low price, and it’s a client that you really want for life, there’s a ton of potential. You could even give it away. But I like the idea of still trying to charge them something because it qualifies the opportunity and will demonstrate back to us that they’re serious about what we’re saying and what we’re talking about, because they’re going to pay for this assessment.
[00:50:24.210] – Speaker 2
Okay.
[00:50:24.910] – Speaker 1
I want to make sure that they’re taking that assessment seriously. The paid or contingency proof of concepts is more of like, hey, we’re going to do a proof of concept for you, and if it meets these three criteria, then you’re going to be charged $2,500. It’s like a try and buy type of thing. Many times that has equipment associated with it. Those work really well as trial closes earlier in the sales process. And then I talked about a minute ago, give them a reason to say yes. It’s all about the timing and what you’re saying. Here’s something I think is important. Use any of these. Trial closes at the end of the sales process. So when you’re done reviewing the meeting and it’s that awkward silence right where you need to ask for the order, you can ask two very simple and friendly ways. So how does this all sound? Okay, that’s simple enough. Or you could ask, have I answered all your questions? Those are two simple ones. A more direct way is, is there any reason today that you won’t want to move forward? That’s a good question to ask. You being much more direct.
[00:51:49.940] – Speaker 1
Is there anything holding you back from saying yesterday based on what we just went through? Because I feel like we’re really good fit. But when you ask a question, it’s hard to do. So you probably ought to practice this, but ask the question and then shut up. And early in my sales career, gosh, I was so guilty. I would ask the question, and it was because it was too direct. I’d keep talking because I felt weird and I didn’t want that awkward silence. Ask the question and then zip it. And then just look at them and you’re going to force them into an answer. I like the friendlier ways of asking. I didn’t like the real direct ways because then it got super awkward. And then the fourth one. If you sign today, I can get you into our busy project schedule by next week and we’re going to meet your timeline like you talked about.
[00:52:38.470] – Speaker 2
Okay?
[00:52:39.480] – Speaker 1
You’re not giving away anything. I’m not a big fan of discounting things right there. To make them say yes, you can do that. But these are some other questions that I like pushing the prospect along so they can say yes. Here are some quick tips on not to get ghosted. Try to get the facts and figures about why they’re not calling you back. They could be out of town. They could have won the lottery and went into Tahiti for a one month vacation. Try to get the facts and figures about what their process looks like. Change your language. That kind of means you can reach out in different ways. You could text them. You could call them. You can email them. You could stop by the office. Try to add some value of if you feel like you’re getting ghosted because they just don’t connect to your value proposition. Add something of value. Say, you know what? Your kid I know just went away to college. If you sign up with us for your 25 computers at the office, I’m going to throw in a free remote package. Normally it’s $49 a month. I’m going to throw that in for free for your kid who’s away at college to make sure they don’t have issues with their computers and add something of value to them.
[00:54:01.490] – Speaker 1
Like I talked about, always set up the meeting, the next meeting before you leave the existing meeting. That helps make sure you understand their buying process and try to align your seven step process with their buying process. Change the channel. Sometimes that just means stop by their office. And I was in the area with another meeting. I just wanted to stop by to see if you had any questions on the proposal that we did and sometimes just fall on your sword and qualify out. There’s nothing wrong with that if you feel like you’re wasting your time. All right, so regardless of what happens on a scenario, keep them in your marketing. You should have some type of marketing campaign, like an email newsletter at a minimum that goes out once a month. Anyway, keep marketing to them and sooner or later it’s going to warm them up. So remember, Timid, salespeople have skinny kids, as my buddy Zig Ziglar talks about. So I’ve talked about this before, but join a toastmasters group if you want to become a better public speaker. There’s nothing like presenting in front of a room and flubbing things up and you having no confidence at all.
[00:55:14.230] – Speaker 1
It’s going to make your presentation and your value proposition weaker than it should be if you’re not confident in what you have to offer.
[00:55:23.360] – Speaker 2
Okay?
[00:55:24.260] – Speaker 1
Confidence is critical. So we talked about the sales process, five, six, and seven. That’s kind of what we talked about today. Propose, negotiate, and close. So always be closing. Just like this character in Glen. Gary Glenn Ross another great sales movie, probably one of the best of all time. If you want to get a good laugh. This scene is hilarious, but it’s a little off color. There’s maybe a PG version out on YouTube, but you could rent the movie. It’s hilarious. Glenn gary. Glenn ross so here’s an PSA. I have this in the handouts. I’m not going to go through it, but it’s pretty simple of what you’ve got. It’s got the credit card and electronic payment processing. I always like recommending for all of you on any kind of subscription project, make sure that you’re billing on the first of the month that you’re providing the service.
[00:56:25.220] – Speaker 2
Okay?
[00:56:25.640] – Speaker 1
So September 1, I’m automatically going to charge your credit card. We’re going to automate it like that upfront for the month that we’re providing the service. So you don’t have any past due issues with your clients. Always recommend that. Here’s an example of a proposal. So I’m going to send this over. I don’t think this is uploaded yet, but here’s an example proposal. You need to add your confidentiality and a signature acceptance. Make sure you add those. But I wanted to give you something in case you don’t have a template. Get your own testimonials, of course, but here’s an example of what this is. Here is kind of a letter from the president. Here’s why your clients love you. Here’s your core values. These are all good things, I think, that are important to demonstrate. Sprinkling of customer testimonials. Here’s the three different plans. The good, better, best, and here’s the price, monthly price per computer or per user. Here are some options, okay? And then here’s what you’re proposing. This is where you would put your good, better, best for the total number that you have.
[00:57:36.730] – Speaker 2
Okay?
[00:57:37.440] – Speaker 1
So I’m going to go ahead and wrap up. Remember to sell the problem that you’re solving, not the product. That’s where the value is. So today we really went through the best practices on proposals, presenting with confidence, we talked about the master services agreement and I have an example handout for you. And I’m going to get this proposal emailed over to them to upload that. So you guys have it as part of the class where if you need it right away, just email me. I’ll give you my email next in just a second. But I’m glad that you guys were with me today. Okay, so here’s my email address, [email protected], or my phone number in the good old state of Nebraska central time zone. Call me anytime. I’d love to hear from you guys and good luck. Happy is selling and thank you for being part of the five part session on lead gen. Okay, thanks everybody. You take care. Reach out if you need anything.