44:3 Spice up your proposals

Lee:
Welcome to season 44, episode three, with your host, Lee and

Nicole:
Guten morgen, it’s Nicole Osborne here.

Lee:
Folks, you are joining us yet again for the one thing concept. We are looking at what is one thing you can do per episode that will massively change your business. And these need to be achievable things. We really believe that small achievable actions lead to big change. So often, we set ourselves goals which are real grand and we have to do so much work to achieve them and therefore, it’s far easier for us to kind of drop off and never get to where we want to be. What I’ve learned in my extreme old age is that little and often wins the race. So, folks, join us today as Nicole sets the scene for adding a little bit of spice to your proposals.

Nicole:
Oh, Lee, thank you so much. Yes, so your proposals are a really, really important tool for you to get the work from your amazing clients. Now, I know from my corporate career that marketers and companies, business owners and smaller companies, sometimes they’re bored and they’re stressed. They have a lot of pressure to get in more leads to run the whole business, to make it all amazing. So do you know, it’s only natural for them, sometimes, when they get a proposal, which is so boring and bland, that they actually don’t pay the kind of attention they ought to because I know you guys always put a lot of work on it. So Lee and I, we thought, “Okay, what easy advice can we share for you today to help you get onto those short lists and get those amazing projects because you totally deserve to?”
So today is all about how you can actually turn up the volume on your proposals and add that spice because Lee and I, we were talking about cooking. And in my household, my hubby, he’s just got the talent. So I could cook something relatively bland for my son and I, and when my husband comes in and within five minutes, that stir fry is absolutely finger-lickingly amazing. So we want to help you today to do the same for your proposals. And often, all that takes is a mindset change to your approach for really making that time to fine-tuning that proposal for making it pop, for making it amazing. And I think that you’ve got a bit of a story about this you’d like to share, right?

Lee:
I sure do. You see, my proposals were the sorts of proposals that people would essentially scroll down to the price and decide whether or not they were going to use me. And if that describes your business, please continue to listen. Let’s first describe our original proposals. We would include things like, we have a combined 20 years of experience. We were founded in 2005, or whenever we were. We are dedicated to you and dedicated to this and dedicated to chocolate. We are specialists in X, Y, and Z. In fact, in my notes, I even wrote we’re specialists in breaking wind. But I don’t know why, I think I was just trying to entertain myself. But you get the kind of idea of the sort of language.
It was very corporate, very boring. We were pretty much talking about ourselves the entire time. And it was a copy and paste jobby that we would put across all our proposals. It made making our proposals ridiculously easy, but it also meant that our potential client would do what I just said, scroll right down to the price and decide based on that rather than based on whether or not this company that’s proposing the work is cool, is fun, is attractive, has understood what they need. So what we did was we developed a little bit of a framework and I cannot claim that this is my framework. It’s just what we did. And I’m sure many people have done it. It’s just common sense.
And we decided to change how we do the proposals and created a little bit of a template. And the first thing we wanted to do was demonstrate to our clients that we understood them. So the first thing we would do in just one or two paragraphs is essentially reverse brief to them their entire goal, what they want to achieve. Maybe that’s monetarily, maybe that’s just what they physically want to build and why, and all of that good stuff, all wrapped up into a simple one or two paragraphs. And that’s right at the very beginning, “Hey, potential client, we’ve understood you and we understood what you want to achieve.”
Next, we would then share the how. So we know what they want to achieve. Now, let’s share the how with them. And again, in a paragraph or two, we’re just going to tell them how we will help them achieve that goal, whatever that be. Are we going to build them a website? Are we going to be providing them with consultancy? What services are we going to put around all of that? Et cetera, et cetera. So just a very practical paragraph on how we’re going to achieve what we’ve understood you want to do.
Next is then the proof. And that would be adding just a few stories, one or two stories. Again, it can just be a paragraph at a time saying, “This is where we’ve done it for somebody else in the past. And these were the results.” This is essentially acting like the social proof you would put down on your website where you’ve got the testimonials, et cetera, et cetera. Exactly the same sort of process. Very simple, one or two paragraphs, one or two examples of proof where you’ve done this in the past. Very, very helpful.
And then finally, we like to personalise. And that’s personalising kind of throughout with the language, but kind of doing a little kind of personalization at the end is probably nice as well. A little handover to them, say, “Here’s your price. Let’s have a conversation.” And I guess a good example of that, and we were talking about this before we recorded, Nicole, would be if, say, our potential client was into golf, then we might say, “Hey, we will help you get a hole in one with your marketing strategy.”

Nicole:
It helps though because it’s a human being reading that and they probably have to go through 10 of them. And sometimes that’s boring. So if someone just uses a bit of fun language where it’s appropriate, and especially if I’m a golfing company, I’m totally into that kind of language, right? Or you could use sports.

Lee:
Exactly.

Nicole:
Music.

Lee:
Turn you into a rock star.

Nicole:
I just recently sent off a proposal out of my niche for a company who provides fittings for really lovely coffee shops. So I talked about my packages, double espresso, risotto. I named them to kind of show that I get the sector they’re in because, essentially, that’s what you’re doing when you’re personalising it, right? You are showing that you really want this job and why you’re an interesting person to work with. So I absolutely love your golfing. And obviously, I have no clue about golfing, but you can make it about football, anything, right? Just what’s that personal touch, really?

Lee:
Exactly. And you can discover this. You don’t need to make this up. You can discover this when you’re having those conversations. You’re bound to have some sort of discovery conversation, initial conversations, and build some sort of rapport/relationship with that potential client when you are having those calls or those physical meetings. So make some notes. What are those little elements of spice that you can put into that framework? So let’s understand what they want, demonstrate how you’re going to do it, demonstrate the proof, and make sure throughout you’ve sprinkled some of that spice.
Also, I have a little thing. You mentioned your risotto and all that sort of stuff, for the sponsorship of Agency Transformation Live, so we’re now open to sponsors for our November event, we’ve called our sponsorship levels, megabyte, gigabyte, and terabyte because that’s very industry-specific and everybody gets that the terabyte is the top level, which is pretty cool. Simple things, isn’t it? It’s a simple thing, but that’s a little bit of spice and that will resonate with the target audience, the potential sponsors that I am looking to attract.

Nicole:
Brilliant. And people can do the same with their proposal because often, once we’ve gotten over, “My God, I’ve got to put together a proposal list for pricing,” right? If we just give ourselves perhaps 10, 15, 20 minutes to just look at it again and, “Where can I add a bit of spice? Where can I personalise it more?” Because those little touches will make a huge difference. I have seen it where I’ve been ready in my corporate life to let agencies go because I came in and where we’re from the last marketing director. But then they had a personal touch and they reassured me that then we would be working together, they would be fun to be working with in addition to giving me the results, of course, I reconsidered them. And that’s really what we’re hoping agency owners can do with their own proposals, right? So use the fancy tech to put together the proposal by all means. But don’t forget about your personality because otherwise, chances are you might come across as really boring. And our marketing industry is not boring, right?

Lee:
Absolutely. We’re all about grabbing people’s attention, aren’t we? And then we send people, I’m speaking for myself now, I have sent people the most boring proposals on the planet.

Nicole:
Do you know, I have as well. And it’s usually the moments when I left it to the last minute. I know I like to be organised, but I left it to the last minute. So it was all about just getting these figures right and getting it out there as opposed to sort of sitting back and thinking, “Okay, how can you make this a bit better, Nicole?” And it’s usually when you do that, you actually get that call for a Zoom call for exploring the options. So this is really what we’re encouraging people to do today. Lee, time for the takeaway actions because we want to make this really, really practical again.

Lee:
Yes.

Nicole:
So just to reassure everyone, these have been baked between Lee and I. We’re both not bakers, but we have got done the takeaway actions. So first of all, apply Lee’s amazing framework.

Lee:
A reminder of the framework would be, reverse brief their goal to show that you’ve understood what they want to achieve, then share how you’re going to help them achieve that goal, that’s the how. And finally, share some relevant past stories of successes specific to what they want to achieve. That’s your proof. And remember throughout to personalise with a little bit of spice.

Nicole:
Love that. Good job we’ve both eaten. So also then we encourage you just to work on that mindset. Yes, your clients want to know how much you’re going to charge them, what you’re going to achieve for them. But think about how can you excite them. People want to work with real people, so show you are enthusiastic. That’s your job, actually, at this stage, and really connect with people. We believe this won’t take longer than 10 minutes and once you get going, it will be easier every time. So start early with your proposals, have a template as Lee suggested, review and revise, and yeah, we just wish you best of luck. And if you have found some amazing tricks, which can easily be applied by other people, share them with us and with Facebook group because it’s all about inspiring each other and making it easier. Now, Lee, just very quickly who cooks in your household? I want to know.

Lee:
I am the chief cook.

Nicole:
And do you spice things up?

Lee:
I do, but unfortunately, my wife’s allergic to spice, so I have to be very careful how much I put in, what I use, et cetera, otherwise, she will flare up.

Nicole:
Oh, no. So it’s a bit like the situation at my house, bland cooking for the child then someone else takes over and makes it finger-lickingly amazing. Excellent.

Lee:
Well, what’s really bad as well is that both my teenage daughter and I can’t detect the spice. So we are happily eating away and then we see Kate across the table going, “Woo, hoo, hoo.”

Nicole:
We’ve got to keep this. I love it. Lee, we’ve got a couple of amazing resources.

Lee:
That’s right. Folks, if you head on over to Trailblazer FM and have a look at season 44, episode three, you will find a few resources in there. A couple of YouTube videos and some more goodness, including making your outreach emails more bespoke, including a cool template. And also, picking good stories to share during client chats, which obviously you can also translate that into the proof section of your proposal. So be sure to head on over to trailblazer.fm. Also, whilst you’re on trailblazer.fm, we would love it if you could hit us with a comment. Let us know how you spice up your own proposals. Feel free as well to link to gifts. I can think of at least three different gifts all about spice, including a man with his arm bent almost backwards, sprinkling spice.

Nicole:
Who we love, yes.

Lee:
So that would be great. Post them in the Facebook group, which is trailblazer.fm/group, or, of course, in the comments on this particular episode. Also, head on over to Agency Transformation Live because if you have been stuck at home for a very long time and would love to meet other human beings with legs, rather than just the top halves of them on a Zoom call, then you can do that on the 10th of November at Kettering Park Hotel and Spa. From 9:00 AM onwards, we are getting together at least 120 of us all in a lovely big conference room to both learn, collaborate, and also to have a little bit of a knees-up at the end of the evening. So that’s agencytransformation.live. Folks, if we don’t see you in the Facebook group, if we don’t see you in the comments, if we don’t see you at Agency Transformation Live, how about you come and see us in the next episode? And that’s a bye from me.

Nicole:
Bye-bye.