B.B. King died, marking the passage of a blues giant. In less broadcast news, Zilliam Zinsser also died. Zinsser was the author of ‘On Writing Well‘, a classic that everyone writing proposals should read. (Confession: I haven’t read it.) His … Read More
proposals
Price Objections are Great
Some prospects will negotiate out of habit, almost out of obligation to see if they can get a lower price. After all, many vendors have trained them to do this. If you have a history of offering deep discounts at … Read More
Why People Misunderstand Each Other (and what it means for sales)
One of the biggest issues in sales and the delivery of the subsequent project, is keeping everyone on the same page. The buyer thinks they have specified very clearly what they want. The seller thinks they understand the requirements. The … Read More
Amazon is an internet company, after all
Amazon finally broke out numbers for its cloud services offerings, and they’re huge. As The New York Times reports: Amazon said in its first-quarter earnings report that its cloud division, Amazon Web Services, had revenue of $1.57 billion during the … Read More
The 2 Biggest Mistakes of Proposal Writing
I’ve got an article up at SmallToday, a community of about 75,000 small business owners. If you’re making these fundamental mistakes, you’re holding back your sales.
Mimiran Announces New Module to Streamline Marriage Proposals
Austin, TX. Mimiran, a leading provider of online proposal software, announced the addition of a new module designed to streamline marriage proposals. Aimed at young, tech-savvy couples who don’t have time for traditional proposals, Mimiran makes it easier to get … Read More
3 Ways to Increase Deal Size (Plus a Bonus)
The Three Pillars of Making Much Larger Sales
Marc Wayshak always has great sales advice. This blog post gives some tips to grow the size of a deal. Especially as an individual sales rep, you can only handle so many prospects and activities. To sell more (and make more), you sometimes need to grow the size of your deals.
Here’s a simple formula:
Revenue/Time = Average Deal Size * Number of Deals * Deal Win Rate / Time to Close.
Increasing your deal size, number of deals, and/or win rate drives up your revenue. If you take longer to close, as can happen when pursuing larger deals, your revenue per period will go down. If you can find ideal prospects, you can drive all the metrics in the right direction.
One other tip to add onto Marc’s post– you can also increase your deal size (and your win rate), by offering multiple options to the buyer. They may surprise you by selecting a higher priced, higher value option.
Table Styling Fixed
Yes, this is embarrassing. For some time, it’s been really hard to style tables in Mimiran, due to conflicts with style sheets in the app. There’s no good reason for this, but once it was in place, changing it might … Read More
Austin Meetup March 26: Create Winning Proposals
How to create winning proposals and reduce sales stress
I’ll be doing a short talk on Thursday, March 26 at Sherlock’s at 183 and Burnet. Networking from 11:30-12, then a talk, with Q&A from 12-1. The meetup is free, but lunch is on your own.
The talk will cover some of my mistakes in proposal writing, and tips for how you can learn the easy way instead of the hard way like me.
• Create proposals that get accepted faster (and more often)
• Increase your deal size and profitability
• Stand out from the competition
• Grow your business faster with better proposals
• Reduce the sales stress related to proposal creation
Workshop– Beyond the Number: Sales, Positioning, Pricing
I’ll be doing a one day workshop for the Professional Pricing Society at their Spring Conference in Dallas on May 6. This workshop is about how you can’t just focus on the number in your pricing sheet, proposal, or negotiation. … Read More