The Right Time to Send Your Proposal

The proposal is an important part of your pricing process, but most people get it wrong.

The golden rule is this: a proposal should only ever be written or sent to confirm what’s already been agreed.

The mistake people make is they meet with a client, they ask the right questions, they build up the value, the client wants to buy but we get stumped by the price question. When the client asks what it’s going to cost, we say that we will go away and think and then put it in writing and send it through the mail.

This is fatal!

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You should never do that because you’ve now lost control of the pricing conversation.

You should always have the pricing conversation with the client face-to-face. If the client doesn’t say yes to you in the meeting and asks you to go away and put it in writing, you haven’t inspired them sufficiently. Don’t ever agree to put a proposal in the post.

There must be a reason they haven’t said yes. You need to go back and revisit the questions, visit the value and have a conversation with the client to find out what is stopping them from saying yes.

If they are asking for you to send a proposal they may just be too polite to say no. It’s ok. You don’t want to work with everybody, but you need to know sooner rather than later if they really don’t want to work with you, rather than waste time.

If you haven’t sufficiently inspired them or demonstrated your expertise, it may be you are just not right for them, and that’s fine.

It may be they ask for your proposal to be sent so that they can shop around and get other companies to beat the price. 

Your proposal should only ever be sent to confirm what you have already agreed in your meeting.

If you found this valuable and would like to learn more about value pricing, I run a free live online training session every month with a topic chosen by you. Attend live and you can ask me any questions you have. Click here to register and I will send you an invitation to the next session.

Wishing you every success on your pricing journey

Mark Wickersham

Chartered Accountant, Public Speaker and Author of Amazon No.1 Best Seller “Effective Pricing for Accountants”