You’ve had an appointment, you sent a proposal and now you can’t get a follow up appointment, what do you do?

In most situations, mailing faxing or emailing proposals is mistake for several reasons:

1. Follow up communication needs to be personal; 75% of your success or failure is directly related the trust and rapport that you establish, and therefore, you want as many opportunities as possible to solidify a relationship with your potential clients.
2. Things change at the speed of sound and in the time lag between your previous appointment and proposal receipt, circumstances could have changed for your prospect.  The first thing I always do before delivering a proposal is ask:
   “Here’s where we left off last time we got together, has anything changed for you in the meantime?”   If it has, I can adjust on the fly.  I suggest you do the same.

Every sales call or presentation needs to have an objective and sometimes closing the sale isn’t closing the sale; sometimes the close you seek is just an agreement for the next meeting date!   The approach I suggest you take is to ask for the next meeting at the conclusion of the current one.

“You know Mr. Jones, it seems there could be a good fit between what you and XYZ Corp are looking for and what we specialize in. Here’s what I’d like to do, I’d like to prepare a proposal which reflects our conversation today, and demonstrates where we see ourselves being able to add value to you. I can have that document ready next Tuesday.  If we can prepare it and I can present it to you next week, can you think of any reason, why we shouldn’t get together?”

All you want to do is get a committment to the next appointment. When you come back, re-qualify the prospect to ensure that everything is the same as it was when last you met, then review the proposal.  Since it contains your action plan for moving forward, you will then be ready to close the sale or move to move forward to the next logical step in your sales cycle.