Archive for August, 2011

As a new consultant, or salesperson looking to meet a quota, an RFP (Request for Proposal) can seem like manna from heaven. And now, I’m going to tell you to say no to it. You may think I’m crazy, but hear me out.

Being a salesperson, freelancer, or consultant, you may instantly want to grab onto an RPF, and spend a few hours preparing a suitable sales proposal. If you’ve already done this a couple of times, think back to how many have resulted in you actually getting the bid. And then calculate the time and effort invested into it. Chances are you’ll find it’s not a proportionate, much less, healthy, ratio.

Sometimes you just need to ask yourself, ‘why?’ A tried and true method of knowing if a company is worth prospecting into.

Often when prospecting, we find ourselves in conversations that articulate something like this:

“We really need to see your reporting capabilities and also need to ensure we can see a holistic view of the customer.”

But the real question you should be asking is why? Why is a question that more often than not leads to further questions. So in this instance, why do you need to see reporting capabilities, may lead to something like, because we need to estimate efficiencies, or in order to predict future strategies.

So here is my nugget of help for today…