You’ve gone through all of the steps necessary to successfully bring a prospect through to the final stages of the selling process, and you’re getting ready to present them with a proposal. Do you set a time to meet with them face-to-face to review what you’re offering or do you simply shoot out an email with your proposal attached? Which one do you think will get you the best results?

Recently, BDU’s CEO Lisa Peskin had the opportunity to speak with the managing partner of a very large, successful accounting firm in the Philadelphia area about how best to present proposals. He said that out of every 20 proposals his firm presents to prospects, 19 of those 20 are presented in person. Do you know why?

In our current technological world, many sales professionals just don’t realize the importance of setting up face-to-face meetings to present and review proposals with prospective clients or customers.

Here are just a few reasons why it’s important to meet and review proposals in person:

• You can highlight key points. If you send an email with the proposal, it’s out of your hands. Once that happens, you lose the opportunity to highlight the key hot buttons that were uncovered during the discovery phase. Meet your prospect in person, however, and you can review these areas with them and remind them of the products or services you offer that can help them out.
• You have the opportunity to trial close. A trial close (“Can you see how this feature/ benefit would be helpful?,” “Can you see how that solution would impact your business?”) is important to helping you take the temperature of your prospect, seeing how they’re feeling about what you’re presenting and knowing when to go for the close. When you email your proposal, you don’t have the chance to utilize this strategy or other sales techniques to your advantage.
• You can move forward. With an emailed proposal, you don’t have the opportunity to try to close the business, let alone set up defined next steps. Meet in person and you can discuss where to go next.

If you want to regain control of the sales process and do everything you can to close the sale, make sure that you are setting face-to-face appointments with your prospects to present and review your proposals. Follow this sales rule-of-thumb and you’ll watch your close ratios greatly increase!

Do you present your proposals in person? Have you seen the benefits of in-person presentations versus emailed proposals? What are some additional reasons you’ve found presenting in person to be important? Let us know!