Sales Message Continuity Pre-RFP to Post Proposal

One of the most important things any business development group can do to improve their proposal win rate is to maintain sales message continuity between their pre-RFP selling effort, their proposal, and their post-proposal presentations.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t always happen.

Too often, the proposal team writes an effective proposal and the seller gets invited onsite to deliver a presentation. Then, inexplicably, the salesperson takes back control and dismisses the proposal development team, “Thanks for the help with the proposal, but I got it from here.”

This is a common practice, to be sure, but it’s not a best practice. In fact, it doesn’t even make sense. If the proposal advanced the sale to the short list, shouldn’t the proposal team that wrote it be at least minimally involved in helping prepare the presentation? Common sense and an interest in continuity says they should.

The sales team and the proposal team should not be two separate groups working independently, they should be one integrated, unified team working together towards a common cause. This best practice ensures continuity of the sales message from the pre-RFP selling phase to the post-proposal presentation phase.

David Seibert is president of The Seibert Group, a consulting and training organization for businesses that respond to RFPs from other businesses and from SLED (state/local government and education) agencies.

The Seibert Group provides a range of services:

David authored Proposal Best Practices and The Sales Manager’s Guide to RFPs, he publishes Dave’s Blog about proposal and business development topics, and he is a regular speaker at numerous webinars, seminars, and conventions.

You can contact Dave at David.Seibert@ProposalBestPractices.com. You can also follow Dave on LinkedIn.

The Seibert Group, Inc.