atw: Re: Statistics to demonstrate value ...
- From: Suzy <SuzyDavis@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 19 Oct 2009 03:15:52 -0500 (CDT)
Yes - you've pretty much got the picture
It's not just proposals, it's also the specification and design
documents that go to the customer once the business has been won.
While we have been getting great feedback from our customers about
the documentation we provide, it's impossible to determine that it
is a significant reason for a 'win' or even continued buisness.
Tbe Account Managers certainly find it easier to be delivering a
pitch to a prospect or an existing customer when they aren't
embarrassed by the quality of the Proposal they are submitting.
The US counterparts do not have a view of the value of
documentation at all, and often have to be convinced that they
should even give their customers an Excel spreadsheet.
There were no such documentation quality procedures in this
company when I arrived and it has been easy to look good just by
having an understanding of what they should be doing. So I
haven't quite go them to a Marketing review stage yet, but at
least they have the right 'legals' now. They do have a technical
review now. for that reason its been a great project for me to
work on.
What I tell my Sales and Presales people is that the document is
going to meet far more people in their prospects organisation than
they will; so you want it to make a good first impression. An in
the same way that they wouldn't go to a customer meeting in their
house renovating clothes, they shouldn't send a shabby document
either. On the Sales side, people are reporting that customers
are more willing to have the conversation, even if we lost the
bid. On the Delivery side we are finding customers have more
faith and understanding, and a belief that we can fix the problems
when things go wrong. That appears to be a shift in providing
better quality documentation. It's like the wheels would have
fallen off for anyone, rather than "these guys can't get anything
right" attitude.
regards Suzy
>>
This is a Sales organisation and the technical documentation that
is produced is sent as part of a vendor solution. It needs to be
of high quality.
Ah, Suzy, so one of my premises was not true. From what you have
said, you are talking about sales proposals going out to customers
of your products.
Does your organisation have an editor? I would be surprised that
any organisation would allow documents to go out externally to
potential customers without thorough review. Who reviews them? I
would think your marketing department would have something to say
about this.
If this IS the case, and following through on Warren's idea, let
some bad proposals through, then tee up some of the engineers to
ask for you back when the sales are lost. However, you will have
to be able to demonstrate that sales are lost, and in my
experience of buying products this way, bad proposals don't make a
huge difference. No-one expects to really understand the
proposal - they just skim it for key points. All sorts of other
prejudices come into play long before the quality of the document,
such as price, functionality, contract conditions, how good the
presentation is, and how sexy the sales person is. (Oh, there you
go again Christine, Janice will slap you again. She thinks you
don't have "professional pride".
She thinks you are slack. Ah well. ;-))
Christine
Other related posts:
