How to Drive Sales Campaigns and Influence Sales Behaviour with Proposal Automation

In this four-part series, we have been looking at the ability of proposal automation to generate powerful, personalised, automated proposals. We have shown how we can encourage sales reps to be better proposal writers without them even knowing it! But the proposal or RFP response is just one step in the lifecycle of a typical, complex sales pursuit.

As Proposal Managers, we may be surprised by a mature deal that has already advanced some way through the sales funnel – but only now it is a bid or RFP do we get to apply our magic touch. We wanted to go further and help our sales colleagues build a compelling story right from the start. We imagined:

• What if we could extend our reach backwards and influence client communications much earlier in the engagement?

• What if we could be part of the initial awareness campaign and influence the messaging to prospects?

• What if we could encourage sales to start by solving customer needs rather than selling products?

I presented How to Automate Proposals and Influence People with Darrell Woodward at the APMP's 13th Annual UK Conference and received excellent feedback from our audience. One of our key talking points was avoiding the pitfalls of tired, repetitive proposals by building in the flexibility to adapt to corporate strategy by synchronising with sales initiatives and marketing campaigns. In Part 3 of our series, we look at the ability of proposal automation to influence sales rep behaviour and take an important role in supporting events, product launches, and tactical promotional activities. Here are a few of the key elements that we believe are critical to success.

Amplifying the expertise of the proposal centre

Leveraging the skills and experience of our proposal centre, we translated marketing messaging into compelling, modular themes that we used to automatically build dynamic proposal propositions.

Because we can “slice and dice” the components of our propositions in multiple ways, we created a virtual matrix of available personalised, client-focused sales propositions. With thousands of possible combinations, we needed to control the variations by using a structured framework which further helped to reinforce our corporate go-to-market strategy in the field.

Guiding sales colleagues to prioritise client needs

The sales team is our primary customer, so, we applied the principles of good proposal writing techniques to influence their user experience as well as the proposal output. In this context, our aim was to mask the complexity of configuring a document using a simple script-based approach – asking simple questions about their client to derive the required content from our library – making it quick and easy for them to build high-quality proposal documents.

The carrot and stick and, occasionally, the carrot shaped stick!

This "carrot and stick" approach to configuring a draft proposal document means we extract key information from the sales rep, then use it as intelligence to drive the selection of appropriate boilerplate and blended content, build the persuasive structure and apply personalisation. The way we do this naturally encourages sales reps to prioritise addressing their client’s needs rather than simply pitching products - and highlights potential knowledge gaps to be closed as the sales campaign unfolds.

Finessing proposal messaging to support ‘Campaigns du jour’

The granularity of our model provided the inherent agility to reinforce event and campaign activity with matching proposal messaging. This bought us a ticket to some key planning meetings where we could influence and propose new ideas.

The Swiss Army Knife offers agility, precision, and is always ready, just like properly configured and automated sales proposals are ready for any selling scenario

Through consistency of messaging from marketing and sales-stage aligned proposals, we built pressure on our sales colleagues and the clients to buy-in to the campaigns. Finally, because we can adapt proposal messaging in minutes, we were able to quickly spin up new options to support tactical promos and time-sensitive opportunities.

Deploying APMP best practices by stealth

The skills and value of a sales rep are best applied building relationships, developing business and closing deals. They’re not necessarily the best proposal writers, and their time in field ought to be maximised – not chained to a desk trying to write proposals and wrestling with RFP responses.

We built a foundation of industry-specific proposal themes that would integrate and resonate well with our products and services portfolio, creating a suite of persuasively structured proposal content assets that are intelligently combined to focus on common industry issues and associated outcomes. This is how to drive sales campaigns with proposal automation and influence sales rep behaviour.

"It’s impossible to train everyone to be a good proposal writer. But you can help them fake it."

This was made possible because we used a small team of APMP-certified proposal managers to craft the proposal content using a proven persuasive structure and other techniques to build buyer commitment and deepen personalisation. By enhancing our content using marketing messages optimised for proposal use and combining small pieces of boilerplate and blended text, we created a highly adaptable platform that could be rapidly updated to maintain relevance and currency.

In summary: How to Drive Sales Campaigns and Influence Sales Behaviour with Proposal Automation

• Automation is not about mass production of proposals. Rather it is the application of sales intelligence to build a compelling story.

• Drive the persuasive paradigm beyond the confines of the proposal centre with a use-case driven approach to proposal building.

• Encourage sales to think with closer proximity to their client’s needs and desired outcomes from the start.

• Keep sales in the field by simplifying proposal writing and giving them the tools to follow up on new leads and prospects.