In this article, we’ll look at several ways to improve your business proposal presentation (and pitch) and increase the odds that you’ll walk away with a new customer.
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If you let the customer review the presentation on their own, it’s likely that they’ll lengthen the sales process and even put off making a decision.
When crafting your proposal presentation, there are a few quick best practices to keep in mind.
- Personalize the presentation. While it’s totally fine to reuse a PowerPoint presentation template, you don’t want to accidentally include another business’ name on the deck. So be sure to go through every slide and personalize it for the customer’s goals and pain points.
- Send apre-meeting emailwith an agenda. To prepare your customer for the presentation, it’d be wise to send a pre-meeting email with a quick, scannable sales agenda detailing how the meeting will go. That way, you can set the right expectations and keep you both on track.
- Plan your in-person customer visit. If you’re meeting the customer in person, there will be a few more elements at play, such as an office tour and even a colleague introduction. That can quickly lead to lost time, so use this guide to plan a customer visit that stays on track and helps you effectively sell your solution.
- Pay attention to the design of the deck. Your clothes and demeanor may be in tip-top shape, but if your deck is messy and poorly designed, then the effectiveness of your points will be diminished. Use a PowerPoint template and check out a few sales presentation examples to inspire you.
- Keep the presentation short and precise. Keep your presentation as short as possible, about 15 to 20 minutes. The longer you speak to your clients, the less they’ll remember.
Now, it’s time for your presentation. Let’s go over how you can execute it flawlessly.
How to Present a Business Proposal
- Optimize your meeting time from the start.
- Have a clear agenda.
- Open up with the customer’s problems and challenges.
- Pause and ask questions.
- Lead with stories, not data.
- Don’t read off of your PowerPoint slides.
- Present your solution — and sell them a vision.
- Establish a clear follow-up timeline at the end of the meeting.
1. Optimize your meeting time from the start.
When presenting a proposal, it’s important to remember that your clients are busy. They have other meetings to attend, phone calls and emails to return, and problems to solve. Time is their most precious asset. Here are a few tips to optimize the time you spend with your customers:
- Arrive early. This is a no-brainer, but arrive to the meeting with at least ten minutes to spare, especially if it’s in person. Use this buffer to use the bathroom, rehearse your introduction, and even set up the meeting space.
- Rehearse setting up the projector or sharing your screen before the meeting. If you’re carrying out a meeting in person, you don’t want to waste ten minutes figuring out how to project your laptop’s screen. Carry several adapters with you and have a fail-safe plan, such as bringing a tablet with a copy of the presentation. If the meeting is over Zoom, practice sharing your screen so that your notes aren’t visible.
- Keep your introduction short. Leave space for banter and rapport, but keep your personal introduction short. Small talk should be reduced as much as possible — you shouldn’t spend twenty minutes talking about the weather, unless you sell a weather-related solution.
2. Have a clear agenda.
Your presentation must have a clear and compelling agenda, which you can share right at the start (in addition to having shared it over email before the meeting).
The meeting should begin with compelling reasons to consider your proposal and culminate with a specific request for the business. Here’s an agenda template you can use to structure your meeting:
- Challenge/Opportunity. Begin your presentation by illustrating the opportunity or challenge that your client is overlooking. Make sure it’s compelling enough to motivate your client to listen to the rest of your presentation.
- Benefits. Discuss the benefits that your client will achieve by adopting your solution. Use a customer case study or testimonial to support your point.
- Plan. Present your plan or options to resolve the client’s challenge/opportunity.
- Company. Briefly share your company’s background, including who your company helps with these issues.
- Recommend. Before closing your presentation, be sure to ask for the client’s business. You might close by asking the client, “Do you believe that the solution that I’ve presented will effectively help you overcome your challenges and achieve your goals?”
In the presentation, include a few bullet points that outline these parts of the meeting, so that the client knows what to expect.
3. Open up with the customer’s problems and challenges.
As mentioned, you’ll begin the meeting with a challenge or opportunity. Don’t walk into the meeting and immediately start talking about yourself or your company or your products. If you do this, your client will immediately focus on cost and product features, often ending the meeting before you’ve had a chance to finish.
Instead, focus on re-emphasizing the customer’s challenges and pain points. Your clients want to know how they can beat their competitors, reach new customers, retain existing customers, and increase profit margins. But before you can sell them your product, you have to emphasize the graveness of the issue they’re facing and illustrate how their challenges will prevent them from achieving these goals.
For instance, if 30% of their customers are churning, and you sell a business solution that can help reduce churn, you might open up your presentation with how their revenue will continue to be impacted by this loss. This will emphasize the urgency of the problem and help you create a stronger pitch later.
Free Business Proposal Template
Propose your business as the ideal solution using our Free Business Proposal Templates
- Problem summary
- Proposed solution
- Pricing information
- Project timeline
