ROI Selling Blog

At one time or another, everyone in sales and marketing has shared something in common with the character Sheldon on the Big Bang Theory. Although you might not be a former child prodigy with a genius-level IQ, I’m willing to bet that you’ve created marketing materials or had conversations with customers that sound very similar to this:

In my last guest post I discussed how to make your proposals and quotes pop, but today I’d like to focus on how you can systematically create great content. After all, even the most beautiful and well-designed sales proposals will fall flat on their face if they’re not backed by well-written content. Given the recent Super Bowl, I decided to enlist the help of a handy football analogy to walk you through the following steps.

What are two words that get every salesperson’s pulse racing? Budget approval. Want to know the secret to securing budget approval? Simple. Create the right kind of business case to include with your proposal. The right kind of business case will win the respect and approval of the CFO (or whomever your stakeholder/prospect will request budget approval from). However, not every selling situation requires the same kind of business case. In general, there are three levels of selling situations, and each requires a different kind of business case: simple, standard, or in-depth. Here’s a breakdown of each one.