Toolbox Booster FY15 Winning

Winning Investment Plans / Powerful Proposals

Winning Investment Plans / Powerful Proposals

Today’s challenge When capabilities become commodity, competition becomes communication!

The sales game is very different from all other sports in which one decides to compete. In the sales game there is only one single prize – The gold medal i.e. the order.

The rest of the competitors all stand on the podium with nothing to show for their experience. A costly experience at that.

You may know that your company offers top quality products and services, great value and superior customer experience. But if your business proposals don’t reflect those strengths, you are losing out on a lot of potential customers – and profits. Your proposals must be so much more than just a description of “what we do”. You´ve got to give your customers a reason to choose you – you need to differentiate yourself through the proposals you write!

In most cases, proposals do not win contracts, but they can lose them in a heartbeat

Winning Investment Plans / Powerful Proposals

How we together can respond to the challenge In today’s highly competitive environment, proposals are too important to be left to chance. The opportunity cost is too great to risk creating and submitting the kind of uninspiring, generic and nonresponsive proposals that often flood the marketplace. Future Group’s TOOLBOX™ Winning Investment Plans (“WIP”) presents a step-by-step guide for creating informative, engaging and sales-winning proposals that satisfies your customers needs and features the solutions your company can provide. WIP is an invaluable tool for winning more deals! Proposals are the critical endgame

The planning process: •

Can we win?

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Price strategy

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Competition strategy

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The writing process

The writing process •

Re-use of text

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Customer focus – customer orientation

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Creative page design

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Compelling story – getting your messages across

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Executive summary

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Ease of evaluation

in a long process of sales activities.

When a proposal is executed with skill and finesse it can bias the customer towards you and act as the “icing on the cake”. First and foremost a proposal is a sales document.

The 1-day WIP workshop “Excellent technical capabilities or technology poorly communicated is a surefire way to lose on price. When that happens, you don´t really lose on price. You lose on communication” Through a one-day highly interactive and hands-on workshop, the participants are taught the fundamentals of the Winning Investment Plans framework. This framework is based on best practice proposal writing tools and techniques that have been distilled into an easy and understandable pragmatic framework covering active (Request For Proposal/Tenders), as well as latent sales opportunities.

During the workshop the participants will work with all the fundamentals of a powerful winning proposal:

The participants are encouraged to bring examples of their own proposals to the workshop for evaluation.

Winning Investment Plans / Powerful Proposals

The Process

Outcome

The Winning Investment Plans TOOLBOX facilitates

YOUR POWERFUL PROPOSAL

one of the most critical sales disciplines: The closing of

+ Create great business focused investment plans for

the sale. A profound understanding and mastering of

the customer.

the writing of powerful proposals constitutes a critical

The WIP framework is built to help the VARs help their

discipline in any successful product and solution sales

customers align solutions with business imperatives,

process, and is implemented through the following

and the quantifiable and direct financial benefits of

activities:

those solutions.

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Preparation • Prior to the workshop the participants are encouraged to submit examples (prepared in a disclosable format) of proposals that they currently work with to the workshop facilitator 8 days before the start of the workshop.

+ Avoid “no decision” by demonstrating value to the customer.

Value is in the eye of the beholder. Value is not only the business value the VAR delivers to the customer through an Autodesk solution, but also the value the VAR delivers throughout the sales process. How that

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1-day workshop training • At a 1-day workshop the overall Winning Investment Plans framework is laid out enabling the participants to plan and write more powerful and customer-centric winning proposals.

Business contribution • The key to a successful sale today is an understanding of the customer’s critical business issues and how these can be addressed with an Autodesk solution, thus creating business value.

• The endgame of a sales process is to write a strong winning proposal that reflects the VAR´s understanding of the business and how the capabilities the VAR can provide will help the customer address their critical business issues. The WIP framework provides the AutoDesk VAR with a process, techniques and tools that enables them to differentiate themselves not only through their sales process, but also by written communication.

Review Service • After the workshop the participants will continue to work with their specific Winning Investment Plan.

• The final outcome will be sent to the workshop facilitator for review and comments

value is captured in a strong customer-centric and selling proposal that creates a compelling reason that catalyzes and motivates the customer to act is key.

The WIP framework is such a catalyst.

Contact If the above is of interest, please contact your Partner Manager