Quote Versus Proposal

0:04 Thank you for joining us on the Winning and Selling Podcast. I'm Professor Scott Plum of the Minnesota Sales Institute, and with me is Bill Hellkamp of Reach Development Systems. A customer calls and asks you to send them a quote. Do you do it? Or do you ask for an appointment to find out more about their needs? If I just send over a quote, how can I be sure that it will really address their issues? That is a full-blown proposal, really necessary.

0:29 And will it help or hurt my chances to make the sale? What's a salesperson to do? Get ready to defend your preference as Scott and I discuss quote versus proposal and other creative concepts on episode 655 of the Winning and Selling Podcast. That's going to be a great subject. Over the last few months in our presentations and work with clients, this has been one topic that they have really embraced.

0:58 And when they've embraced it, it's amazing how they're able to achieve the results that they want. We've got a couple of clients that both reach their goals in January and we started working with them in December and the first part of January. So it's really rewarding to see this concept being adopted and I'm looking forward to Bill sharing how he's used it. And I'm really impressed when he puts together a quote when we do our work together.

1:19 But before we get into that, let's talk about the book, The One Thing by Gary Keller. We're going to be covering chapters 7 and 8. And this again is from that list of the six lies between you and success. Number one was we covered everything matters equally. Number two, multitasking. Number three, a disciplined life. Today we're going to cover number four, will power is always on will call and number five, a balanced life.

1:42 And then we're going to leave the last one, number six, up to a few weeks on the big is bad. So look forward to that. But chapter seven, willpower is always on will call. And it talks about this not really being well, good. This is kind of a lie is our willpower is on will coach means we can call upon it at any time. And that's not always the case. I like this. I liked what he talked about that it's almost like this reserve you have.

2:08 Yeah, reservoir, kind of like the reservoir in the the palisades in California. And when that when that reservoir is empty, you ain't putting out any fires with your willpower. Right. And that's what they found out in in Pacific Palace ages. If you don't have anything in your in your reservoir. And I think that's true. You know, you and I have talked about when do we work best? I know I'm much more creative in the morning.

2:34 And I like to be with my clients in the afternoon because they energize me in a different way. Yeah. I think this is really true. I found this to be one of the most important chapters to think about. Yeah. Yeah. These last two these next two are pretty good. And when we put them all together and I think we can reflect on how do they impact us and what is the goal of changing our behavior. I think it starts to make sense within this chapter.

2:57 He talked about the marshmallow test and I think some of that heard about that. And I got to watch the videos though. Yeah. The videos are. Lots of those kids squirm about not having to wait 15 minutes to eat that marshmallow. Yeah. They sniff it and they touch it and they give it a little lick. So. Yeah. And it's amazing. The study is a 15 minute test where a kid gets a marshmallow and then they have to wait 15 minutes and they'll get another one.

3:26 If they wait 15 minutes. They get to. Yeah. They can just eat it and you know they don't have to wait in you know no reward or whatever. And they found that the kids and their average was what were they able to wait like two, three minutes, three minutes out of the 15 and only three out of the 10 could delay that gratification. And of those three out of 10, they did future studies with them and they found that the SAT scores average 210 points higher with those three out of 10 because they were able to withhold that gratification.

3:58 And it's just fascinating how at a young age when you learn about that patience and commitment and persistence how it's transferable and other ways of life. And it was. Well it's all about delayed gratification right. Right. Well. If I can hold off and say it's like savings right. I can either spend that today or I can save it and in 10 years I'll have twice as much. Right. Well. But it's hard to save that because. There's a story about a 280 Z in there somewhere.

4:27 Yeah. Well I know that story. It's a great car. It's a ZX. Okay. All right. It was incomplete in my description. But the author of this studies last name is Michelle which is spelled M-I-S-C-H-E-L went to Stanford if you want to look that up on the internet and watch the video. Couple of things in this chapter. The author talks about the importance of food and that food is maintaining that cell phone battery that battery life that we have to be able to have that willpower and to be able to deal with adversity and to be persistent.

5:01 And they talk about carbohydrates and things and I can now understand why there's so many candy dishes when I go visit offices around and there's protein bars and there's chocolate in the conference rooms. This is all to keep that willpower going. And it's obviously it works. I mean just keep having nutrition in your day and fueling your body and you don't have that 330 law. Sometimes you get that 330 law. You feel like you hit the wall and you got to go get a cup of coffee.

5:29 That might not be the right answer. We might want to look at a different solution to that. And then he talked about willpower. If we don't focus on something and have that willpower we kind of drop to our default settings. Which is we end up doing what's most comfortable and what's easiest. That's why I was the best one. The most important tools you can use is that list that you're to do list. You're prioritized to do list because when you have that drop you're going to you're going to play on your computer.

5:58 You're going to go do something useless. You're going to go look for more food. But if you know what if you're following your list you say okay here's the next thing I can do. Something small I can do to get myself back on track. Right. I look at sometimes when I've got stuff that I need to do it I'm a little bit more focused on getting stuff done and less distracted about the other stuff around me. Plus I start my day a little earlier.

6:20 Sometimes when you're working on the home office it's easier to just simmer in bed when you should be getting your butt out of bed and start getting some stuff done. Get a dog. If you want to have to get out of bed get a dog that you're the bathroom in the morning. I don't have a dog. But the default settings is really- I think I'll buy you a dog Scott. No I'm not going to take care of a dog. I wrote about this in my book taking off into the wind I talked about your time defaults.

6:44 And if you're not committing to something that's previously scheduled or you're committed to what are you doing. And when you don't have something to do you drop back to that default setting and it's just not a good habit. So pick a goal to finish a book within a period of time and you can draw your energy to focus on that goal. And like Bill said either it's a to-do list or it's a goal list. Sometimes a to-do list is basically task.

7:12 A goal list is working on productive activities that you're being measured by that's giving you the results that you want. Well he talked about the to-do list in this book is not being the most valuable tool but a prioritized list that says let's do the most important things first. Is really the goal. Because then it gets you focused back on something that's important and crucial to you and you can push that energy a little bit to do that.

7:37 Or maybe you know like you say have some kind of a food bar and then get yourself back on track. So nice chapter on this one. Yeah it is. And the next one is pretty good too a balanced life. You know again this is a lie. There's no such thing as a balanced life. I'm like okay these are really truly misconceptions that we all think of. And he talks about you know in the first opening paragraph he says time on one thing means time away from another.

8:02 And this makes balance impossible. And one of the examples he uses back in the 1980 there were half the married women joined the workforce. And that was two breadwinners and Nolan at home. And that created a lack of balance in a household. And we know who kind of made up the difference there. And that shift in where people are spending their work life balance ended up being altered a lot. And the articles written about this is amazing between 1986 and 1996.

8:35 There are only 32 articles that were found that were written about this. In one year 2007 alone there were 1,674 articles written about work life balance. And it talks about really looking at counter balancing versus balancing. So once you go off in one direction you have to be able to compensate in another direction to be able to make up for that. So the time is a limited factor. Yeah. And we start to think about a top that's spinning.

9:06 It's wonderful balance. It's gone from each side and it's perfectly balanced and like a geoscope. But as it starts to slow down it starts to wobble. So then you start widening the edges and then things start to become less focused and then it starts to become almost like you can't even keep going anymore because you just don't have enough energy. So a couple of thoughts I had is I was going through this one. This work life balance.

9:30 You know one of the things that we thought as we were coming into COVID and everybody went home to work. It was very interesting how everybody early on was able to stay focused. And as the years have gone by and people have not gone back to work. Businesses are finding that productivity is going down where it was pretty they saw. Oh yeah. This is okay. Productivity is staying up yet. People are maybe they're taking the dog for a walk, but they're working till six and they're getting everything done.

9:59 But now we're seeing especially with what's going on in the government where nobody seemed to come back. Six percent of the workforce came back to the ninety four percent is still goofing off at home. People have two jobs. There's a lot of abuse of that system. So we're not really trying to balance work life. We're really over balancing in the other direction. And I think also do you remember when in the this was maybe in the eighties or nine maybe the nineties or the early two thousands.

10:27 People would do this thing about your seven pillars, you know faith and home and they'd put they'd have a circular charge. Yes, wheel, life wheel. Success wheel or the life wheel. Yeah. And you were supposed to try and shoot for a perfectly round wheel. Right. No flat tire. No flat tire. And yet what he's telling you here is some days this one's flat. Some days that one's flat. Exactly. But it was never and I never bought into that because I remember a quote.

10:58 I think it was Robert Heinlein moderation is for monks. And that is that everything in excess you go do this really hard and then you go work on that really hard. And like you say, and you counterbalance you work on family for a while and then you got to run and do some work stuff. Like juggling. Right. Right. And that's how he closed up this chapter. Okay. Yeah. He says when you're working work, when you're playing play and you know, I always been, you know, if you're going to work work hard, if you're going to play hard.

11:29 But here's where a lot of people get confused with that is they put play hard first. Mm. And then that becomes a priority. Now they have no balance between play life and work life. Yeah. If you do the work life, it's amazing how much more enjoyable the play life is because you're not worrying about work. It's like getting stuff done in the morning and then you've got the rest of the day to be creative or meet with clients and to have that play time.

11:53 Right. And maybe punch out at two thirty three o'clock and go to the club when it's not busy. That's great. There's nothing wrong with that. Well, and I've never found anything more enjoyable than meeting with clients and discussing their issues and having a good question set. Yeah. Right. And yet, you know, again, a boss of mine once told me you're going to have to do the twenty percent you hate so you can do the eighty percent you love.

12:15 Exactly. Right. And so if the twenty percent is, you know, you have to bear down in the morning and get those calls made and try and create clients. So you can have those meetings with them in the afternoon that you enjoy. Mm hmm. There's one line in this chapter says when you're gambling with your time, you may be placing bets you can't cover. Top gun quote in there about Maverick. You're writing checks your body can't cash.

12:40 I think that was the lie. So I heard that like, wow, how long ago was that movie that came out of me? But it was a great chapter. And again, I really encourage people to read this book and to be able to adopt some of the suggestions that Gary Keller is talking about. And again, it's the one thing. Next week we're going to be coming chapter nine out of the one thing with Gary Keller. And that's the last one of the lies we're telling ourselves.

13:03 It is. Yeah, the last one. Well, before we get to chapter nine next week, we've got to do our topic of this week. And our topic this week is quote versus proposal. And this has just been screaming at Scott and I as we've been working through November, December, January with our clients that are just, you know, they're so quote oriented. Aren't they Scott? We're just hearing on that. Yeah, we found that out. Yeah. And you know, send me a quote and we'll send you a quote.

13:33 And the challenge is, what's the quote mean? What am I quoting? When I send you a quote, the client is kind of running the program. Yeah. And we're assuming a lot of things. We're assuming the client knows what they want. We're assuming they know how to solve their own problems. We're assuming they know all the newest technology. They're assuming they know our entire product breadth. And when we give them a quote, they're assuming that their product and the competitor's product and our product are exactly the same thing.

14:05 Well, we may be. A lot of assumptions going on there in a quote that aren't in a proposal. So we want to talk about these two things. And so let's got lead off on this. So Scott, based on your experience, what we've seen over the last month's year, what do you think about this quoting process? What are the things that we miss? Yeah. In the conversations that we've had with our client-string workshops is the quote outside of a proposal or a total solution is taking the quote out of context.

14:41 So we really don't know what the challenge or the problem is. We don't know what the desired outcome is. We just have this item, the quote, the product in the middle. Also, there's no contrast. So we're not comparing one thing against another, which is putting the area that they want to develop in the way where we can compare different ultimate solutions and find a unique selling proposition within one of them. And then another one is the commoditization.

15:09 A quote without a proposal is just a commoditization. Then you're selling based on price and thinking that all products are the same in reality or not. Yeah, that's excellent. Yeah, I had three drawbacks too. I think one of them is right on par with yours, but my first one is the customer's wrong. Oh, you know, they're asking for something maybe based on something they bought 10 years ago. And we've got better product, better services, better solutions now.

15:36 But workers can let the customer order 10 year old product because that's what they want. And so we're not asking any questions. Our responsibility is to period, even with a really good customer, Scott, who knows what they're doing. It's our responsibility every few months to go in and say, okay, let's talk about how you're using this stuff. Let's find out what's going on. You keep ordering the same stuff over, but is it really the best solution for you at this time?

16:03 Right. Because if we don't do that, you know, who's doing that? Well, that creates an opportunity for somebody else. The competitor is going, hey, you know, you're using really old crap here. We've got a better product now. So the customer is wrong. They just don't know it. We're assuming they're right. Right. When we just take that quote and we just do it, we're assuming the customer knows everything. And yet they probably don't.

16:27 My number two one is the product or service becomes a commodity, which you talked about. But there's nothing to differentiate on. So that's kind of your other thing, no contrast. What are we differentiating our product against? How are we having that conversation with them? It's just another thing. And you know what's funny, Scott, is the sales people get mad when procurement tries to make their product a commodity? Oh, definitely.

16:53 Hopefully they do. Yeah. That's what procurement's job is to say everything's the same. Let's just work on price. And yet when the sales people just take a quote, they're a commodity. They're doing exactly what procurement would do. They're saying there's no difference between us and the competition. So you just become procurement by accepting that quote and assuming that everything's right. I think the people that work within the company probably have the same view of procurement as sales people working outside the company.

17:21 Yeah. Because procurement ends up short short sheeting all of the solutions. Well, you know, that's absolutely correct. And I think sales people are doing it to themselves. They're becoming the procurement office when all they do is. They lead with price. They walk in and they go, Hey, I can save you money. Well, geez, who's turning your product off? Oh, yeah, they're starting out there. Yeah. All right. And then the third one I have, you don't have a chance to develop the client relationship.

17:48 Yeah. When all I do is take a quote and give it, send it back to you. I don't become a better sales person. I don't become an expert. I just become a functionary, which is why in many cases, I don't even ask the sales person. I just send the quote to inside sales. Yeah. Yeah. And inside sales, it doesn't know anything about the customer. And in many cases, we found that they're even less functionary than the sales person as far as what needs are.

18:16 And they just answer the quote. Don't ask any questions. And we have inside sales. Tell us that. Oh, I don't ask them any questions. I'll follow up. I mean, if they want to, they can order. They want to, they'll call us, you know. So, so we don't grow that sales person's relationship with the client. And then what happens when the competition comes in or who my sales person is, I just say. Yeah. Yeah. So, so it's crazy.

18:43 Anyway, you might be getting the feeling that we're not big quote opponents. Yeah. There are some benefits to using a quote. I'm not sure these are benefits for the salespeople, but this is why they use them speed and simplicity. Mm hmm. Right. Quick minimal effort and the sales person can pretend they're working transparency in quotes or fixed prices. We don't have to set expectations. We don't have to have a conversation.

19:12 The other, the problem is though, the cheaper manufacturers going to win. They don't know why they should buy the better manufacturer. Mm hmm. If you're not the cheapest and you commoditize your product and you have more transparency, well now I'm using procurement. Right. It encourages a fast decision. So, yeah, usually if you're the more expensive a decision not to buy yours. Right. Because I have no reason to buy it.

19:38 But, but these are not benefits necessarily for sales. These are benefits for customers. It can be. Yeah. Yeah. And they're not really benefiting because they don't know what they're buying. They don't know what they're losing. Mm hmm. Right. Because we didn't have that conversation. Yeah. It seems like this is probably applicable maybe 80% of the time we can make a difference. There's probably 20% of the time where there are certain industries or certain cultures or certain companies that just love quotes and that's how they have a relationship with their clients and their prospects.

20:09 That's what they're known for. But most likely they're not really selling on value. They're just kind of sustaining some momentum over the years and they're not really interested in building up and growing like that. They're interested in maintaining it. Yeah. They're sustaining momentum and what happens to momentum after time? Well, eventually it just dies down. That's right. I don't know that some business owners or companies or families that have businesses really mind.

20:30 I think some of them just want to naturally wind down the company too. That might be true. But for the corporation that's not true. No. Those have to be sustained. And that's why I said you need to, even if you have a quote system, you have to meet with that client every few months. Of course. Sure. But they're not doing that. I mean, Scott and I are coming up on our fifth anniversary of doing this show together. Actually, actually almost our sixth year, right?

20:59 Getting into our sixth year. Yeah. Does it feel like five years Scott? No, it doesn't. But I mean, I can't believe it was April of 2020 that we started working together on the show. And so that's how fast time can go before you talk to that client again. Well, a sudden it's been four years and you don't talk to them until their orders start to shift down. The contract's up for renewal. Three months before you go. Well, you wish that would cause them to do something.

21:25 Yeah. All right. So let's talk about the proposal. What is a proposal? How is it different from a quote? So it really goes into an analysis. You know, I start off with the situation page. It's a great situation. The situation page says, here's what we heard. Here's what you told us about the problems. Here's the issues. Here's your pain points. So is that correct? Because I want to make sure that we're communicating back and forth that that's the truth thing.

21:52 Mm hmm. Exactly. Right. You're not being asumptive. You're making sure that we're talking about the same thing because if you don't know what they're talking about, you don't know what you're talking about. And if the situation is not defined clearly and the solution doesn't have a problem to stick to, it doesn't have value. So I love that step that when you put a proposal together, Bill, it's just so influential. The second part of that quote, thank you, Scott.

22:14 The second part is that here's the solution. Here's what we're going to do to solve the problems that you identified. And here's our process. And the longer Scott and I are working together, we're becoming very strident on our process. One of the things that we found that we do, that we left open to the customer early on was do you want to do a follow up process? Do you want us to beat with your team four or five times after this is over?

22:41 Oh no, we got it. We'll meet with them. We'll be S. So Scott and I've changed our process to say, if you don't do the follow up, we're not doing the training. Right. The adoption and the application of the content presented and coaching and reinforcing the behavior that we introduced is absolutely essential. Because otherwise you got a nice binder and you got a beautiful, Scott's got a beautiful binder shelf behind it.

23:07 I got all the binders of all the programs I've done on my show. There you go. All right, I do too. All right. And then you have the pricing. And Scott likes to have two or three options. Three, always three. Yeah, I, you know, I think we can get confusing. We talk about it. We talk it through each time we are good through, but it is nice to have a couple of options because then the customer chooses the options and then they move forward.

23:34 And once they've chosen the option, then then we're, they feel like they made the same. Yeah, fair option. Yeah, people buy for their reasons, not ours. I mean, as much as you think they buy for our reasons, you're wrong. Scott likes the three options because you got the good, better, best and they almost always pick the middle one. Right. Exactly. That's psychology. That's where it comes from. All of contrast. Yeah. Terry Wu taught us that.

23:58 Oh, good. So what are the benefits of using a proposal? I'll let you, I'll let you run through some of those benefits that you've got. Sure. It's a value driven selling process. So it highlights the benefits just beyond the price and the proposal justifies a higher value, a higher price point and really differentiating your option from the competitors option. And this is where you really need to build to find out what your unique selling proposition is and make sure that you highlight that within this.

24:24 This is more than just apples to apples. I want you to talk about, and I know you've done this before, but when a customer says, oh, I don't want this to go over this price. Right. Let's say we're going to do training and they say, well, I don't want it to go over 25,000. Mm hmm. Okay. What do you tell them when they say it? I appreciate that. And in our discussion, if there's ever a topic or something that we offer that would add the ticket up over 25,000, I won't present it to you.

24:53 I won't share it with you because I don't want you to think that I'm not being respectful to the ceiling that you have and that you want to stay under. And I don't want to sound like I'm misleading you and causing any pressure for you to look at other other things. And the customer say, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. Are you okay with that? No, no, no, no. No, no, no. You help me everything. Well, you know, if we found something that we liked, yeah, we might be able to find the money.

25:16 Oh, really? Okay. Which shows you the budgets a lie. It's a guess. It is what this might cost. And if you can show them more value, they'll buy more value. Exactly. You cannot show them more value in a quote. Right. Right. And I'm telling you, the chart of accounts for companies and where they're spending their money and their expenses and their projecting is going to change. Your AI is going to really alter how businesses manage their expenses.

25:45 And when we look at a budget, a budget is just a made up number before a decision needs to be made. And the example that I use is nobody hopefully is paying for long distance anymore. But long distance was on the balance sheets at one time or an expense sheet, P and L. Now its cell phones are paying for exactly. Talk. All right. Second one is it's custom tailored to the client. And I really think this is true. I love the proposal discussion.

26:09 Man, not only do I want them to read it, I want them to change it. I want them to tell me, no, no, I, we, now that wasn't quite right. We want the more they take out their pen and do some adapting of it, the more it becomes not just something custom tailored to them, but something that they've taken ownership of. But that is a great, that's a sales conversation, man. That's the fun part of doing this. There's nothing fun about taking a quote and having to go, okay, I guess so when can you deliver it, you know?

26:40 It's like, okay, that's, that was easy, but I didn't sell anything. Well, yeah. Yeah. I mean, a tailored proposal though is de-commoditizing your service and it's difficult to compare apples to apples then because it's something that you offer this totally unique that nobody else does. And that's what you and I find when we go in and we talk about the pre-work that we do before interviews we do, what do they say? Wow.

27:07 It seems like so applicable to what we're doing. It's like, you know our business. Nobody else is doing this. Right. Right. It's not easy to do though. No, no, it takes a lot of work. The customization and personalization of a program. But when we're done, they love it. It's the impactful. Yeah. That's right. That's right. All right. You take the next one. The next one is number three is more persuasive. So this is a well crafted proposal positions the company as a trusted advisor, which really is builds a lot more confidence with the client.

27:37 And I mean, if I could sum it up just in this one step, a quote is a price offer. A proposal is a persuasive plan. And when you're putting together a persuasive plan, there are more steps than just the product or the service or the engagement that go into delivering value and contributing to the relationship and expectations on both sides. Yeah. So, you know, just really focusing on that trusted advisor and that confidence.

28:03 And sometimes we need to spend a little bit more time building trust and rapport in the beginning before we start jumping into just, here's the quote. When are you going to make a decision? No. Well, yeah. You know, when we come back with a proposal, we're showing that we understand what their issues are. We're showing that we took it in and we now figured out some things and modified. And I always tell people to not, when you're in that first interview, don't blather out your solution off the top of your head or all you do is devalue it.

28:34 I tell my customers, I want to go back and Scott and I are going to talk about this and we're going to put together a plan which we do. We put together a specific plan for them based on what they said and it increases the value of the solution. But when we blurt it off the top of our head, we're like insulting them. Right. Their problem was so stupid and easy. You should have figured this out before us. I can't believe you didn't see it.

29:01 So obvious. I mean, and that sometimes when you walk in somebody, a sales person walks into a factory and they're selling LED lighting and they say, who's in charge of facilities around here? I can save you 23% on your electric bill. What you're telling somebody that there are more on that they don't know how to run the company and you're assuming that they're wasting money? That's not going to build rapport. All right.

29:21 Number four is encourages collaboration. And I kind of took my own, you know, I took my own heat on that one. I talked about custom tailored because it's the same thing where is it is when they have that conversation that discussion negotiation, we're getting into a better business relationship. So some of the drawbacks of using a proposal, I would call these the lazy sales person syndrome. It's time consuming. Yes, it is.

29:42 Create a real proposal. Take some time and effort. And that's probably one of the biggest barriers we've seen for sales people. Well, I don't really want to have that discussion. I don't really want to do that work that shows a proposal. And yet the conversations we're having with people who have gone through the class and started to change what they're doing. Some guy said, as we were talking through the proposal, I could see the engineer re-envisioning the way he was looking at his whole layout.

30:12 Yes, yes. I love that story. I could watch him do that. I saw the gears turning and we want it because we were more flexible than how we could set up the system. Man, oh man, what a powerful statement. Oh, time consuming. That was a half a million dollar piece of machinery. Right, right. How much time is that worth? So it can delay decision making. Why? I don't think it can delay. You know, sure, the decision is the decision.

30:43 So I'm not sure that one's real. But let's look at the decision making process, most likely there's other people that are involved. If the quote gets separated from the situation and the desired outcome, which is usually within a proposal, and maybe there's another document that's floating around the department, word from the quote, now we don't have that context of why are we doing this? And why is it an emotional motivation and people make decisions emotionally?

31:07 Well, when the quote gets a faster decision, often no. Well, is that the decision you want? The speed of the decision isn't my counterpoint. The speed of the decision, if it gets delayed because it has to be talked through the system and go through their buying process, good. I want that to happen. Right. There's more people involved. And then the final one that came up with is your scope creep. You mean you can enlarge the program?

31:37 Right. That's good. I'm worried about scope creep after they bought. Definitely, that happens. Then we have to deal with it. Scope creep, when we're talking about the proposal and they add on some things to it, that's a good thing, which can happen. Yeah. I love it when they put their fingerprints on the proposal and the desired solution that they want. And it's their proposal. It's their solution. And then it makes a lot easier for them to sign up.

32:05 You can even hear them saying that. When we do this, and their whole verbiage changes from will we to when we. Yeah. And how can we? And so those are the questions we call them buying signs, right? They change their verbiage to buying signs. So should you use a quarter proposal? I think if you've got a solid relationship, you've been doing a lot of business and they send you quotes on a regular basis, that's okay. But don't let that happen for a year that you're not going and contacting that person and making sure they're getting the right things.

32:36 Every time technology changes, you should be going back and talking to that client and saying, okay, we've got some new things here. Let's see if these are going to be a value to you. But for most sales and these big half million dollar sales, just because you get a quote doesn't mean they know what they're quoting on. Right. Right. I do think the customer could be wrong. I would use a proposal, Scott and I use proposals all the time.

32:58 We think it's a much more effective way to sell. Well, and it's a lot easier for us to remember what we're working on too. It works both ways. Get confusing. Well, the proposal lays out for us. It's a mind map for us as well. So if you're with a service, I don't think you can quote anything. Well, that's why you're talking about services maybe, you know, I don't know. Well, yeah. Yeah. I mean, it starts getting into time, value or cost of goods sold.

33:23 It seems like that's how the pricing is always determined. But we want to be able to sell in the best value. And sometimes you need a little bit more time to build a describe how you can deliver the best value for the customer. So great topic, Bill. I'm glad that we finally had a chance to share that with all of our listeners around. It's just been percolating on us. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Our golden nugget is nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

33:48 That was pretty cool. You're wild. Yeah. I wanted to find something that was related to price and value. And there was a lot to pick from. Yeah. Well, I think that salespeople are valuing nothing when they just let people throw a quote at them. So yeah, yeah. For all the information we talked about, go to winning at selling.com. Look for our show notes. This is episode 655. Next week we're going to be covering seven assumptions and which ones to avoid.

34:17 And again, our book club will be doing chapter nine from the one thing. So please subscribe and share this podcast with your colleagues and on your social media network. Go out and get better one skill at a time. Joyful selling.