When pursuing a new business opportunity with a prospect or existing client, it is a good idea to provide a few different options within your proposal. You should think of these as “good”, “better”, and “best” options with corresponding scopes and price ranges. While you might have a strong inclination as to the most appropriate route for the client, it never hurts to provide options.

A good way to think about the proposal process is to imagine yourself as a fisherman. If you had to catch fish in order to feed your family, would you use a single fishing rod and one type of bait? Or, would you use multiple rods, each with a different type of bait? Professional offshore fishermen use a technique called trolling, in which they have dozens of hooks on outriggers using different types of bait and lures. The idea is to increase the odds of success by presenting options to the fish. In professional services, you don’t want to present dozens of options to prospects, but it is a good idea to offer a few.

Champagne Taste on a Beer Budget

One reason to offer options in your proposal is that a prospect can appear to have a large budget during the sales process but base the final vendor selection on a much smaller budget. This can happen for several reasons, such as:

• The prospect may want to understand what the “Cadillac” option looks like. They may ask a lot of questions about higher-end services that they likely can’t afford. They are getting a free education from you in the presentation and proposal.
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• Your contact within the prospect might not know what the actual budget is. How often have you heard the words, “We haven’t finalized our budget yet”? If the prospect hasn’t defined their budget, how can you provide a “one size fits all” scope and price?
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• Budgets get cut at the last minute. It is not uncommon for a prospect to get cold feet on a large spend when it is time to make a decision. A lot can change between the time you present your proposal and when ink hits the contract.
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• Executives weigh in last. Your project sponsor may not be the final decision maker. You should assume that there will be one or two executives involved in the decision chain whom you have never met. Those executives may have an entirely different vision of the project scope and cost than your sponsor.
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Low Pricing Can Also Lose

One of the most frustrating events in professional services selling is losing a deal because “your vision wasn’t big enough”. This usually means that some other firm won the business by proposing a larger and more robust set of services and deliverables at a higher price. The prospect may have liked you the best, but just felt that you didn’t grasp the entirety of their needs.

Just as you may misread a prospect’s budget on the high side, you can also lose deals by shooting too low. Again, this can be caused by a final decision maker who has a different set of priorities than your direct contact. If you pitch a Honda while the executive involved wants a Cadillac, you lose the deal.

So, the best approach is to cover your bases. Propose “good”, “better”, and “best” options and do so in a way that doesn’t make the “good” option feel cheap or the “best” option feel gold-plated.