Is it necessary to write a proposal for customers before you begin working with them on your "productized service" or a physical product? If you do, what is your proposal's success rate? Is it more than 90%? If not, you should reconsider what your proposal should say to your potential customer. Most business owners and salespeople, understandably, focus on themselves when writing proposals. As business owners, we believe our company is fantastic. And we want to tell people how great our business is, which is a very noble thing to do, but from the perspective of a potential customer or client, they're not so interested in our business, our credentials, what awards we've won, what certificates we have, and how long we've been in business, especially if you've already had an initial discovery meeting with them. They want to know if you understand them. Do you understand the issues? Where are they doing business? They want to know that you understand their business or problems and can demonstrate that you have a solution for them. So, what constitutes an effective proposal? An effective proposal includes using a good template and demonstrating that you understand the issues. So, after having an initial discovery meeting with a potential new client and asking them questions about what's important to them. What are the problems they're having? What do they require help with? What are their desired outcomes and objectives? And then, when putting together a proposal, it's critical to basically throw back or incorporate those words. So, as they read the proposal, they think, Yes, this is fantastic. You understand both me and the business. So, while we want to write about ourselves, the client wants to read about themselves, which has a lot to do with our brain's original reptilian part. It's very me-centered and we focus, so that's what we need to focus on to catch their attention and demonstrate that we truly understand what they want. My suggestion is to keep your proposal to two pages. So it's really short and succinct, but it just shows the person you're pitching to that okay, yep. You're going over all of the points, you understand everything I need, and it makes it very easy for them to decide that yes, they do want to work with you.

I just had the most productive meeting with a client in cybersecurity. Their product, which we agreed was an absolute no-brainer for the prospect we were discussing, hadn't sold. The sales team told me that this was the second time they'd had this issue and implored, "We MUST reduce the price" "I agree", said the CEO "Really?" I said, "Tell me why." There was silence. "It's not price, is it?" I said, "There are other clues, and we're just hoping they are going away." We talked about the OTHER issues that were stopping the prospect from buying. Why am I telling you this? You might suffer from some of these issues and are too ready to drop your price, which won't help you sell more. We went through a brainstorming session similar to the pre-project brainstorming session I run, which is called the pre-mortem. In the pre-mortem process, we look for all the reasons why a project FAILED and then draw up a list of risks. In brainstorming about this sales process, we looked for all the bad stuff that might stop a prospect from buying. We discussed : - What uncomfortable reality do they need to acknowledge? For example, does the IT Director need to tell the CEO that he's buying the product because they might get hacked? What lessons from the insurance industry might we use? - Do they feel out of their depth making this decision? - Whose respect do they risk losing? - Whose buy-in do they need to get? Have we met them? - What other hard conversations do they need to have? - What scarce resource do they need to reallocate? - What other projects do they need to deprioritise? - What sunk cost do they need to abandon? - What assumptions do they need to rethink? This is just a small selection of the discussion, but you get the idea. After getting the list of issues with the sales process and this prospect, we moved to reframing the discussion with the prospect, and a price cut wasn't even on the table. Want to have a similar brainstorm or pre-mortem? Check out systemise.me

Are You Learning Faster Than You're Burning Cash? I recently wrote a newsletter about how using my scientific background helps me take a methodical approach to marketing experiments. I've found that applying scientific principles is incredibly powerful for learning and growth. My approach isn't just about accumulating facts; it's about embracing a systematic, evidence-based methodology to understand challenges, test hypotheses, and adapt strategies. It's about approaching every business decision not as a guess, but as an experiment, constantly observing, analysing, and refining. This scientific mindset has been invaluable in navigating the complexities of the market, identifying opportunities, fostering continuous improvement within my business. As business owners we are constantly making decisions, taking risks, and investing resources. But are we truly learning from those investments, or just spending? The difference between rapid growth and stagnant plateaus often boils down to your learn rate. It's not just about what you do, but what you discover along the way. The Friday Learning Check-in Forget the typical "what did we accomplish?" updates. Every Friday, gather your team and ask one powerful question: "What did we learn this week?" This simple shift in focus can be transformative. It moves the conversation from activity to insight. Sales: Instead of just reporting on closed deals, what did you learn from the rejections? Were there common objections? Did a new approach resonate with prospects? Marketing: Beyond campaign metrics, what did you learn from your experiments? Why did Message Variant A outperform Variant B? Was it the imagery, the call to action, or the target audience? Product/Customer Service: What surprising feedback did you receive from users? What unexpected pain points did they reveal? Encourage everyone to share their key takeaways. The real magic happens when you dig deeper. Don't settle for surface-level observations like "CPAs are too high" or "customers liked the new feature." Instead, ask "Why?" repeatedly.

I’ve written and talked about this many times. At one time I was a working scientist, doing real science every single day. But what does that have to do with you? A scientist does experiments professionally That means: Having a theory you want to test Setting out the process you will use to find out if you were right Running the experiment, making sure you know what you will measure and how you will know if you have proved your theory Using this knowledge to take your next action Why am I telling you ths? Business is not like science at all! Really?? Nothing sucks the energy out of a brainstorm faster than “we already tried that.” Why this phrase is problematic I don’t believe in failure. Every opportunity where it doesn’t go as we expected is one to learn something new, but only if you know what you were trying to do and try to understand what caused the unexpected result….. Often when an experiment doesn’t go the way we expected, we wall it off in our minds, and rule out entire approaches based on a single experiment. We don’t do the learning and thinking which should follow each experiment. My favourite? “We tried Facebook ads, they don’t work.” Really? Then why is Mark Zuckerberg a trillionaire? Meta ads, like most good ideas, only work after dozens of attempts and learning what worked and what needed further improvement. But how do you know if you should try again or if it's genuinely a bad idea? I’m not comfortable making huge decisions based on a single experiment whose specific details nobody quite remembers. Try, Try, Try Again? (or not) That’s why, in my teams, we have a rule: If somebody says, “We already tried that,” they must show you the experiment plan. This is a plan just like I used as a working scientist to document my experiments, (back in the day, when I made discoveries that allowed me to go all over the world telling people what I had found…) An experiment plan contains, at a minimum, 5 things: 1. The original hypothesis and experiment design 2. The success metric and everybody’s predictions 3. Descriptions of all variants 4. Screenshots of the results metrics 5. Notes from the debrief on learnings and next steps

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