Why Proposals Don’t Close the Sale


Notes
…and what to do instead.
Why don’t proposals close the sale?
If you’re still leading with flashy presentations or sending quotes as soon as possible, you might be losing deals before it even begins. In this episode, we break down the real reason most proposals don’t close the sale. We then share what you should do instead.
Do you feel like you’re sending proposals out into and don’t hear anything back? Let’s walk through a subtle but shift in mindset and process that will change the way you close deals. If you’ve ever wondered when’s the right time to deliver a proposal or conduct a full-blown sales presentation, this episode is for you.
Spoiler: The answer is—later than you think.
Giving a Sales Presentation Isn’t the Answer
Rob opens the episode with a critical reminder: a slick sales presentation doesn’t close deals—conversations do. He emphasizes the importance of delaying your sales presentation until after you’ve identified the real pain, qualified the budget, and confirmed the decision-making process. Without those, even your most dazzling sales presentation or proposal will fall flat.
To illustrate this, Rob shares a real-world example involving Amanda, a client in the HVAC space. Amanda had an opportunity with a private school looking to switch vendors. Their old system wasn’t performing, and their current provider had dropped the ball. Another vendor had already walked in, inspected the unit, and handed over a proposal—full of bells and whistles—but failed to build trust or ask meaningful questions. In contrast, Amanda took a different approach.
Rob walks us through Amanda’s sales process, and how she turned a potentially lost opportunity into a closed deal—fast. Rather than jumping into “pitch mode,” she slowed the process down. She didn’t assume anything. She asked questions. Lots of them.
Here’s what made her sales process effective:
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She challenged the assumption that a new HVAC unit was even needed.
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She probed deeper into their dissatisfaction with the current vendor.
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She uncovered their internal budget cycle and urgency based on upcoming school events.
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She confirmed that they not only had a budget, but flexibility in how they allocated it.
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She made them feel heard—not sold.
As Rob explains, Amanda’s questions built rapport and trust. Her curiosity wasn’t salesy, rather it was strategic. This allowed the school to open up, feel the trust, and when she offered to present some options, it felt natural and welcomed, not forced.
Contrast this with the story of the other vendor who seemingly dropped off a quote and left. It sounded like he didn’t identify any pain, didn’t have a budget discussion with no clear decision-making path. He left a generic estimate and was quickly forgotten.
Rob reinforces a central message to the Slow Pitch Sales Process: Proposals don’t close deals. Conversations do. If you’re sending out sales proposals and not getting responses, you may be skipping the most important part…diagnosis. Or more importantly, pain.
Throughout the episode, Rob offers guiding questions to help you determine if you’re ready to do your sales presentation. Ask yourself:
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Do I fully understand the prospect’s pain? (this is part of the sales strategy)
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Have they shared why they’re considering a change? (important part of the sales process)
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Do I know what happens if they don’t act? (also part of the sales process)
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Has a budget been established and confirmed? (critical component of the sales strategy)
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Do I know who’s involved in the decision and how they make it? (critical component of the sales strategy)
If you can’t answer all of those confidently, it’s probably not time for a sales presentation because you’re not closing the sale.
Rob closes with a reminder: Sales done right feels more like helping than selling. Amanda didn’t sell them a unit; she helped them solve a problem, which is what made the sale.
If your sales team is stuck in the proposal trap and not getting the traction they want, this episode is a wake-up call. It’s not about being fast, it’s about being thorough. Slow down. Ask better questions. Build trust. Then, and only then, you can consider a sales presentation.
Need help diagnosing your own sales process? Email Rob at questions@theslowpitch.com or call/text (608) 708-SLOW.
📬 Let’s Talk Sales
If you’ve run into a similar challenge and want to improve your process, Rob offers 1:1 coaching and team sessions.
📧 Email: Questions@TheSlowPitch.com
📞 Call/Text: (608) 708-SLOW
⏱️ Timestamps
00:00 – Intro: Are You Presenting Too Soon?
00:30 – The Problem with Flashy Proposals
01:00 – When Should You Present a Proposal?
01:55 – Real-World Example: Amanda’s HVAC Sales Call
02:30 – Mindset Shift: You Might Not Win the Deal—and That’s OK
03:10 – Red Flag: Client Wants to Switch Vendors
03:50 – Competing Proposal Mistake: No Trust, No Sale
04:35 – Amanda Asks the Right Questions
05:20 – Exploring the Client’s Real Problem
06:00 – Why They’re Dropping Their Current Vendor
06:50 – Discovering Budget and Timeline Details
07:30 – Qualifying the Budget and Testing Flexibility
08:10 – Offering Options Instead of a Quote
08:40 – What the Client Said About Amanda’s Approach
09:10 – The Difference Between a Quote and a Conversation
09:45 – The Questions You Must Answer Before Presenting
10:10 – Final Thoughts: Conversations Close Sales
10:30 – Outro & Contact Info
Keywords: Proposal timing in sales, Sales presentations, Budget qualification, sales conversations vs proposals., pain points in sales, decision-making process, HVAC sales strategy, slow pitch sales method, sales trust building, closing deals effectively, proposals don’t close deals, when to present a proposal, closing the sale, sales process, budget, sales strategy
Related Episodes:
Sales Phone Calls: Sales Prospect Won’t Return Your Phone Calls
Sales Meeting Prep: What Everyone Gets Wrong
Reddit Suggestions (not always the best)
Podcast Recorded on Squadcast.fm
NOTE: Some links may be affiliate links, which means we get paid a commission when you purchase, but it the cost remains the same for you.
Music: "Clydesdale Funk" by Cast of Characters, written by: Dustin Ransom.
The Episode
Rob 00:07
When’s the right time to present a proposal, or what about a full-blown presentation? When do you walk your prospect through your ideas, your process and your pricing? If you’re asking that question, you’re not alone, and that’s probably why you’re here.
Rob 00:21
A lot of salespeople think if I just show them something that’s kind of impressive and really cool, they’ll say yes, razzle dazzle…that’s what I do. And then all of a sudden, they say yes.
Rob 00:30
But guess what? If you haven’t uncovered the real pain or real sense of urgency or understanding what their budget is and a whole process of how they make decisions, your proposals gonna fall on deaf ears, or, better yet, you’re going to fall on deaf ears because you’re not going to hear back from them.
Rob 00:46
In this episode, we’re going to walk you through exactly when you should present what needs to happen first. A few red flags of, hey, maybe you shouldn’t be doing this quite yet. And we’re also going to talk about a compare and contrast kind of a story here that I had with a client that I was helping get the sale. And we closed this deal, pretty big deal in a couple of days, and it just took that for a variety of reasons, but it only took that for the size project. This was actually a pretty good deal. Let’s get started.
V/O 01:09
This is The Slow Pitch Podcast,
Rob 01:13
So let’s talk a little bit about what when you should be giving a presentation or doing a proposal. And my answer to that, and you may have heard me say once before, and that is, you really almost never should be doing that, you should almost be doing that as an afterthought.
Rob 01:26
It should be coming way at the end of a long process. And by long process, I mean relatively speaking. So, if your sales cycle is a one day, one and done kind of conversation, you should have maybe an hour-long conversation and then a five minute here’s the presentation. That, that’s really it.
Rob 01:42
So relate that to if this is a six-month process, then your final presentation should be about 15 to 20 minutes of presenting information, and I say presenting in a loose way, I’ll share with you here in a minute what I mean by that. Let’s dig into a little bit of an example.
Rob 01:57
So I have a client that was working with who wants to have a big project that came in and she was thinking, hey, this is a good project. I want this project. And we had to kind of right set some mindsets there, because in the beginning, if you want something really, really bad, it can come across the wrong way.
Rob 02:12
So let’s take that idea out of your head, and let’s first start with the idea of you don’t have the job yet, you may not get the job. And guess what? You probably may never get the job, and if you don’t, you’re going to be okay. Alright, so let’s start from that.
Rob 02:25
It’s, it’s a matter of you have the right mindset walking in. That’s the first key. The job was this. She had a lead that came in. It was a private school. They needed to switch their vendor. Her company does HVAC, or heating, air conditioning, those types of things.
Rob 02:38
So she was in South Florida, and so air conditioning is pretty important. You don’t want to live there without an air conditioner. Most of the time, throughout the year.
Rob 02:45
This private school called her and said, “Hey, we have a need to switch our vendor. We’re having some problems, and we would like to switch the vendor out.” And so, to me, that was the first little red flag you want to switch the vendor out, huh? How come?
Rob 02:57
So before we had the meeting with this private school, and I say we, meaning I’m kind of helping her, so I’m behind the scenes, “We,” but really what happens is we had to go through a series of questions, of, you know, why are they, why are they searching for this? What is the issue that’s going on, and why are they working on trying to find a vendor?
Rob 03:13
Well, come to find out, she was handed another company’s proposal when she met with them, and I thought that was even more telling that this poor guy who went there, it sounds like, went to look at this system that they were running into problems with, and went through a whole bunch of stuff and just wrote it all out, gave a price and said, “Here you go.”
Rob 03:31
And also in this particular estimate, which was nice for him to share, this is they said something in there that that was like, hey, we’re, by the way, we’re the best we’ve worked for this many years. We’ve done all these things, blah, blah, blah, and it’s really nice that they do all that, but you know, that means nothing if you don’t earn their trust ahead of time. Right?
Rob 03:47
When my client Amanda, we decided we’re going to go into this thing, and we’ve been handed this, there’s a little bit of a different approach here, right? So, and this should be the same approach, but now we have some inside information that we didn’t really wouldn’t have access to it normally.
Rob 04:00
So then she says, well, when did you start to figure out that you need a new unit? And they start answering those questions. And then she says, well, what happens if you just don’t fix it right now?
Rob 04:00
The issue really was that this school has a air conditioning unit. Compressor is kind of old and about to die. It’s a 12-ton unit. Doesn’t mean anything other than it’s old and it needs to get replaced pretty soon, because if they don’t replace it before the beginning of the new school year, it may become an issue.
Rob 04:16
Layer on to that they also have. we find out later that, their budget resets soon over the summer, and so you want to, kind of, they want to spend that money now rather than later. That’s the way that they wanted to do it.
Rob 04:30
So, this other company had put in a warranty, maintenance plans, all this other stuff. That’s nice, but we felt like, you know what? What if we don’t need all that stuff?
Rob 04:35
So, Amanda, when she went, she took a little look around, and she shows up. They walk her through. They show her the unit. She looks around, does some investigating, and says, hmm, so tell, tell me again. Why do you think you need a new unit? And that was a little bit jarring to them that she said they, she said they, they were like, what do you mean? Why we think this is what we were told?
Rob 04:53
And she says, Well, okay, but why? What’s what seems to be the problem still working, isn’t it? And they said, Well, okay, you, you. Yes, but it doesn’t work all the time. It doesn’t get as cold as it used to. It just it’s, it’s, it takes forever for things to cool down.
Rob 05:14
I mean, you’ve got a new school year, you got a new budget. Why wouldn’t you just do that then? And so she goes through all these questions and finds out whether, you know, students are complaining already this time of year.
Rob 05:26
Schools are not out yet, and you know there’s an event coming up, parents are going to be there. They don’t want a chance that this thing’s going to be down. And so, she’s like, have you have you had any events since it went down or started going down at all? Have you had any events since then?
Rob 05:36
And they said, no, we haven’t had any, but we’re afraid that’s going to go down before this event comes up. And she’s like, okay, like, okay? And she’s like, well, you have a vendor already, don’t you? Why wouldn’t you just call them? Why are you calling me?
Rob 05:47
They said, Yeah, but there’s a reason this thing is going down. They haven’t really fixed it. They haven’t maintained it. They said they would maintain it. They haven’t come out as often as they used to, or they should, and we’re not happy about it.
Rob 05:55
She’s like, Oh, that’s not good. Well, have you called them to at least come out? And check out. Maybe they just didn’t even know that this was bad. Maybe was bad. Maybe you should call them.
Rob 06:11
They’re like, no, we don’t want to work with them anymore. And they gave her a bunch of reasons why they didn’t want to. One was, is that they took forever to get there? And so that was an interesting thing, too.
Rob 06:12
If that took forever for that company to get over there, why did that take so long? Is it because they’re busy? Is it because they were a difficult client? They just want to deal with them. So, she starts digging into some of those questions.
Rob 06:22
The point is, she started asking a whole bunch of questions about that vendor, but it was just a conversation. It was very comfortable. They were answering the questions freely, because they didn’t feel like they were being sold.
Rob 06:35
They didn’t feel like they needed to protect themselves. But she was gaining so much information. And then she turns to them and says, you know what? These units, they’re not they’re not inexpensive.
Rob 06:44
Have you guys set aside funds for stuff like this happening? Because this can happen occasionally, I’m sure. And they said, Yeah, we do. We have a budget. This is kind of part of the deal. We knew that some of the maintenance stuff needs to happen, and this could be one of those items.
Rob 07:08
She said, hmm, and what did you guys set aside for something like this? This this is kind of a big deal. They said, Yeah, it is, but we’ve said we’ve set us out. And then she they told her how much she’s they set aside and she was happy to hear that number, because it fit with what it would take to get that done.
Rob 07:10
And then she said, what if I told you that might be a little bit more than that? What would happen then? Now that was an interesting question, right? They told her the budget. She felt like that’s an okay budget to be able to repair it.
Rob 07:21
But if she says, well, what if I told you, it might be a little bit more than that, what was their answer? Their answer was, it would be okay, because we have funds that we can move around from this area to this area, we’re going to be okay with that.
Rob 07:31
So she knew that that number that they said originally is pretty good, that’s probably going to be okay. That’s something that’s really interesting and helpful to know, isn’t it that they could pull money from another account if they needed to. So, she says, alright, well, should we start to talk some budget, would that make sense?
Rob 07:47
And so they said, Yeah, let’s do that. So, she starts kind of digging through and figuring out what that would look like. And then she says, somewhere in the conversation, would it make sense for us to put a few options together for you and figure out what’s the right option for you guys?
Rob 07:58
Knowing she thought she could probably give them a couple of options to choose from, which could involve other things along the way over the years that come, but it would be helpful for them as options.
Rob 08:07
So, she talked about the different options, and kind of let them select which ones they thought they would like to see pricing on, all knowing that that was all within their budget that they talked about. So, let’s talk about what this difference is between the original guy that came out that just handed off his estimate and walked away, versus her.
Rob 08:26
They told her this private school person, that maintenance person, that facilities manager, they told her, you asked so many questions. You helped us understand that you knew what we were going through, what we needed to fix, and understood what the problem was, understood what the possible solutions were and started to put together a solution for us. That’s what they told her.
Rob 08:44
And so, what really comes down to is the original guy that came out didn’t know if there was any pain or not. He just said, this is what you need. I see it, but they didn’t know for sure, and they weren’t… They weren’t comfortable with somebody that just didn’t dig into it far enough.
Rob 08:56
He didn’t confirm a budget, necessarily. It was tough to tell, because he was kind of close to the budget, but he wasn’t exactly where he should be. And whenever somebody just says, hey, just send it over, it’s a lot of times a brush off.
Rob 09:08
So, they didn’t say that to her. She asked, do you want me to go through this with you before I send this to you? That that’s her process. She doesn’t just send it over. She sets up a meeting, she reviews it with them and lets them make a decision.
Rob 09:20
And I think the key to this is that when they tell you what’s at stake, and they if they don’t solve the problem, that’s a huge answer. When you know the budget and the timeline and the range and all that stuff fits, you know, that’s a good positive for you. It’s a strike in the corner for you, right?
Rob 09:33
And you know, when you ask them, would you like me to put something together, and they say yes, with some context of why that’s helpful, and when you’ve confirmed there’s a decision making path, you know what’s happening next based on their what they’re doing and what you’re doing, that’s a huge deal too.
Rob 09:47
I mean, you have to remember proposals and presentations. They’ll never close a deal. The conversations will close the deal. It’s always about the conversations that you have before you build or do anything.
Rob 09:58
Ask yourself, what is the information that I do not know, because once you’ve got pain, you got the budget, you got some decisions, only then is it right to start to make some solutions.
Rob 10:07
So, if you or your team is sending out proposals and not getting any response, it might be time to fix it, or maybe not. Maybe it’s not costing you anything to do that, you know, maybe, maybe that’s not an issue for you.
Rob 10:17
Regardless, you can contact us at questions at the slowpitch.com if you have any questions about how to fix your sales issues, especially if you might be presenting an estimate too soon or the wrong way, remember, Slow Down and Close More and thanks for listening.
V/O 10:34
Thank you for listening to The Slow Pitch. Do you have a question about sales? Call or text your question at (608) 708-SLOW. That’s (608) 708-7569. Or you can email them at Questions@TheSlowPitch.com. Slow Down and Close More.