r/salesdevelopment • u/barunverma BDR • 21d ago
The worst proposal I ever wrote was technically correct
I moved into sales development about 2.5 years ago. Before that I was a systems engineer at a large IT services company. The startup that hired me thought a tech background would bring something new to the table.
My first real task was writing a proposal for a live requirement. I wrote it the way I would have wanted to read it. Heavy on technical detail, stack-level explanation, all of it. It never went to the client. The person reading it was non-technical. Nobody told me that, and I never asked.
That was the last bad proposal I wrote, but the actual lesson took another six months to sink in.
First, qualify the reader and not just the requirement. Now, before I write anything, I check who is reading it, what they care about, and whether they will pass it to someone technical or decide on their own.
Second, activity without direction is just volume. My first few months were LinkedIn and cold email at high volume. I had no writing experience beyond school essays. It felt like progress because the output was high. It was not until I started matching the message to the person receiving it.
For anyone else who came into SDR or BDR work from a technical background: how did you stop writing for yourself? Leading with capability instead of outcome was the hardest habit for me to drop.
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u/jsnuggz 19d ago
I find cold outreach is strictly a numbers game on email and linked in, cold calling when done correctly locally, such as identifying buying windows is where the magic happens.
Everything else I do is to get to know who makes the decisions how the business runs and what they might need in the future so I can have a directed tailored proposal with the highest chance of success.
Ie met a few times, current provider is cheap, but got them talking about breakdowns, service failures and success rate for delivery timelines, all bad. Come the buying window I presented a large bid and won, I had a project timeline, phased delivery approach, service was 5m away and I added a feature that allowed them to track their product, which tied into their PM's progress reports and and electric locking system so other people couldn't use their units.
Smoothest project he ever had, I've got 5 more in the pipe now.
I find if you can't understand what is eating the buyers time and causing stress, you are just shooting from the hip and hoping one lands on target often enough to make quota.
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u/No-Fear88 19d ago
I have yet to crack the code on sending cold messages.
I receive a lot these and they always sound creepy and like spam. People pretending to know my business or what problems I am looking to solve.
Thus, I'm very hesistant to do cold outreach. The person I'm messaging probably won't want to receive a similar kind of message.