General Consultant Discussion

Sadly this isn't realistic (or smart business) but I'd like to start taking as long to respond to prospects questions on my proposals as it took for them to get back to me after receiving the proposal. The new normal is they push you for all sorts of info. The radio silence for days/weeks after you deliver a proposal. If it takes them two months to reply - I'd like to take two months to answer their inquiries...

It's all part of the 'Service Business'. We are here to serve their needs, not the other way around. However, a little equity (or more importantly, a little more respect) would be nice. Is it any different than people who talk on a cell phone while checking out at the store or ordering at the local Subway? Anyway, I share your pain but it just comes with the territory.

I have some clients like that. I respond quickly to their issues. They take several months to pay.

Easier said than done but the key is turning the prospect into a paying customer. Even if they aren't yet licensed for Sage 100, you are still providing Sage 100 consulting (which is not free as Don Draper points out to Conrad Hilton). If the business pays, we become more forgiving of these types of relationships or we have an opportunity to make a decision to walk away from the business or charge more. I think this works in cases of new license sales and Sage 100-licensed rescues.

Until you present the proposal, you are in charge; you have the power. As soon as the Prospect has the proposal in their hands, you have transferred the power to the prospect. In many cases, especially with hardware, the prospect trusts us to provide what they need. So they wait until they get our proposal and then use it as a guide to ""shop"" while we cool our heels. If the prospect is ""local"", we insist the proposal is delivered in person with a scheduled time of 1 hour. If I get there and the party won't/can't see me, I don't leave the proposal. If the prospect is too far away to do that, we give a couple sentence statement for each of the Good, Better, Best Options based on Warrior's Standard Terms, Conditions, Schedule and Qualifications which will only be given out during final negotiations. The Prospect, of course, does not really like this but when we tell them we have a ""process"" that has worked for us and hundreds of other prospects just like him/her, and the process requires an in-depth review of the proposal, we don't really have a hard time with the followup call/meeting. Once you get to that point, however, the proposal needs to be top shelf. The key is to keep control of the power as long as you can in the process. My 2 cents.

Every quote/proposal that I send out has an expiration date, in a big bold font, usually no more than 30 days from date of presentation, and sometimes as short as 10 days. Seems to help motivate them to respond.

@MoiraGoggin And when they say to move ahead weeks after the 'expiration date' do you accept the original price?

No, I'd re-quote them, even if it was the same amounts, it would be re-quoted with a new expiration date. It usually never comes to that though, I don't let quotes expire without following up with the client/prospect and usually that allows for us to chat about the objections/objectives and resolve it with either an approval, deferred (to be re-quoted later), or shelved.