Proposal Essentials

After you’ve completed your initial appointment / discovery and demo, it’s time to present the proposal to your prospect. You’ve undoubtedly learned a lot about your prospect throughout the process, and now it’s time to show them how your solution adds value for their business.  As you’re putting together your proposal make sure to include the following:

Overview of Your Services

Remember, your services are what makes you unique and differentiate you from your competition. While there are a lot of different service providers in the market, each one does things a little bit differently to create value for their clients. Focus on those differentiators, and make sure you show your prospect how your services can help them. Don’t assume that they’ll be able to see how you can help ease their pain, create efficiencies, or streamline their processes. Connect the dots for them.

Overview of the Technology

Keep in mind that fundamentally, most PEO technology platforms will accomplish similar tasks. Don’t feel the need to go over each and every feature of the technology. There might be some nuances that make your platform different, which you’ll want to emphasize. You’ll also want to make sure to cover the features that you feel will bring the most value to your prospect. Do they have employees in multiple states? Highlight electronic onboarding. Do they manually track time and PTO? Show them how the system can make their processes so much easier. Just keep in mind to highlight the features that will make the most difference for your prospect. Avoid feature dumping.

Overview of Implementation

Change is scary. Take the guesswork out of it for your prospects by telling them exactly what they can expect from the implementation process. If there is some heavy lifting that they have to do (filling out upload files, providing payroll reports, providing EOBs, I9s, etc.), make sure to let them know up-front. If reasonable expectations are set, it’ll help everyone throughout the implementation process.

Benefit Plan Descriptions and Costs

Depending on the situation, going over benefit options might be a completely different meeting. However, covering the benefits during the proposal works well for most prospects. Make sure you have the options that are available to your prospect, the costs associated with each option, and know the basic details of the plans. When it comes to talking benefits though, be careful if you aren’t licensed in your state. I would personally work with a licensed agent on my team to help design the benefit package that he thought would be best for the prospect, and then I would simply present the options and answer general questions. If they start asking specifics, then it’s best to defer to a licensed agent.

Fees Associated with Your Services

There are a couple of different approaches that you can take here. You can either present your costs and leave it at that, or present your costs in some sort of comparison to what they’re doing today. Personally, I’m a fan of completing a comparison for my prospects. Does that mean that I’m selling on price? No. A lot of times, I was more expensive than the incumbent situation. However, I believe that a prospect will do their own comparison if you don’t provide them one. I’d rather do the math and be positive that they have a true comparison than hope that they get the numbers right. Whichever route you choose, just make sure that your numbers are clear and concise. Your prospect will be looking at these after you leave the table, and will oftentimes have to explain the costs to other members on the team. Make sure that they will be able to accomplish this. I’ve seen a lot of pricing that includes percentage of this, plus percentage of that, and don’t forget the percentage for this. A prospect will not be able to make sense of that after you’ve left the room. Keep it simple!

While the typical service provider fees will include an administration fee, workers comp, SUTA, FUTA, and FICA, please also make sure that you include all your fees. If there is an implementation fee, include that. If you charge extra for 401(k) or require employer paid life insurance, include that. You don’t want a prospect to find out about these things during implementation. That’s a sure way to sour a new relationship.

This is a lot of information, but a PEO relationship affects a lot of different aspects of an organization, and it’s important for each piece to be covered. You can choose to cover these topics in a PowerPoint. You might choose excel spreadsheets. Maybe you’ll have a combination of both. Whichever way you choose, make sure you leave hard copies of the material you’ve covered during your proposal, and follow up with an email containing soft copies as well. It’s also helpful to include a copy of your contracts with your proposal documents. This way the prospect can review and can ask questions prior to you going out to sign the contracts with them.