Peter McKeon - Founder and CEO, Salesmasters
If you’re a sales leader watching well-crafted proposals disappear into silence, the problem almost certainly isn’t your proposal. It’s what
happened — or didn’t happen — before you sent it.
Across the B2B sales teams we work with, the pattern is consistent: 80% of lost deals were lost before the proposal landed. Salespeople are confusing activity with progress — quoting too early, chasing prospects who were never going to buy, and letting the document do the selling for them.
Here are the four most expensive mistakes we see, and the fix for each.
1. Proposing before qualifying.
“Just send me a quote” is not a buying signal. It’s a signal to slow down. A proposal is earned, not given. The rule in our client teams is simple: no discovery call, no proposal.
2. Skipping the real pain.
For example, “We need a new website” isn’t the pain. “We’re losing leads to competitors who look more credible” is. Surface asks waste your time. Dig until you find the business consequence — the cost of doing nothing.
3. Selling to the wrong person.
60% of proposals get forwarded — cold, with no context — to a decision-maker who never spoke to you. Ask in every call: “Who else, in addition to yourself, will be involved in this decision?”
4. Avoiding the budget conversation.
No budget talk equals wasted hours on the wrong deal. Try this: “Projects like this typically run $X–$Y. Does that align with what you’ve set aside?” If they flinch, you’ve saved yourself a twenty-page proposal.
The fix is upstream. Qualify harder. Discover deeper. And book the proposal debrief meeting before the document leaves your inbox — never send cold. The top 2% of sales professionals don’t close proposals. They open conversations that make closing inevitable.
Want our Go/No-Go Proposal Checklist? We’ve turned this into a one-page checklist used by B2B sales teams to decide — before they write a single word — whether a proposal is worth sending. Visit salesmasters.com.au or get in touch with the Salesmasters team and we’ll send you the checklist plus our 5-question Discovery Call template.
