Rant: Lost a 6-figure deal because our proposal was a PDF wall of text

Last Tuesday we sent over a 40 page proposal to a logistics company in Chicago, all text no visuals. They ghosted us for a week, then their procurement guy said 'we couldnt find the pricing section'. I get it, our old templates were lazy. Has anyone else had deals die just because the doc was unreadable, and what did you switch to?

2 comments

2 Comments

joseph_hart1mo ago

“we couldnt find the pricing section” lol that hits way too close to home. I once sent a 30 page quote to a retail chain and they replied back asking if the cost was per unit or per pallet because it was buried in paragraph 27, under a header that just said “Overview.” My bad for thinking anyone would actually scroll that far. Switched to a one page summary up front with big bold numbers and a QR code to the full boring version. Still lost deals, but at least now they know exactly what I’m ripping them off for, ha.

finley_lopez981mo ago

Holy crap, @joseph_hart, that QR code idea is gold. I did the same thing once, sent out this monster 40 page bid to a school district and they emailed me back a week later asking if the price included installation. It was on page 2, bold and underlined, right under the total. I just assumed people read the whole thing, but nope, they skim like everyone else. Now I put the total on the first slide of the deck and write "YES, THIS INCLUDES INSTALL" in all caps, and even then I get the "just double checking" reply.