Commercial offer: tips for correct drafting, samples and examples
In this article, we will consider the main types of commercial offers and give step-by-step recommendations, following which you can significantly increase customer interest in the product and make the CP more effective, we will also consider programs and services that will help in development.
A commercial offer is an essential document used by most companies, with which you can not only offer your products and services to both new companies and partners, but also motivate your customers to purchase a new product or service.
Purpose of the commercial offer
In order for a commercial proposal to bring results, it must first of all be correctly drawn up. For the correct development of a CP, it is very important to understand what main information load it should carry.
As a rule, among the main criteria that affect whether the recipient of a commercial offer will call the telephone number indicated in the commercial offer, there are several basic and many additional ones.
Why should a buyer call?
This question is very easy to answer, putting yourself in the client's shoes.
Main motivating factors
1. Price of a good or service
This applies to commercial offers whose main purpose is to sell. Everything is very simple here, the recipient (potential buyer), unless of course he is interested in buying, most likely looked at similar market products and will not buy a product or service more expensive than competitors, unless of course there are very significant reasons for this.
Most Internet users are familiar with the A liE xpress online store, which has become very popular lately. It is not difficult to guess that it owes its popularity to the very low prices for goods that are posted on the site.
Therefore, the indicated prices should be, if not lower, then at least at the level of competitors.
2. Terms of delivery of goods (provision of services)
This criterion is the second most important after the price, and may outweigh the choice in favor of your company, even if the price is slightly higher. There is a simple explanation for this, if the delivery time varies significantly (for example, by two weeks), and the cost does not differ significantly, the choice will be made in favor of a supplier that works more quickly.
3. Quality
Quality is a very important incentive that must be reflected in the commercial offer. Of course, a lot here depends on what exactly is being sold.
For example if it is a product, then it would not be superfluous to indicate that it is supplied directly from the manufacturer's factory and, for greater confidence, write the address of the factory.
If a service is being sold, then people's reviews about its quality will perfectly motivate the client to call your company. However, we will write about reviews in more detail later. It will be great if quality certificates are attached to the commercial offer.
4. Decoration
Definitely, the design of a commercial proposal affects the choice of the buyer. Surely you yourself have repeatedly received the same type of letters, consisting of only one sheet of Word or an Excel document listing all the goods or services of the company. In most cases, such a commercial offer is not only not read, but not even opened.
Compare two options for a CP: with registration and without
How can you be serious about a company that offers a product by writing just a few lines about it in a Word document, and attaching a few poor-quality photos to the letter. Definitely, it is impossible to send the received text without registration, even if they are expected after a personal conversation on the phone.
Additional motivating factors
1. Discounts, promotions and bonuses
Recently, discounts do not arouse much interest among customers, since by and large they do not carry significant advantages, but you should not forget about them, because they can play a decisive role in choosing a client.
Show people on the numbers, how much savings they will receive by ordering not 10, but 100 copies of the goods at once. Show them how much they can save.
Give a useful gift that the buyer will receive when ordering goods within a week.
2. Availability of additional service
Depending on what exactly is being sold, it will not be superfluous to indicate the presence of additional services that you can provide to the buyer when ordering from you.
Additional services include:
free shipping;
free service;
free installation;
delivery to service.
If we say this is a service, then a free visit of the master, free diagnostics, etc.
Not a small role can be played by reviews and recommendations from your partners who have used the services or are buyers of goods.
It is important to understand that the reviews left on your site will be less valuable than those that customers can find about the company on the Internet on third-party review sites or on the sites of your partners.
Imagine how a person’s trust will increase if, starting to look for reviews about your product or services, he will find only positive ones and not on your company’s website, but on a specialized review site like irecommend.ru or otzyv.ru.
It is not necessary to insert all letters of thanks, you can simply put links to the pages of your site, where interested people can see them.
4. Facts and research results
Do not underestimate your potential buyers and significantly embellish reality, but if the product is really good, it will not be superfluous to indicate true facts or, for example, research results that will help with the choice.
However, a strong distortion of reality can pass for deception and produce a negative effect.
5. Calculations are better than text
You can describe the benefits a thousand times, but one visual calculation will show the customer the benefits that he will receive as a result of using the product will be much better.
And the more transparent and understandable the calculation is, the more it motivates to call.
6. Photos or videos
Do not skimp on photos that should show the product from all sides. It will be easier for the client to make a choice if he can immediately see how the product will look.
If the product is complex or it is a service, you can give a link to a video that will show the whole process, and it can be very interesting for the buyer. The presence of photos and videos in the commercial offer will undoubtedly favorably influence the customer's decision in a positive direction.
7. Contacts
A call to the contact details will bring the desired result from the mailing, however, if among all the contacts the customer does not find the most suitable for the call (say, there is no free 8 800 number), he may change his mind to call and the possible deal will fail. So try indicate in the commercial offer the maximum ways to contact you.
If there are several people in the office, it is necessary to indicate in the commercial offer the full name of the employee who can answer the questions that the customer has. The big disadvantage would be if a person calling the company cannot get additional information, most likely the client will be lost.
To make dialing your contact information easier, you can create QR code and place it on the contact page, using a special program on a smartphone, a person will recognize it and make a call. To create a QR code, there are free services that are easily searched through a search engine.
In contacts, next to the names of employees responsible for information about the product, you can place their photos, so the customer speaking on the phone will see who exactly he is talking to, which will positively affect the conversation as a whole.
If the purpose of the commercial offer is to visit the client to the office, then be sure to indicate the address, how to get there by car and public transport, and also add a photo of the facade of the building with the entrance through which you can go to your office.
What are commercial offers?
Commercial offers can be divided into three big groups, This:
cold;
warm;
hot.
Hot CPs
Such KP, as a rule, are personalized, in other words, directed to be read by a certain person. In such proposals, the position and name of the person for whom it is sent are usually indicated. The most common example of a hot CP might be a sentence that sent to the client after a telephone conversation.
In most cases, a customer request for a price list or quotation is needed to compare prices. A person calls several companies, asks to send him a commercial offer and then compares prices and in most cases orders from a company where the price is more attractive.
When compiling and sending such an offer, it is important to understand that it must be sent as quickly as possible and at competitive prices. Such a CP can bring results.
Warm CPs
Offers called warm, as a rule, are sent after the call of the seller to the potential client, that is, the opposite of hot, when the client calls the seller.
The scheme of work is very simple: the manager of the seller's company selects the base of phones of companies that may be interested in the seller's service or product. If a sharp refusal is not immediately received, the manager either asks when to call back and find out about the need or ask for an email address to send a commercial offer.
Less response from warm CPs than from hot ones, and their distribution is more laborious, since before sending it is necessary to call the company and "test the waters".
Cold gearboxes
For these commercial offers, a database of email addresses of companies is collected that may be interested in a service or product, after which a letter is sent.
The response to cold CPs is very low, which may be due not only to poor selection of email addresses, but also to the lack of interest in the product from the client.
1. Structure
Header or title page- introduces the client to the essence of the matter and may contain contact information, a logo or a photo.
Introduction- the essence of the offer is briefly described, with the maximum number of facts and figures that should emphasize the uniqueness of the product or service.
Price list- an obligatory component of any commercial offer are prices, which, as already mentioned above, should be lower than those of competitors. The price list can clearly reflect how much the client will save by buying a batch in bulk or ordering more than 10 pieces. at a time. Definitely don't list the whole price list, list the best prices.
Conclusion- it should describe all the advantages over competitors and tell all the facts that make your company more attractive.
Contacts- it is best to duplicate the main contacts on all pages (phone, website), however, on the last page, indicate all possible contacts (phone, email, website, fax, Skype, Viber, Whatsapp and groups in social networks) to give the client a more convenient communication method.
2. Minimum "water"
A commercial offer should contain a minimum of general information. Everything should be clear and to the point. You should not embellish or mislead customers, such information can rather give the effect of anti-advertising.
3. Write the right headlines
The first thing you pay attention to when reading a commercial proposal is the headings. The right headlines will whiten the essence and your uniqueness from the crowd and encourage the client to read it to the very end. The more catchy and intriguing the headlines are, the more likely it is that the client will call using the contact details.
Headings will be more readable if their font is different from the color of the body text, but not too different from the general color scheme of the document.
4. Visualize all possible data
Data visualization will not only provide a more understandable perception of information by your client, but also will focus on key aspects of the proposal. Information presented in the form tables, graphs, drawings and diagrams will attract attention and encourage the reader to study.
Currently, there are many online services on the Internet that allow you to visualize any data as simply and quickly as possible.
5. Correct design
Undoubtedly, the content has the main meaning, but in order to start reading the text, it must interest the client. That is why it is very important to consider the development of the design of a commercial proposal.
The main task of design should be to create a unique selling proposition that will stand out from hundreds of others. The presence of a beautiful header will not make the offer unique, you need to think over a complex design, which should at least include the design of the title page, the design of internal pages, buttons, numbered lists, footnotes and various pointers with which you can focus on the necessary information.
6. Format text correctly
Text design affects readability, so a lot of attention should be paid to the text:
A large amount of information should be divided into paragraphs, and each paragraph should begin with a red line;
Key phrases should be highlighted, for emphasis, either in bold or italics;
Do not create a document with an "exotic" font, it is best to use standard fonts that are easy for everyone to read.
7. One commercial offer - one product
To achieve maximum efficiency from sending out a CP, you should make one commercial offer for each product, in which you write only about this product or service.
Thus, it will be possible to send it out more precisely, the audience of the mailing list will be more targeted, and the number of responses will be maximum.
This mistake is very common, as many sellers think that if they don’t call for one product, they will be interested in another, but this is not correct. The client simply may not find the necessary information and close this KP. Therefore, you should not list all the services that your company provides or write a complete list of goods.
8. Be original
Make your CP completely different from others, come up with something unique that others don't have yet. Come up with a unique service that will be useful to the target audience.
9. Push the customer to action
Very often, from the moment of the first reading to the call, a lot of time can pass, and during this period the client can either lose your contacts or find another company. That is why it is important to gently push the person to the call.
Motivating information can be both the validity period of the price and additional bonuses that the buyer will receive by calling the company today. For each product or service, it is important to choose exactly such attractive benefits that can motivate a call.
10. Electronic file format
The file format in which the commercial offer will be sent by email must be available for viewing on computers running any operating systems, as well as tablets and mobile phones.
The most viewable and ubiquitous is pdf format. In our opinion, it is in a pdf file that it is worth sending out a commercial offer. It will not be an error if the CP is sent in the form jpeg image file, although, of course, the convenience of viewing will suffer somewhat, but now users who do not have a pdf viewer installed will be able to view the CP using a standard image viewer installed on each computer with an operating system.
Sample commercial proposals
How to deliver a commercial offer to a client
There are two ways to transfer the CP to the client: electronic and personal.
Recently, the most common is the electronic method, but it is not the most effective.
Sending via email
The easiest way to present your services or products is to send them via e-mail. This method has both its advantages and disadvantages.
To the main benefits can be attributed to the fact that customers can be very far from you and convey information to them quickly, conveniently only using e-mail.
It is much easier and cheaper to send a commercial offer in bulk in electronic form (and if you do not use specialized services, it is generally free of charge).
The only downside before personal delivery, there is less interest of a person in reading or even viewing this letter on e-mail.
Delivery of a printed copy in person
Often, a lot depends on whether the essence is conveyed to a potential client or partner, and we are not even talking about tens of thousands. In such cases, you can not be lazy and print out a commercial offer for its personal delivery to the addressee.
If there is no color printer, you can order a dozen copies at any printing house by printing on thick glossy sheets of paper, and then making a beautiful binding.
It will not be a shame to hand a beautiful printed commercial offer personally to the head of the organization or leave it at the reception. Unlike commercial proposals that are sent by e-mail, such an offer will certainly be studied and, if it is drawn up correctly, motivates the client and you will be contacted to conclude a contract or clarify details.
What programs and services will help in the development of the CP?
After the text of your company's commercial offer is ready, it remains to arrange everything correctly by adding graphic elements, tables, photographs and motivating design.
The easiest to learn is the Publisher program, in which we recommend starting development. This is a specialized program for creating presentations from Microsoft, from which it will later be possible to export CP to pdf format.
To work with raster and vector graphics, of course, it is best to use the well-known programs from Adobe - Photoshop and Illustrator. Edited graphics from them are easy to move to Publisher.
For data visualization, it is most convenient to use online services, among which almost all the best ones are in English. Among the best are Easel.ly and tableau.com. With their help, all data from dry numbers will take on a living form.
There are services that can help determine how many times your letters were opened and a certain addressee was busy reading it. Based on this data, you can make repeated mailings to interested emails if they did not receive a call. But this will be discussed in detail in another article.
Before submitting: what questions does a quotation answer?
1. How the product or service can really help the customer
Read the entire text that was compiled again and analyze whether the proposed product is really able to solve the problems of potential consumers, are the emphasis on strengths correct?
Put yourself in the buyer's shoes, you would have a desire to buy this product after reading.
2. Main differences from competitors
What real differences did you indicate in the text of the offer that can significantly distinguish the product in comparison with competitors? An advantage can be not only the characteristics of a product or service, but also additional services that only your company provides.
3. Factors that can push you away from buying
Analyze the text and try to find facts that can negatively affect the customer's decision to buy. If such factors are found, try to correct them.
In other words, just put yourself out of the buyer's shoes or ask your friends and try to think about what should be added to the offer, so that it would be really interesting.
Conclusion
According to the received commercial offer, the client will make a conclusion not only about the services or products offered in it, but also about the whole company, with which he may have to cooperate for a long time.
That is why, having spent time on developing a CP today and doing everything as informatively, beautifully and correctly as possible, you will do profitable investment in the future of your company. After all, in most cases, the money spent on its development can pay off with the sale of just one unit of goods, and a good commercial offer can help to conclude profitable contracts and bring millions in profits.
Download template
Especially for those who want to create a commercial offer on their own, we have prepared a template for a commercial offer in .pub format in which you can enter your data - text, photos, price list, graphics and save it in .pdf format for later sending.
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