By Nhlanhla Nkomo, Head of Sales, Southern Power Maintenance
A proposal tells a client what a company believes it can do. That sounds obvious, but it is easy to forget when there is pressure to win work. A deadline is approaching, competitors are bidding, and the client wants an answer. In that situation, the temptation is to make the proposal as attractive as possible and deal with the difficult details later. That is often where problems begin.
Salespeople are expected to be confident. They should understand the client, explain the value of the service and move an opportunity forward. But confidence is not the same as agreeing to everything. Sometimes the most important part of the job is knowing when there are still unanswered questions.
A short discussion and a site visit may give Sales a general understanding of the work. They do not always reveal what the project will require once it moves into delivery. The proposed timeline may depend on an outage that has not been confirmed. Access may be more difficult than expected. Specialist equipment may not be available when it is needed. The scope may also leave out work that only becomes visible once the team is on site.
A salesperson does not need to be an engineer or an operations manager, but they do need to know when the people with that knowledge should be brought into the conversation. This is where experience shows. An experienced salesperson is less likely to rush past an unclear point because the rest of the opportunity looks promising. They understand that one assumption can affect the price, the schedule and the client’s expectations.
Asking another question may delay the proposal, but it is usually better than explaining a missed commitment later. There are also times when the client’s preferred solution is not the most practical one. The requested completion date may be unrealistic, or the proposed approach may introduce risks that were not considered at the start. In those cases, Sales has a choice: say what the client wants to hear, or have a more difficult conversation before anything is promised.
The second option may feel less commercial in the moment, but it is often the more responsible one. Clients do not expect suppliers to know everything immediately. Most would rather hear that a point needs to be checked than receive a confident answer that later proves wrong. A salesperson who asks for time to confirm something is not weakening the company’s position. They are protecting its credibility.
Once a client begins to doubt the proposal, every later explanation can sound like an excuse, even when the delivery team is doing its best on site. The danger comes when winning the contract becomes the only objective. A proposal can succeed commercially and still create trouble for the business.
If the price is based on weak assumptions, the margin may disappear. If the timeline was never realistic, Operations inherits the pressure. If the scope was not properly understood, the client may feel misled even when that was never the intention.
None of this means Sales should become cautious to the point of avoiding commitment. Sales exists to win work. But winning good work requires more than persuasion. It requires a clear view of what the business can deliver and the discipline to stay within it.
Clients may not remember every line of a proposal once the project is underway, but they will remember whether the company did what it said it would do. A salesperson’s judgement is tested long before delivery begins. It is tested when the promise is first made.