Follow-Ups and Proposals: What to Ask Your Mobilizers with Kevin "KD" Dorsey
31 Jan 2026 · 6 min
Podcast episode (Better Sell Better) hosted by Kevin 'KD' Dorsey focusing on tactical guidance for sales follow-up and proposal practices. Key advice: use problem-based language in proposals, include persona-specific FAQs, interview customers to map buyer processes, and ask four critical questions to mobilize champions and accelerate deals. Contains a sponsor ad for Clary's Revenue platform and a call-to-action to engage via Slack/LinkedIn.
Chapters
Every company has breakdowns in their revenue process. Sure thing. Deals slip into next quarter, competitors creep in and swipe deals away at the last minute and deals getting single threaded that don't get to power. These are just a few examples of revenue leak, but there are a ton more and they're preventing your team from reaching their sales targets. That's why I'm such a big fan of Clary's Revenue platform is the only tool that actually helps leaders take control of their revenue and thrive through any market conditions, especially when things get tough. You can't afford to miss a single detail, but you also can't be leading by gut. Clary combines the science and the art of sales and sales leadership. So go to clary.com if you want to answer the most important question in your business. Are you going to meet, beat or Miss on revenue?
Welcome to the live Better Sell Better podcast with your host Kevin Dorsey of Inside Sales Excellence, the number one Patreon group and YouTube channel for tech sellers and tech sales leaders where we dive in deep for tactical advice on how.
To book more meetings, close more deals.
Faster and lead sales teams to success. But we don't stop there. We also focus on the person in salesperson. We talk about mindset goals, time management.
And so much more.
So thank you for listening and if you're interested, head on over to patreon.com InsideSalesExcellence now with that, grab a notepad, get ready and let's dive into the good stuff.
And now we get into the follow up and proposals. So one problem based language in your follow up and proposals. Most proposals are all about the product and price, nothing about the problem. The more places you can put in there you said you wanted, you told me you're using their language back reminding them like these are the problems you have now and the better future that you are trying to get. Reminding them of the commitments they made and why. And this bullet point right here, your proposal is for who you didn't talk to, not for who you did. You already spoke to them. Your proposals for the people that you didn't that already should make your proposals better. Because so often they glaze over the problems, they glaze over the issues, they glaze over the impact because they think everyone gets it. That's not the case. The proposals for where you didn't remember I said making it easy for them. Have the frequently asked questions by Persona in there and ready. What are the most common questions from legal? What are the most common concerns from finance? What are the most common questions from HR like have those in there, you know what they're going to be or at least you should know what they're going to be. If you're a professional in your industry and in your process, you know what a buyer goes through. If you do not know what a buyer goes through to buy your product, you need to go find out. You need to go interview 15, 20 customers and say walk me through the entire process. Who did you have to talk to? Who was the approver versus the decision maker? Where were the sticking points? Why do you think you were able to get it across the line? Why did the boss agree? Right, like go find these things out so you can help build this process out. You know how often I have to build a business case or I have to go answer legal questions or I have to chase people down, right? Single sign on, what's the secure login like? Build that out for me. You know my biz system team is going to ask me, have it ready for me in this follow up and proposal, right? Like now we're talking the problem, the impact of that problem. Remember discovery training, why they need to fix it, why the impact will be so important to them. The return on it, how your product does it, FAQs, like now you're talking about proposals right now. It's valuable and it's going to help drive the process forward. All right, you're selling the very next step. So if you know I've thrown a lot at you already, but I want you to think about this. These are the four must ask or must do things when you're trying to mobilize. And champion. One, is your champion sold? Two. Why are they sold? Three. What has to be in the proposal? And four, how can we get this done by X? With reasons. Even if they're rushing you off the phone, you gotta get the answer to these four questions. Because also too, if they're rushing you off the phone, you missed something. You missed something. Are you sold? And why? What has to be in the proposal to earn the next step? How can we get the next step done by why? This is the core format here that you need to understand and remember. So remember this coaching is where you make or break your deals. You, you can give the pitch of your life and if you just leave it there, you let them off the hook. You let them run off to their boss and you don't equip them, you're going to lose deals. Right now remember this isn't going to work on everyone but it's going to allow you to get that one extra deal out of 10. That can be thousands of dollars per month. Build your relationship so you can leverage it. If they love you so much, they should be willing to go above and beyond for you to get a deal done. I hear so many closers thought, oh, they love me. I'm a relationship seller.
Cool.
Then leverage the relationship to earn the next step. And if they love you and you love them, empower them, help them buy. Right? So this process here, it's going to bring your close rates up. It's going to bring your sales cycles down. You'll be able to close deals faster, and you'll turn a champion into a mobilize. I hope this was helpful. If you have questions, hit me up in the Slack channel or on LinkedIn. But until the next time, y' all go mobilize and go load later, y' all.
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