Proposals and resumes can get buried in your client’s inbox, and time kills all deals. If both firms run Microsoft 365, you can message a prospect in Teams.* Your first message arrives as a chat request they can accept or block. All you need is their email address.
*This no longer works if their company does not allow external access (thankfully it’s on by default, but admins can switch it off).
Try this week
Open Teams → Chat → New message.
Type your prospect’s email in the To: line and send:
“Hi Susan, I’ve just sent you that proposal by email. Shall we set a follow-up call?”
AI tip
Write an in-house writing style guide
And while we’re touching on proposals, I recommend developing an in-house writing style guide. Spell out the standards of writing you want your firm to live up to. It can also contain bans on phrases readers associate with AI slop. Then you can set up your AI tools with these as standing instructions.
The Lyle Alexander Consulting writing style guide has been applied to every page of our website and all outgoing long-form communication. Almost everything we write starts here. A secondary checker script of 28 rules then blocks anything with an error, and a second AI that didn’t write the draft reads it against the guide. I edit or approve last.
If you want the same for your team, I’m happy to walk you through our setup on a call.