Some time ago, I watched a salesperson spend three days crafting what she called "the perfect proposal." She'd mapped out every feature, highlighted the ROI calculations, even included a detailed implementation timeline. Two weeks later, she was still waiting for a response.
The buyer had gone dark.
Here's what happened: she was pitching a product instead of guiding a decision. Every B2B sale boils down to helping someone make a confident decision to change. Most proposals fail because they focus on products instead of transformation.
These days, I use what I call the Transformation framework. I'ts a simple way to structure both your discovery calls and proposals around what buyers actually need: a clear path from where they are to where they want to be.
The real reason buyers ghost your proposals
Picture this: An executive gets your proposal on a Thursday afternoon. They're already dealing with budget reviews, a system outage, and three other vendor pitches sitting in their inbox. Your proposal lands with a thud: twenty-three pages of features, benefits, and technical specifications.
They skim the executive summary, scroll to the pricing page, and close the PDF.
The problem is that buyers aren't choosing between your product and your competitor's product. They're deciding whether to change their current situation at all. If your proposal doesn't make that case it gets filed away under "maybe later."
So what does it take to guide someone through a change decision?
What really happens when executives make buying decisions
Before we dive into the framework, let's talk about what's actually happening in your buyer's head.
They're not sitting there thinking, "I really need a new CRM system." They're thinking, "Our sales process is broken, deals are slipping through the cracks, and I'm tired of having no visibility into what's actually happening." They're weighing the pain of staying the same against the risk and effort of changing.
Most people are naturally inclined toward the status quo. Change is hard, risky, and requires explaining yourself to other people.
Think about the last major decision you made at work: hiring a new team member, switching software platforms, restructuring a process. You probably asked yourself four questions, even if you didn't realize it:
Where are we now? Where do we want to be? What needs to happen to get there? And is it worth it?
These four questions form the backbone of every change decision. They should also guide every proposal you write.
The 4 questions every buyer needs answered
The Transformation framework breaks down like this: Situation, Future, Change, Value. Let's walk through each element.
Situation: Where are they now?
This isn't about listing their current tools or processes, although that is important. It's about understanding the specific pain they're experiencing today. A good situation assessment sounds like: "Right now, your sales team is managing deals in spreadsheets, which means you have no real-time visibility into pipeline health, and deals are falling through the cracks because follow-up tasks get forgotten."
You shouldn't assume you understand their current state without digging deep enough. Your buyer needs to see that you truly get their world.
Future: Where do they want to be?
Vague futures kill deals. "We want to be more efficient" doesn't create urgency. "We want every deal tracked automatically, with clear next steps and pipeline forecasting accurate enough to predict monthly revenue within 5%" creates a clear destination.
The future state needs to be specific enough that your buyer can visualize what success looks like and urgent enough that waiting feels costly.
Change: What needs to happen?
Here's where your solution lives, but notice the positioning. You're not pitching features. Instead you're describing the bridge between their current reality and their desired future. "To get from manual tracking to automated pipeline management, you'll need a system that captures every customer interaction, automates follow-up sequences, and provides real-time reporting."
Your solution becomes the necessary path forward, not a nice-to-have add-on.
Value: Why is it worth it?
This goes beyond ROI calculations. Value includes the cost of not changing, the risk of waiting, and the quantifiable benefits of moving forward. "The system will pay for itself within six months through improved deal closure rates, but the real value is avoiding the revenue leakage you're experiencing right now. These we calculated at roughly $200K annually."
When you can clearly articulate all four elements, you're not just writing a proposal. You're creating a roadmap for their decision.
How to use the transformation framework in your next sales call
The framework works just as well for discovery conversations as it does for proposals. Each element translates into specific questions that naturally flow from one to the next.
For Situation: "Walk me through how you handle lead qualification today. What happens after a prospect fills out a form on your website?" Then dig deeper: "Where do you feel like deals are getting stuck?"
For Future: "If we could solve just one thing about your current process, what would that be?" Follow up with: "What would that look like day-to-day?"
For Change: "What would need to change in your current setup to get you there?" And: "Who else would be involved in making this kind of decision?"
For Value: "How would you measure success six months from now?" Then: "What's the cost of leaving things as they are?"
Notice how these questions naturally flow from one to the next? That's the power of having a framework, it keeps you focused on the buyer's decision-making process instead of your product pitch.
Avoid jumping to solutions before you've established all four elements. If you don't understand their current situation, you can't position your solution as the necessary bridge to their future.
Diagnosing dead deals: the transformation audit
When deals stall, it's usually because one of these elements is missing or unclear. Here's how to diagnose what went wrong:
Can't clearly describe their current situation? You need more discovery. Go back and ask better questions about their day-to-day reality.
They're vague about their desired future? The problem isn't urgent enough yet. You haven't uncovered the real pain or created enough contrast between where they are and where they could be.
The change feels too risky or complicated? You haven't built enough trust or demonstrated enough value. The juice needs to be worth the squeeze.
The value proposition is unclear? Go back to quantifying benefits and costs. Make it concrete and personal.
I once helped rescue a stalled six-figure deal when I realized we'd never clearly established the future state. The buyer kept saying they wanted "better reporting," but we'd never defined what that actually meant. One conversation to clarify their specific reporting needs, and the deal moved forward within a week.
Your next proposal starts with better questions
Before you write your next proposal, make sure you can clearly articulate all four framework elements. If you can't complete these sentences, you're not ready to propose:
"Right now, they're struggling with..."
"They want to get to a place where..."
"To make that happen, they need..."
"The value of making this change is..."
Use this framework to structure both your discovery calls and your written proposals. When deals stall, audit which element is weakest and go back to fill in the gaps.
The difference between a 30% win rate and a 70% win rate often comes down to asking better questions earlier in the process.
The difference between proposals that get ignored and contracts that get signed
B2B sales isn't about having the best product or the slickest presentation. It's about guiding someone through a change decision with confidence and clarity.
The transformation framework gives you the structure to do exactly that. Strong discovery prevents weak proposals. Missing elements create stalled deals. And when you can clearly articulate where your buyer is, where they want to go, what needs to change, and why it's worth it - then you're not just another vendor in their inbox.
The shift from pitching features to guiding decisions might feel subtle, but it changes everything about how buyers experience your sales process. They stop seeing you as someone trying to sell them something and start seeing you as someone helping them solve a problem.
Want more frameworks for writing proposals that actually close deals? I share tactical strategies like this every week in my newsletter, practical tools you can use in your next sales conversation.
Your buyers are already trying to make change decisions. Your job is simply to help them make good ones.