High value per deal
A few large deals make the year
You may not send out hundreds of proposals, but every lost deal hurts. Order values are high, several people usually weigh in, and proposal, pitch, price and follow-up help decide who wins.
Hello.
Which deal is on your desk right now?
The proposal that has gone quiet for weeks. The bid that has to go out next week. That one important tender. That is where our conversation starts.
Ernst WallingaFounder & Deal Architect · DealCraft
Discuss that deal with us
Or first read how it works ↓
Open conversation · with a senior consultant
The Last Mile of Sales
More revenue from the deals you already have
DealCraft improves how you turn existing sales opportunities into contracts: from qualification and proposal to pricing, follow-up and decision. Whether you close twenty large deals a year or send out hundreds of recurring proposals. You don't need more leads for that.
Find out where your deals stall
Discuss a live deal
DealScan · € 999 · two weeks
- 35+ years in B2B sales
- € 1 bn+ in deal value won
- 200+ companies helped
What we solve
The Last Mile of Sales
Marketing fills the pipeline. Sales turns it into opportunities. Then comes the phase in which revenue is actually won or lost: the proposal, the price, the conversation with the people who decide, and the weeks of silence after that.
We call that phase the Last Mile of Sales: the stretch from serious opportunity to signed contract. It is exactly where many organisations work less systematically than at the front end. Deals are steered on experience, proposals are rebuilt from scratch every time, and reasons for losing are hardly ever recorded.
We make that phase visible, measurable and improvable.
- This is where DealCraft works
- LeadMarketing and network. We leave that work to others.
- OpportunityA client with a real need, a budget and a timeline.
- Proposal or tenderProposal, pitch, bid: the story on paper.
- DecisionThe client chooses, often without you in the room.
- ContractThe signature, or a silence nobody learns from.
Where it pays off
Two ways improvement pays off
Complex deals are not a requirement. Complexity doesn't decide where the gain is. What decides it is how much commercial value runs through the process, and how much of it could be converted better.
High frequency
Hundreds of small improvements add up fast
Not every deal has to be complex. If you send similar proposals every week or every day, a better standard, a better process and consistent follow-up make a large commercial difference over a year.
It is still one method, with a different emphasis.
The problem
Your pipeline only has value when it converts
You send out a proposal that took days of work. Then it goes quiet. Sometimes you hear weeks later that someone else got it; often you never hear at all. Nobody tells you why, so you don't know what to do better next time. Every rejection without an explanation is a double loss: you miss the order, and you miss the lesson.
- Nobody knows why deals are lost. A buyer rarely tells you the real answer. So every next deal remains a gamble.
- No fixed standard. Everyone starts from their own previous proposal. Quality varies per person and the organisation never learns what works.
- Qualification after the fact. Writing starts before anyone has asked whether the deal is worth the time.
- A proposal about yourself. A standard proposal after a tailored conversation: the client doesn't recognise themselves in what is on the table.
- A standard never designed from the buyer's side. Many companies do have a standard proposal, but it was built internally once and has never been read through the client's eyes.
- No decision is also a loss. Deals hang for months or end in a price discussion, because the value was never made explicit.
- No structured follow-up. The document goes out, and then everyone waits for the client to respond.
- No data. Nobody knows whether version A wins more often than version B, so nothing gets adjusted.
The common thread: nobody has a grip on what happens between opportunity and order.
What winners do differently
The process
Winners have their process in order
Qualify sharply, respond quickly, follow up at fixed moments and measure what does and doesn't work. Not loose actions, but a sales process that runs all the way to the signature.
The message
Winners write about the client
Not the supplier at the centre, but the buyer's situation, the challenge they face and the result they want to achieve. A proposal that tells the client's story beats the sales brochure.
American research into more than five million proposals shows what happens when teams get this in order: conversion doubled on average. It is an average, from a different market, and not a promise for your industry. That is exactly why we start by measuring, not by assuming.
The DealScan · € 999
Measure first, then improve
We don't recommend an improvement programme until it is clear where you are losing revenue. The DealScan is a diagnosis of your Last Mile based on your own deals: ten recent proposals, won and lost, with the sales process around them. Not a theoretical audit.
With larger deals we look for patterns in qualification, strategy, price and decision-making. With recurring proposals we also look closely at standardisation, structure, speed and follow-up.
What we examine
- ProcessThe grip before the writing starts: which opportunities you pursue, who follows up and when.
- PresentationWhat the client reads. Does your proposal start with their situation, or with you?
- PropositionWhy you and not the other party, in the client's own numbers.
How it works
- A one-hour intake. We map your sales process, from opportunity to signature.
- You provide ten proposals. Winners and losers, because the pattern sits in the lost deals.
- Your report after two weeks. At least three places where you leave orders on the table, each with what it costs you per year for as long as it stays that way.
- We discuss it together. Then you decide whether to continue. If you do, the full DealScan fee is credited against the follow-up assignment.
A live deal
Is there an important deal on the table right now?
Sometimes improvement doesn't start with ten past proposals, but with one deal that has to be won now. For a strategic opportunity or a tender, we look directly at positioning, strategy, proposition and presentation.
If the underlying problem turns out to be structural, we use that deal as the starting point for The Project.
- A large opportunity that will be decided this quarter
- A tender that closes soon
- A pitch to the people who make the decision
- Not yet sure which way in makes sense
How we work
One starting point, one journey
No menu to choose from. Every engagement starts with the diagnosis. Then we redesign the Last Mile, and keep steering on it until winning more often has become a habit.
§ 01 · Diagnose
DealScan
€ 999 one-off
Ten deals and your sales process examined, so the baseline is on the table. The report names at least three places where you leave orders behind, each with what it costs you per year for as long as it stays that way. Numbered and bound, delivered by post before we go through it together. If you continue with us, the full fee is credited.
See the DealScan →§ 02 · Redesign
The Project
from € 25,000 one-off
The Last Mile redesigned in three months. We close the leaks from the scan: from qualification and proposition to proposal strategy, pitch, price justification, follow-up and win/loss. By the end, your team knows before every deal whether it is worth the time, and on day ninety we measure that against your own numbers.
Where you stand after three months →§ 03 · Steer
The Partnership
from € 3,000 /month
Making sure that winning more often becomes a habit. Directly after The Project, for at least nine more months: review of your largest live deals, periodic win/loss, coaching of your sales manager and the Pitch Lab every quarter. The measurement is repeated on the same yardstick.
How The Partnership works →
The founder
Built on 35 years of winning and losing deals
Ernst Wallinga has worked as an entrepreneur, interim director, bid manager and dealmaker. He grew an agency from two to twenty-two people, sat on the selling side of large deals and, as a director, had to account for the commercial results himself.
Across all those years the same pattern kept returning. Most deals are not lost on price, but in the weeks after the key conversations have already taken place. DealCraft grew out of that pattern: a method that doesn't depend on one person, but on how an organisation sets up its Last Mile.
Ernst is also writing The Last Mile of Sales, a book about why complex B2B deals are so often lost after the most important sales conversations have already happened.
Proof
Proof from practice, not theory
35+years of B2B sales & change
€ 1 bn+in deal value won
200+companies helped to grow
Built up over more than 35 years, through Management Resultants, Tenderbirds and Sellian. Enough deals seen to know that most are not lost on price. DealCraft brings that track record together in one discipline: the Last Mile of Sales.
Next step
Where do your deals stall?
If you don't know why your last ten deals were lost, that is a sensible place to start. The DealScan costs € 999 and takes two weeks. If there is a large deal or a tender in play right now, we would rather talk first.