Our formula for creating winning Business proposals for any Business.

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Hey r/Entrepreneur

We've created a lot of business proposals over the years, and from our experiences we’ve broken down what to put in a business proposal that has worked for us. Hopefully this guide will help you guys win more business and clients.

Introduction.

Remember this is the very first thing your client will see. This is the content from which they will form subliminal judgements about the professionalism and attention-to-detail your service offering provides. They won’t consciously realise it, but realise it they will. (See Daniel Khaneman's work on unconscious bias).

So pay special attention to the design elements here. Make sure it’s aesthetically top-notch and that the layout, colours and typography choices are just right.

Solution

Description of your product or service, and how it provides a direct solution to the business challenge laid out previously.

This section is not where you go into detailed analysis of what you are going to deliver. Rather, it simply situates your proposal as a solution for the challenges of your client’s business.

Data driven success story

This section is an opportunity to provide hard evidence of the assurances you’ve made in the previous section. Proof that you execute and deliver value. In a business setting, the best way to evidence this is with hard data. Being able to show a tangible percentage, or hard figure, improvement in a particular target KPI. Not a projection, but a historical fact. These are the nuts and bolts of justifying the business case for your proposal.

That being said, a strong testimonial, a relevant award and/or a demonstration of recent high quality work.

Approach and process

The purpose of this section is two-fold.

*First: it helps the client to conceptualise what the delivery of your proposal will entail. Having a clear process, laid out from the very beginning, is vital to maintaining a successful working relationship. It anchors the discussion around process and workflow on your own terms.

*Secondly: this section, in the “approach” piece, is an opportunity to differentiate your business from the competition. To describe what is unique about your ethos and values, above and beyond the hard data. Your process should flow on a natural extension of your business approach.

The philosophy of every business is different. Each has its own unique stance and focus. Explain yours. Why do you do what you do? (Approach) And why do you do it the way you do? (Process)

Project investment.

This is the pointy end of the proposal stick. Strategy around quoting and pricing is a big topic. Many articles, heck a whole blog, could be dedicated to that topic alone.

But some brief things to keep in mind:

1. Provided you have accurately and intimately understood your client’s business challenges and associated KPIs, you should be able to assess (at the ballpark level) what X% improvement in those KPIs means for the gross revenue of the business.

2. During the first client meeting, you should do your diplomatic best to fish out the client’s approximate budget. Obviously, you are in the opening stages of a negotiation at this point, so take any client-supplied indicators of budget with a grain of salt.

Combining these two figures you should be able to formulate an approximate price point. One that makes sense given the client’s ballpark budget, and the potential bottom-line return you believe you can deliver.

Here’s my one piece of advice on pricing: if you believe that you are fantastic at what you do, and that you will work fanatically to deliver outcomes to your clients (you should, or maybe you’re doing the wrong thing), go for the higher end of the price point. Your client has almost certainly got other proposals on the table — position yourself as the premium option.

It’s important to note that, if you want to take this route, everything about your proposal needs to exude that best-in-class quality. The analysis and content, as well as the design and aesthetics of the material needs to be spot on.

Finally: if you’re in a digitally oriented business — don’t deliver your proposals in an offline format! Sure, have a PDF as an option for printing. But if you’re promising to deliver on a digital product or service — be digital from the inside out.

Team

Following on from your pricing, now is the time to highlight the calibre and experience of your team. What are the special skills, experience and qualifications they possess in order to effectively deliver on your proposal.

The team section of proposals can sometimes be neglected. A few throwaway lines about each member. But that’s a mistake. Describing the composition of the team, and why they in particular are so well suited to executing this project, is another opportunity for differentiation against competing quotes. The team description is therefore a vital aspect of getting a client across the line.

Conclusion

There is a classic debating technique when making any argument:

1. make a high-level point.

2. flesh it out in detail.

3. conclude by reiterating the high level point.

This is what the conclusion of your proposal should be. It reiterates, in concise terms, the business challenge of your client, how your solution will address that challenge, and the expected return on investment from that solution.

Do you guys share the same principles in your business proposals?

Or do you have different sections you put in?

We hope you've enjoyed our guide. If you wanna read the full guide with pretty pictures and examples have a geez at

http://ift.tt/22ziJ4k

P.S: If you are interested in making money on-line, there are many avenues you can explore. Click here to get my step by step guide on how to this. I break down all the details for you and give you some useful resources and tools