A proposal somebody can approve
Their problem in their words comes first. If that paragraph is right the rest is a formality, and no number in it should appear for the first time.
A proposal is not a description of your service. It is a document that lets somebody say yes without another meeting, and most proposals fail because they are written to impress rather than to be approved.
What it has to contain
- Their problem, in their words. First, before anything about you. If this paragraph is right, the rest is a formality; if it is wrong, nothing after it matters.
- What you will do about it, specifically enough to be checkable.
- What they get, as deliverables rather than as activities. A document, a working system, a trained team. Not consultancy and support.
- What it costs, as a number. Not a range, not on application.
- When, as dates.
- What you need from them. The thing most often left out, and the usual reason a project stalls in week two.
- What is not included. The paragraph that prevents the argument.
- How to accept. One sentence saying exactly what to do next.
Eight sections, and on most engagements the whole thing fits on two pages. Length is not a signal of seriousness; it is a signal that nobody decided what mattered.
Why the first paragraph decides it
The reader is checking one thing before they read anything else: does this person understand my situation. If the opening restates their problem in their own language, including the awkward details, they relax and read the rest as a plan. If it opens with your company's background, they read the rest as marketing.
This is the practical reason to write down their exact phrases in the first conversation. The proposal is where those phrases earn their keep.
Options, and how many
Two or three, where it genuinely applies. Not as a pricing trick but because it changes the question from whether to which, and because different buyers want different amounts of help.
- Make the difference in scope rather than in quality. Nobody buys the version that is described as worse.
- Make the middle one the one you expect, and make it complete on its own.
- Make the differences easy to see, in one short list rather than a comparison grid.
- Three is the maximum. Beyond that you have handed the decision back as a research project.
The mistakes that cost the work
- Sending it without having discussed price. The single most common and the most expensive.
- Pages of company background before the problem.
- Hourly rates where a fixed price is possible, which turns every conversation afterwards into a discussion about hours rather than about outcomes.
- A list of activities rather than deliverables, which gives the client nothing to check.
- Terms and conditions longer than the proposal, attached to a small engagement.
- No stated expiry, so a price from four months ago comes back when your costs have changed.
Sending it
Where possible, go through it with them rather than emailing it and waiting. Twenty minutes on a call, walking through the document, answers the objections while you are present, and the ones you cannot answer are information you would otherwise never get.
If it has to be emailed, say in the message when you will follow up, then do it on that day. A proposal sent with no stated next step produces the silence people interpret as rejection, which is frequently just a busy week.
Validity, and what happens after sending
Two administrative details that are usually omitted and cause most of the awkwardness afterwards.
Put an expiry on the price. Not as pressure: because your costs, your availability and the scope all move. A line saying this price holds until a date is normal commercial practice, and it prevents a proposal from four months ago arriving back expecting to be honoured.
And say how to accept, in one sentence. Reply to this email and I will send the agreement and an invoice for the first stage. People who have decided to go ahead frequently do nothing because the next step was not stated, and the silence is then read as hesitation.
If the engagement needs a contract, say so in the proposal and say what it covers in a line. A proposal that is accepted and then followed by an unexpected ten-page agreement produces a second decision you did not know you were asking for.
Work to do
- Add an expiry date and a one-sentence how to accept to your proposal template.
- Rewrite your proposal template so their problem, in their words, is the first paragraph and your background is at the end or absent.
- Add the two sections most often missing: what you need from them, and what is not included.
- Stop sending proposals before the price has been said out loud.