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How to Write an Effective Business Proposal?

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Starting a business entails planning, understanding and evaluating a range of things to achieve its overall objective, and creating an effective business proposal is one among those considerations that ensures the success of your business.

Writing a good business proposal can be tricky and challenging at times. To make your business proposal stand out, you to need keep your business details honest, yet effective. In this article, we’ll explain everything about business proposal, its important elements and how to write an effective business proposal.

What is a Business Proposal?

A business proposal is a document used by a business to persuade a buyer to invest in his goods or services. A business proposal is used to secure work and is usually used by a B2B company to attract clients and win new business deals. There are two types of business proposals:

• Solicited Business Proposal

  If an individual or a business has been requested by a client to submit a proposal it is called a solicited business proposal. A standard way of asking for submissions by clients is RFP (request for proposal). Most organizations prefer using RFPs as they are formal. Solicited proposals are easy to write because you have clear guidelines.

• Unsolicited Business Proposal

  If business proposals are proactively sent without any request from the client they are called unsolicited proposals. Unsolicited proposals are difficult to write because they don’t have any brief or clear guidelines to go by.

A good business proposal proves to be beneficial in bridging the gap between you and your customers. So, whichever type of business proposal you create, you must ensure that it includes the key elements, i.e. a statement of the problem faced by the organization, the proposed solution, and pricing information.

However, it’s not an easy endeavor to write a business proposal. You need to thoroughly understand the business, the problems it is facing, and research a whole lot about it to draft the perfect business proposal. Let’s discuss in detail how to write a business proposal and its necessary elements.

How to Write a Business Proposal?

Writing a business proposal is similar to writing anything else. You need to collect information about each and every aspect of a business to make an appropriate and result-oriented proposal. Here are the basic things that you need to keep in mind while drafting a business proposal –

• Information about your company – Describe who you are, what’s your expertise, what are the potential benefits of hiring you, and everything that makes you unique and extraordinary.
• Address their problem – Explain the problems that the business is facing. If you have done your research, show them, after all you know what client is looking for.
• Propose the solution – Let your clients know exactly how you are going to solve their problem. Discuss about the methodologies and solutions that you would offer.
• Don’t forget the pricing – Last, but not the least, disclose the cost for your services. Tell them about the complete costs involved in solving their business problems.

By focusing on these basic things, you can easily get started to writing a business proposal. But that’s not enough!!!

You need to have a clear idea about all the important elements and structure of a business proposal too. Here we have described all of the elements of business proposal in the way they should be structured –

1. Title
2. Table of content
3. Executive summary
4. Problem
5. Solution and approach
6. Qualifications or company information
7. Timeline
8. Pricing
9. Terms and conditions
10. Signatures and acceptance

#1 Title

Begin with a title page. Use it to introduce your business. Include your name, your company’s name, your client’s name, and the date of submitting the proposal.

#2 Table of content

Include a table of content. It helps the potential clients to know what is covered in the proposal and what information they can get from the document. You can include a clickable table of content so that it becomes easy for your client to navigate to different sections without scrolling through multiple pages.

#3 Executive Summary

An executive summary should have details as to why you are sending a business proposal, why does the client need to read your proposal, and why you are the right company for them. You can even use your business plan’s executive summary here. Your vision should be clear to the client after he reads your executive summary.

#4 Problem

After the executive summary, you need to discuss the issue your potential client is facing. You need to get into details of the problem to understand why the client needs your professional help. You need to show your potential client that you understand his/her issue.

#5 Solution and Approach

This section will have details on how you plan to solve the issue your potential client is facing. You need to provide them with a strategy and the steps that you will use to help them. Your client should understand your perception and be clear on what they will get if they use your product or service.

#6 Qualifications or Company Information

Share your qualifications in this section. Explain to the client how you are qualified to solve the issue. Give him reasons on why he should trust you. You can brag about yourself and your company’s success stories. You can talk about accreditations, educational training, years of experience and rewards. Here you need to show your client that they can expect the utmost quality work from your company.

#7 Timeline

In this section, you need to be clear with the client. You need to give him a proper timeline for his proposed project and your deliverables. Be truthful and don’t promise an unrealistic deadline, if you want to maintain a healthy professional relationship. Don’t go overboard to avoid any differences.

#8 Pricing

Refer to the client’s RFP before fixing any price. You can include a fee table, fee summary, or a fee schedule to make things clear to your client. If you need permits or licenses, include the cost in this section. There are many proposal software offering responsive pricing tables that adjust price automatically as per the client’s needs. You can choose one if you want to look professional.

#9 Terms and Conditions

This is a very important section of your business proposal. Here you will need to get into details of the agreement duration, project deadline, deliverables, payment type, and payment schedule. It is actually a summary of the proposal agreement. Make sure that you and your client are clear over the legal terms. This section will be common among most of your company proposals.

#10 Signature and Acceptance

This section consists of a signature box for your client and your company. It also lets them know what they are agreeing to and it includes a line like – “By signing below you agree to”. You can even include a prompt like – “We are looking forward to working with you. You can contact us for any queries.”

Conclusion

Businesses can vary based on niche, company size and many other factors, so you need to do a deep research to create business proposals that gain clients interest. Now that you know what is a business proposal, how to write a business proposal and all of its elements, it’s time woo clients, anticipate their queries and increase business for yourself.