How to Write a Business Proposal

Time kills deals. So if you've ever struggled to write a business proposal, this episode is for you. You'll learn how to write proposals that get accepted and don't take forever to write. This is the launch your business podcast because we know starting a business is challenging, but it doesn't have to be confusing. Each week we'll give you the tactical advice and the necessary tools to scale your business without feeling burnt out. I'm Terry Rice, business development consultant and staff writer here at Entrepreneur Magazine. Let's dive in. Today, I'm going to walk you through a very simple process to write proposals that have a good chance of being accepted and will not take forever to write. But first, I'm going to tell you a story, and I promise you'll understand why I'm telling you the story at the end. Here we go. When I proposed to my wife, Dominique, I wanted everything to be perfect. We live here in Brooklyn, and I wanted to ask her why. We were sitting on a bench in front of our apartment, and this is the same bench that we sat on during our first date. I asked a friend of mine, Daoudi, to come over and take pictures. So he was hiding across the street in order to take pictures at the perfect moment. And then I came up with some kind of excuse for why we had to go outside and sit on the bench. Then I surprised her by proposing. And I can't remember what I said, but I do remember spending a lot of time writing it. Then I pull out the ring and put it on the wrong hand. First time doing it. So kind of is what it is. But she politely corrected me. I then put it on the correct finger. Nine years and several kids later, here we are. So why am I telling you this story? Two reasons. One, if you ever plan on getting engaged, remember the other person's left hand will be on your right. The other is to highlight the fact that your proposals don't have to be perfect to be accepted. And this is true whether we're talking about a business deal or marriage. But in either case, if you keep the other person waiting too long, they might move on to someone else. So today I'm going to teach you how to write proposals so you can get that. Yes, we're going to cover the three questions you must ask during a sales call to set yourself up for success, the specific content you need to include in your proposal, and one question that will help you avoid getting ghosted. And by the way, feel free to take notes. But you can also grab a sample proposal from my website by heading over to Terryrice Co Proposal. That's Terryrice Co Proposal. All right, so let's go ahead and get started here. The process of writing a proposal actually starts with a sales call and the questions that you ask. So once the prospect indicates a willingness to move forward, here are three questions you must ask. The first is what do you need to see in the proposal? Because too often we assume they want a 30 page essay on how you're going to change their life, when really they just want an invoice. So asking this question up front will save you a lot of time and stress. You can even ask if they have a preferred format for you to use. The more you know, the faster you can move and the more likely you are to have your proposal accepted. Here's another question for you to ask. Who else needs to see this proposal in order for it to be approved? And you might have a great relationship with a prospect you're chatting with, but you never know if there is a spouse or a coworker who you haven't met that also needs to be involved in the approval process. And since they weren't involved with any other conversation, you wouldn't know any stipulations or questions they might have about the engagement. You can speed up the sales process and avoid a lot of back and forth by understanding whether or not it makes sense to have a call with an additional stakeholder. And here's the last question and this one's going to help you avoid getting ghosted. Ask the prospect how soon would you like to start? You're going to ask this just in case they take forever signing the proposal. So let's say they say they have to get started by May 29th. If it's May 22nd and they still have not signed the proposal, you can email them and say, hey, if you want to get started by May 29, the contract needs to be signed this week. I'll also need to send you some onboarding materials if you and it will take me a few days to prep in advance. This should get you a response since you're referencing the deadline that they created. And look, hopefully it does not come to that point, but you're prepared just in case. Just get started. If you've ever looked for tips on launching a business, just get started seems to come up a lot, and while that's vaguely motivational, it does not provide any real direction. Because the next logical question for anyone would be, well, how do I get started? What specifically should I do? Well, if you're looking to quickly start a business without the confusion, risk and pressure of doing something entirely new. I've got a solution for you. It's called the solopreneur's Fast Track. A step by step process on how to start a business using the skills you already have and actually enjoy using. So let's say your favorite part of a previous job was email marketing. You'll learn how to start a business offering other companies advice on how they can improve their email marketing. Or maybe you are really good at integrating complicated tech tools. You can help other organizations do the same thing without the need to bring on a full time hire. So the main point here is that everything you need to start a business is already within you. You don't need a cool website or fancy tools and by completing the course, you'll also discover a simpler approach for attracting clients without using complicated funnels or cheesy sales tactics. You can finish it over a weekend and start making money in as little as 30 days. You'll gain the clarity and confidence you need to start your business and receive a one page business plan so you can immediately apply what you've learned. Get started today and receive a 20% discount by heading to terryrice co. Fast. That's terryrice co fast. So now that we have all the information we need, it's time to write the proposal and my approach is based on the book Million Dollar Consulting Proposals by Alan Weiss. I picked it up when I first started my business and was surprised by the fact a proposal didn't have to be a dissertation. In fact, his recommended format is only one and a half pages long and I'm going to walk you through each section right now. The first part is the overview and this is the part where you explain what you're going to do along with the impact it will have on the company or individual. The example you'll find on my website is based on a service provider who helps companies optimize their email marketing campaigns and the overview is fairly basic. I'm going to read it verbatim. The goal of this engagement is to provide tactic level guidance and support as applies to optimizing your email marketing strategy. Key outcomes include increasing your list size and revenue generated per subscriber. So that's it. Don't get fancy with it. The next section is where you'll indicate how success will be measured. These are the key performance indicators or KPIs and I'll read these from the sample proposal again. Key Metrics of Success Email List Growth Email Open Rate Email Click Rate Website purchases. The metrics that you mentioned will obviously be different and you want to agree on these during a conversation with the prospect. So this is obviously in regards to email marketing, which you may or may not be familiar with, but the metrics that you mentioned will obviously be different and you want to make sure you agree on these during a conversation with the prospect. I'll give you another example for you to wrap your head around. Let's say you offer training that helps companies boost their employees morale and the goal is to reduce turnover and increase employee satisfaction. The KPIs might be reduction in employee turnover, increase in employee satisfaction, and that's going to be based on a pre and post training survey. And the last one could be nps, which stands for Net Promoter Score, meaning how well did participants rate you? And your training and your KPIs are really important because anyone should be able to look at them quickly and then immediately understand the impact of your work. So just be sure to put some thought into these okay, so we have our Overview and our KPIs. Now we're going to list the specific services that you provide and unless requested you should keep this relatively brief. I'm talking bullet points here. Here are the services referenced in our sample. Again, I'm reading this verbatim. The consultant agrees they shall provide their expertise to the client for all things pertaining to optimizing their email campaigns, including and then just list out bullet points, email list maintenance, subject lines, email copy, open rate, and again this is all based on the service you offer, but you get the point here. Keep it brief and if you do want to provide more details, I suggest adding sub bullets as opposed to paragraphs and I'll explain what I mean by that. So I referenced email list maintenance in this example. A sub bullet could break down exactly what I mean by that, the specific parts of this. So it could be removing people who unsubscribe from the email lists, labeling someone who bought a certain product, or tagging people who spend a lot of money. And I don't want to turn this into an email marketing lesson, but again you get the point here. Provide details without getting into the weeds. After providing information on the services, it's time for the next section which is your process. What does the client journey look like from start to finish? And the more you can help someone visualize the entire engagement, the easier it will be for them to wrap their head around it and say yes, again you want to use bullet points here. So here's the process based on the email marketing training we've been talking about. And again, this is going to be a step by step process. And again, these are all bullets. I'm going to read this verbatim. Client grants access to email marketing Platform Consultant audits current campaigns Consultant delivers summary and optimization Roadmap Consultant trains team members via zoom Team members implement new techniques and tools for 30 days consultant audits new campaigns identifies improvement and ongoing opportunities for optimization There you go. So now it's your turn. Jot down every milestone that takes place from beginning to end result, but say it in a concise manner. So by now we've walked through the Overview, developed your KPIs and outlined your services as well as your process. In the next section you'll describe delivery and communication. How will you provide this service and how will you stay in communication during the project? This one is rather basic as well, but it's important, so here's an example for you. The consultant will perform work remotely unless otherwise noted. In addition to emails and messages, the consultant will meet with a client once per week to discuss progress and continue implementation of solutions. The consultant agrees to respond to all client communications within one business day with the goal of answering any questions within 48 hours. And that last part is really important because it forms expectations for how quickly you'll get back to a client. Now on my end I normally respond relatively quickly, but this is a great way to establish communication protocols. And a quick warning here. Be very careful offering clients the opportunity to communicate with you via Slack or any other messaging platform. They'll be more likely to reach out for the smallest reason and it has the potential to get really annoying really quick. I usually offer this level of contact, but by design I actually like the people I work with so it does not become a problem. Just something for you to keep in mind. Okay, two more points here and we're all set. The next part is the terms of the agreement. And by terms I'm not referring to a legal contract. This is just a summary of when the engagement will start and end. So I'll read from the sample again. This agreement shall begin on date and continue for time period. Either party may terminate this agreement for any reason within X days written notice to the other party. Either party may terminate this agreement for any reason within with an X days written notice to the other party. But if you are looking for help with legal contracts I can give you more information on my site. And again, that's Terryrice Coproposal and this last part is exciting and scary at the same time. Compensation as you may have guessed this is the part where you state how much it will cost and when you'll get paid. Here's the copy and the sample. In consideration for the services reference, the client shall pay the consultant a flat rate of $30,000. Consultant shall invoice the client on the following schedule. 33% upon agreement, 33% at halfway, and 33% upon completion. Okay, so a few things to call out here. Always get paid before you do any work, even if it's just a 20% deposit. And you're doing this in case the client backs out for one reason or another after you've already started working. And for larger engagements, I like to break the payment down based on completion of phases. So going back to what we said before, in that example, after you finish the audit for the client, you can say that that phase has been completed and you get paid after that. So there you have it, an easier approach to writing proposals that don't take forever. And if you want to get them out even faster, use a template that can quickly be customized. On my end, I use a tool called Honeybook for this, and you can also use it to send your invoices. And as a heads up, they have a really great promotion going on. You can use their Service for just $1 per month for the first eight months. So it's a great opportunity to try it out for a very low price. I'll include a link to that on my website as well as the show notes. And look, I know the process of making proposals can be challenging, so my goal here is to help you save time and avoid confusion. But before we go, I do want to address something else that may be on your mind, and it's this. What happens if something's missing from the proposal? What happens if they want more details? And these are valid questions. In fact, it happens to me quite often. But fortunately, the foundation you've established is so clear, the prospect will ask more pointed questions as opposed to being confused about what the heck you're going to do. These are buying questions, not what are you talking about questions. And just like my wife accepted my proposal after offering a slight correction, your prospects will often do the same. I hope this was helpful. And again, head to my website at TerryRice Co proposal to grab a copy of the sample plus additional resources. Thanks again for listening and I'll catch up with you next time. Apply what you've learned on today's show. You'll find the show notes and more resources at TerryRice Co podcast. Again, that's Terryrice Co podcast and the best way to support this podcast is by subscribing, telling a friend and leaving a review. Also, you can get more tips by following me on Instagram terryrice or follow me on LinkedIn. This episode was produced by Josh Wilcox of Brooklyn Podcasting Studio and edited by Dan Lardy. Special thanks to my wife Dominique for keeping our kids relatively quiet as I recorded. Thanks again for listening. I'll see you next time.