Business Management Life

Writing a business proposal can seem like a daunting task. Where do I start? What do I need to say? How do I know if I’ve written a proposal that my customer will understand? Business proposals are an increasingly important aspect of any modern, professional business. With increasingly strict corporate regulations governing just about everything a business does, having a document that presents your unique business offering and everything that encapsulates can sometimes seem like an impossible task.

Thankfully, there are some simple steps you can follow to ensure your business proposal delivers the right results. What are they? time to take a closer look at our tried and testing method on how to write a business proposal that wins every time!

The Golden Rule of 4 - The 4 word business proposal checklist

We can summarize our business proposal writing process using 4 words that form a simple checklist for your business proposal:

* Who?

* Why?

* What?

* How?

Pay attention to the order in which you address these 4 checklists. They are purposely ordered that way. Before you send a business proposal to the intended decision maker, please, please make sure you’ve asked yourself have you addressed these 4 simple questions. Let’s look at this in some more detail.

The Who Question

Quite simply, do you know your customer? Do you know what they really want? Or do you just think you know what to sell them. Remember, your customer has some problem they need a solution to. Are you really in tune with what that is? Does your proposal clearly define the business problem or opportunity you proposal to solve?

The Why Question

Why should the customer hire you? What differentiates you from the competition? Why Us? This is quite possibly the hardest question to answer in any business. We all face competition. Somebody somewhere will always claim to be in a position to compete with you and offer a better price or better quality end product. Why should you get the gig rather than your competitor?

The What Question

So now you’ve made sure you really know all about your prospective customer and you’ve been able to differentiate yourself from the competition. Good start! Now it’s time to tell them precisely WHAT you will deliver for them. When I sit down to write a business proposal, this is often the easiest part of the document to put together. We all know our own businesses better than anyone else. But be very careful, this is where you can easily fall down. Never ever assume your customer know’s anything about your business and what you do. This might sound stupid at first glance. But think about it. How much deep industry knowledge does your customer have about your business and what you do? How familiar are they with industry specific jargon? Do they really even know what the questions are that you have so eloquently answered in your proposal document. A golden rule of thumb I apply to my proposals is “Will my mother know what I’m talking about if I read this to her?” If my mom gets it, then my customer will. This might sound overly simplified, but don’t ever overestimate your target audience. Of course, there may be elements of your proposal where you are required to get into technical specifics but your summary should always read simple and clear to those who are unfamiliar with your industry. In this way, you will ensure your customer “gets it” from the outset.

The How Question

It’s vital to tell your customer HOW you will deliver on your promise. Who will be involved in delivering your product or service? Does the customer need to be involved? And if so, what will be expected of them? Depending on your business, a project plan may be of vital importance here so the customer can understand how their product/service will be delivered to them.

Wrapping it all up

So there you have it. This simple checklist will go a long way to ensuring your success when producing proposals to win new business. We never let a proposal out the door without making sure we’ve obeyed our Golden Rule of 4!

Until next time, happy proposal writing!

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 10th, 2007 at 8:16 am and is filed under Leadership, Management, Hiring, Ideas, Tips, Blog Carnival. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.