The business proposal is a staple of the business world, just like memos, resumes, and chatting around the water cooler. The problem is that most people are not trained how to properly create one and least of all how to make a proposal interesting and useful. Why would you need a business proposal? Well, maybe you are thinking of proposing a joint venture with another business owner or just proposing a new service to a client. Using these three steps, you can create profitable and effective business proposals.



STEP ONE: Know your audience

This is the most important step because if you don't clearly know who you are writing to then you will not know how to properly communicate the benefits of your proposal. If you are writing to a client to propose a new service, do not use the whole proposal talking about how great you are (no matter how fabulous you might be). Instead, communicate how your services benefit them. Will it help them increase sales, reduce costs, increase brand awareness, create better client retention? I actually like to create a bulleted list of these benefits so that they can quickly scan the document to see if the proposal is worth their time. Even better is if your reader has a mission statement or strategic plan and you can clearly identify how your proposal helps them meet each objective of their mission statement or strategic plan.

Another reason to know your audience is that everyone has different personalities and learning styles. There are four basic styles you need to make sure to cater to: Decisive, Conscientious, Imaginative, and Social. The decisive personality wants only a high level summary and does not want to get into the details. For this style, a bulleted list will be better than a huge block of text. The conscientious personality type is the exact opposite; they want all of the details and all of the research. For this type, you want to make sure to include they details in an exhibit to the proposal. The imaginative personality type is more visual, so they prefer to see charts or graphics to explain the proposal, to cater to them you want to make sure to include visual materials. The social personality type likes to know what other people think, so they prefer to see customer testimonials and reviews. To understand how different personality types learn differently sit and watch an infomercial. It will usually have a list of the benefits of the product, it goes over all the features in detail, it has a little animation that shows how the "Thighmaster" or "Magic Bullet" works, and then it has customer testimonials and tells you that the product is also used by NASA astronauts (I still don't understand why astronauts need a knife that can cut a penny).

STEP TWO: Resources required and acquired

This is the piece that is often left out of a proposal and it is one of the more crucial pieces. People generally get nervous about this part because it generally includes numbers and people begin having flashbacks to high school trigonometry. However, this part of the proposal is also super easy.

Resources required is just a simple list or table of all the monetary and non-monetary resources required to execute the proposal. For example, if you are putting on a seminar you need: a conference room, printed marketing materials, food, a laptop, someone to help check in participants, etc. These costs should be itemized and totaled so that anyone reading the proposal can clearly see what is required to execute the proposal.

Resources acquired is just a simple list or table of all the monetary and non-monetary benefits received from executing the proposal. If we use our seminar example again, we would receive: money from attendees, a wider network of contacts, potential customers, increased awareness of our services.

STEP THREE: First impressions matter

Make the document attractive. First impressions also matter when it comes to presenting a business document. Is the proposal really long? I like to keep my document to 1 or 2 pages with exhibits attached if necessary. You don't want people to look at your proposal and just get tired from the sheer size of it. The packaging of the document also needs to look appealing. Is it in a binder or a sleeve? And lastly, is the structure of the document appealing? If you have ever looked at a magazine, you will notice that they never have really long paragraphs and they rarely have pages without any pictures or graphics on them. You want someone to look at you document and get a positive vibe from it without even reading a single word.

If you follow these three steps, know your audience, clearly identify resources, and pay attention to first impressions ,you will be on your way to producing lucrative business proposal. So next time you propose, the answer will be a resounding, YES!

Copyright (c) 2008 Aisha Jones Scheffel