6 Ways to Improve Your Business Proposals

As a document that has the potential to bring you more clients and profit, your business proposal should uniquely underline your selling point, every time. In a way, business proposals are a reflection of your business, your capabilities, and the quality of service or products you offer. 

It’s supposed to show how you can help your client solve a problem. It can be sent upon the request of a client, or you can send them as an offer to a prospect that you have previously determined may benefit from the services or products you offer. 

Regardless, your business proposals should always show your company in the best light possible. In the hope that it will help you close more deals, we offer you six ways to create superb business proposals. 

1. Use Templates

To avoid ending up being overlooked by clients, businesses should update their business proposals continuously, and most importantly they should always try to improve upon them. This, however, can prove to be difficult and time-consuming. Luckily, nowadays, there are ways to make this task easier.

The best way to save time each time you are preparing a proposal for a new client, without compromising on quality, is to make it easy to reuse an old one. Making customizable templates, containing all the information that will most likely never change and making it easy to simply add those that are different, is an ideal strategy for improvement and saving time. 

2. Use Software

For even more convenience, you can use proposal management software that lets you save all of your templates in a library. This means that you will be able to find the template you are looking for easily, whenever you need to create a business proposal for a new client. 

More than that, when you use this kind of software, you may have at your disposal other features that can help you make the sale. For instance, you can make interactive pricing tables, so that your clients can understand what they are getting even more clear and choose the option that’s right for them. 

3. Be Thorough

Regardless of what kind of services or products you are offering, every business proposal you create should contain all the necessary information that will help your prospect decide whether they should choose to hire you or move on. This includes the purpose of the proposal, the services or products you will provide, how they will help your client, the pricing information, and so on.

4. Understand the Client

If there is one common thing amongst all clients, and everyone on this planet for that matter, it’s that they all appreciate if they feel heard and supported. Moreover, don’t forget that each client is different and, to keep them, you should spend time learning about their business, understand their needs, their problems. That’s the only way to be sure that you are offering the best possible solution you can think of. Spend time with your client, talk to them, and learn as much as you can about their company.  

5. Be Clear

In some cases, the business proposal you give them is the first contact a prospect will have with your business. In others, it will be the first time they see in writing what you have been talking about. Either way, being as clear as possible will make a huge difference. 

Your client should be able to understand with ease what you are offering, how specifically your services or products can help them, your pricing, etc. Make sure that you use plain language. Don’t expect everyone to understand the jargon you are familiar with, except if you are working with clients from your field. This can confuse your clients and make you seem untrustworthy or even arrogant.

6. Make It Aesthetically Pleasing

The first thing that your potential client will notice about your proposal, whether it’s in digital or in printed form, is how it looks. Just like the language you use, as well as the message you are trying to convey, when it comes to the visual aspect of the document, you should focus on clarity and simplicity. The proposal should be easy to read, the different sections should be easily noticeable.

Conclusion 

It’s not a surprise that a poorly prepared business proposal, or one that doesn’t do your business any justice, can not only cost you potential clients but even harm your business. 

With all the technology nowadays, you should keep in mind most people have really high expectations. If a client gets an unclear proposal that looks bad, with grammatical errors, or with a piece of hard-to-understand pricing information, even if what you are offering is great, they may lose their interest and their trust in you.