Why do I need a Professional Business Proposal?
For your business to thrive and reach its potential height, it is more than the quality of your products and services. More often than not, a professional business proposal is capable of increasing your business sales funnel. Also a professional business proposal is capable of boosting the amount of business deals you closed successfully.
Major components of a professional business proposal
Title Page
In the title page, you are passing some of the primary information about your business. It essentially should contain the following information. Your name as the business owner, the name of your company, the day of proposal submission, and of course the name of the client company or person you are writing the proposal to. One of the aims of the title page is to bring interaction and competence into correspondence with each other. The title page sets the tone for the business proposal hence you have to make sure your proposal is smooth, appealing and pleasing to the reader. See below for a very good example of the title page of a business proposal.
Table of Content
Why is a table of content essential in a professional business proposal? Here’s the answer. Your aim is to make your business proposal as simple and easy to navigate as possible. You need to make it straightforward so that your reader can easily find what they are looking for in your proposal. Just sending a proposal without a clear outline of what you have on the pages will be a huge turn off for your client company. A table of content will allow the reader to have a full idea of the topics that will be addressed in the business proposal. In a case where you are sending the proposal in a digital format, it will be a great idea to add a clickable option where the table of content will have a drop down that will go directly to the specific segment where your client clicks on. This will make it seamless, less complicated and easy to navigate.
Executive Summary
The executive summary is the part that shows in detail the purpose of the business proposal. It also clearly shows the reason your products or services are the best solution for your potential client. It is important to be specific, precise and concise. Make sure you drive home your point, as to the reason you are the most suitable choice for them. The executive summary can be likened to your value proposition. It clearly states out the advantages and the benefits they stand to gain from your products and services. It also explains clearly the ‘How’. How your business will solve the challenge of your potential clients. Your potential client might not have the opportunity to read through all of your business proposals. The executive summary is where he or she can have an overview of how your product or services will benefit them.
Problem statement
Here you will give a brief explanation of the challenge that your potential client is facing. This is the chance you have to let them know that you have a clear understanding of their pain point and the challenge they are in need of help for. Carrying out a deep background check and extensive research will provide tremendous help in this segment. By doing this, you can assure them that you are truly aware of their needs and you can solve them. This way you get to trust you and in turn be compelled to dive into the next stage with your business proposal.
Solution Statement
This is the point where you present your solution to the problem you stated earlier. Similar to the previous segment, you should provide a streamlined and specific solution to the challenge. They are also sure that you have drafted out this solution to precisely meet their needs. Inform them about the outputs you will deliver, the process you will go through and the period within which it will be completed so they can have a good idea of the specific time to expect the results.
Provide your business qualifications
This part of the business proposal is where you will communicate with your potential client why your product and services are the best fit for their company. Do well to add scenarios of how you have helped clients in time past to solve similar problems. Share their testimonies. If you have received any awards or recognition, now is the best time to make mention of it. This will improve your expertise and make them see reasons why they should trust you.
Options of Pricing
In this segment, you have to be careful to ensure you are not scaring them away with the price as a result of over charging and also you are not losing as a result of charging less as a business. You want to research and ensure that you give a good pricing for the entire project. You can provide a wide range of pricing variations so they can make decisions on which one suits their budget.
Conclusion
The conclusion segment should contain the summary, the terms and conditions of the agreement and a place where both parties can input their signatures to show acceptance and ensure you are all on the same page.