How to write a business proposal

Send a proposal and watch what happens to it. It gets opened, scrolled to the money, scrolled back up, and then forwarded to somebody who was not on any of the calls. That second reader decides, and they arrive with no context at all. Almost every rule below is a consequence of that one fact.

How proposals are read

Jakob Nielsen’s reading studies found that 79 per cent of people scan a new page and only 16 per cent read it word by word, and that rewriting a page in plain, objective language instead of promotional language improved measured usability by 27 per cent. That research was about web pages rather than PDFs, but a proposal is read the same way, in three passes.

The first pass is a skim for shape and price, thirty seconds, mostly headings and anything set in large type. The second pass looks for one thing: whether you understood the problem. Only on the third pass, if there is one, does anyone read your methodology.

Three consequences follow. Put the number where the skim will find it, on page one. Make every heading name the thing it contains, so “Investment” beats “Commercials” and both beat “Next steps”. And never let a fact live only inside a paragraph, because on the first two passes the paragraphs are not being read.

The section order

The finished proposal example on this site is a website rebuild pitched by an invented studio, Northshore Digital, to an invented dental group, at a fixed $48,600. I counted every text block in the published document, and the table below is the result: nine blocks, four pages, 607 words in total.

That is about 150 words a page, which surprises people. The rest of each page is a price table, a row of figures, a timeline and space. A proposal is closer to a dashboard than to an essay.

Two numbers in that table are worth arguing with. The executive summary is 94 words and carries three figures set large: the fixed price, the fourteen week duration and the twelve month warranty. Somebody who reads nothing else still leaves with the deal. And “Our approach” is the longest section at 138 words for four phases, roughly 34 words a phase, which is about as much as anyone will read about your process before they either trust you or do not.

The problem statement, in the buyer’s words

“What we understood” runs 59 words and four figures: monthly visitors, enquiry conversion, load time, number of booking systems. Every one of those came out of the client’s mouth on a call.

This is the section that wins the second pass, and it has two rules. Use their numbers, not your categories. And write it with no solution language at all, so that the client could read it aloud in their own meeting without wincing. If you cannot fill it with four specific figures, you have not asked enough questions yet, and the proposal is early.

Approach and deliverables

These are different sections doing different jobs, and merging them is the most common structural mistake.

Approach is a sequence. It answers “in what order will this happen and who is involved”. Four or five named phases is plenty, each with a sentence about what actually occurs in it.

Deliverables is an inventory. It answers “what do I own when you leave”. Six lines in the example, each a named artefact with a one line description: journey maps, designs, the site, the booking integration, the SEO setup, the training and warranty. Nouns, not verbs.

The test for whether something belongs in deliverables is whether the client could tick it off. “Discovery workshops” is approach. “Sitemap and technical specification” is a deliverable.

Pricing: table, options, what to exclude

Price belongs in a table, because a table can be reconciled and a paragraph cannot. The example uses description, quantity, rate and amount, then subtotal, GST and total, and the total matches the number in the executive summary exactly. A buyer who checks that and finds it matches has just learned something about how you work.

Exclusions is the shortest section in the whole document, 35 words over four lines, and it is the one that prevents the argument in month three. Hosting, content, third party licences, paid advertising. Anything a reasonable client might assume is included and is not.

One caution about the numbers you promise rather than charge. The ACCC’s guidance is that any claim a business makes must be “accurate, truthful and based on reasonable grounds”, and that claims about future matters need reasonable grounds at the time you make them. A predicted conversion lift in a proposal is a claim about a future matter. If you cannot show the working, leave it out, or attribute it to the client’s own target.

Team, proof and terms

The example has no team section, which is a deliberate choice rather than an omission. At this size, on a project the buyer has already had calls about, a page of headshots costs a page and adds nothing.

Add a team section when the buyer is a committee that has not met you, when a tender schedule asks for it, or when a named individual is genuinely the thing being bought. Public sector buyers in particular publish what they will assess against, and their portals exist precisely so the requirements are written down before you bid, so answer their headings in their order.

Proof works the same way. One relevant case study beats a portfolio. If you have written one properly, with a baseline and a period, link to it or attach it. There is a companion post on how to write a case study that covers what makes one worth attaching.

Terms close the document. The example spends 57 words on the payment schedule and validity, then 20 words on an acceptance block with signature, name, title and date for both companies. That is the whole legal footprint of a proposal. The contract comes later.

Length by deal size

Across the 47 finished document examples on this site the page counts run from two to fifteen, with a median of four. The proposal sits on that median, and so does a statement of work; a full information security policy runs to fifteen.

As a rule of thumb rather than a measurement: under about fifty thousand dollars, four pages is right, and going longer reads as padding. Between fifty and two hundred and fifty thousand, expect eight, with the extra pages going to assumptions, risks and a named team. Above that you are usually answering a schedule, and the schedule decides.

Cover pages follow length. In the example set, no document of four pages or fewer has one, and 22 of the longer ones do.

The example

Read the proposal end to end before you write your own. The three things worth copying are the price on page one, the exclusions list, and the fact that the investment table reconciles to the summary figure without the reader doing arithmetic. If your proposal is mostly tables and figures, the document maker with tables is the right starting point, and there is a slide version of the same pitch if you are presenting it rather than sending it.