Free business proposal outline for a stronger first draft.

Take a small agency proposing a six month retainer to a regional retailer who asked for a price after one good conversation. The inputs are what the form asks for. Client situation: three stores and a website, marketing run by an office manager alongside another job. Stated problem: the website takes orders but nobody can say which activity produces them. Proposed scope: tracking rebuilt, paid search restructured, monthly reporting the owner can read. Commercials: a monthly fee, a three month initial term, a named person doing the work.

The proposal those inputs should produce opens by restating the client's situation in the client's own words, before any mention of the agency. Something close to: you have three stores and a site that sells, marketing sits with someone who has another full job, and you cannot currently tell which activity is producing orders, which makes every budget decision a guess. Then the consequence, stated plainly: until that is fixed, spending more and spending less are equally hard to justify. Then the scope, in three phases with what changes at the end of each. Then the number, whole and unhedged. Then what is not included, which is the section that prevents the argument in month four. Then one next step with a date attached.

What holds this up is the opening. A proposal that begins with the client's situation proves the conversation was heard, and it puts the reader in the position of agreeing with several sentences in a row before any price appears. Restating the problem in the client's language rather than the supplier's is also the cheapest possible demonstration of competence, because it is the thing an inattentive supplier cannot fake. The exclusions section does similar work from the other direction: naming what is outside scope reads as confidence rather than meanness, and it converts a future disagreement into a sentence somebody already signed.

The version most people send instead opens with a page about the agency, its founding year, its values and a client logo grid. Then a list of deliverables as bullet points. Then a price presented as three tiers with the middle one highlighted. Then a closing paragraph hoping to hear soon.

It is weaker for reasons you can point at. Opening with the agency spends the reader's attention at the moment it is highest on the subject they care about least. A deliverables list without the problem attached leaves the reader to work out for themselves why each item is there, which is work they will not do. Three tiers invite a comparison between your options rather than a decision about whether to proceed, and the highlighted middle is a device most buyers now recognise. And a closing that hopes to hear soon leaves the next move undefined, which in practice means it does not happen.

Do not write a proposal before you can state the client's problem in one sentence they would agree with. If that sentence is not available, the missing thing is a conversation, not a document. Proposals written from an incomplete brief tend to be long, because length is what people reach for when they are uncertain what is wanted, and length is exactly what reduces the chance of it being read.

Skip the formal proposal entirely when the job is small and the relationship is warm. A short email confirming scope, price, timing and what happens next closes more small work than a fifteen page document, and it closes it faster. Sending a formal proposal for a modest job can actively slow the decision, because it signals a process and invites the buyer to assemble a process of their own in response.

Be careful when the client has issued a formal tender or a request for proposal. Those documents usually specify structure, response format, evaluation criteria and sometimes word limits, and answers are frequently scored section by section against the criteria as written. A well written proposal in your own preferred shape can score badly against a rubric it was not built for. Answer the document you were given, in its order and its language, however unnatural that feels.

Be careful with the numbers in anything a client may treat as an offer. Depending on the wording and the jurisdiction, a proposal can form part of a contract once accepted, so a figure written loosely, a timeline written optimistically or a deliverable described vaguely can bind you to something you did not intend. Say what is included, say what is not, state the validity period of the price, and have anything substantial checked before it goes out.

The first paragraph decides whether the rest is read carefully or skimmed. Spent on your founding year and your values, it tells the reader nothing they can use, and it arrives at the moment their attention is at its highest. Spent on their situation, restated accurately, it does two things at once: it proves you listened, and it starts the document with several sentences the reader agrees with.

Credentials still matter, but they belong after the scope, where they answer a question the reader has actually formed by then, which is whether you can do the thing you have just described. Relevance beats volume there. One closely comparable piece of work explained in three sentences does more than a logo grid, because the reader can map it onto their own situation.

A single clear number is easier to say yes to than a menu. Tiers are useful when the buyer genuinely has a choice of scope, and harmful when they are a device to make the middle option look reasonable, which experienced buyers spot. If you offer options, make them genuinely different in scope rather than three sizes of the same thing.

Then write the exclusions. Naming what is not included, in plain language, is the single highest value paragraph in most proposals, because almost every damaged supplier relationship traces back to an assumption that was never written down. Media spend, third party licences, additional rounds of revision, content the client was to supply, work outside the agreed hours: each line you name is an argument you will not have. It reads as confidence, not as meanness, and clients who have been burned before will notice it approvingly.

A bullet list of deliverables asks the reader to imagine how the parts fit together. Most will not, and the ones who try will imagine it differently from you. A sequence with phases removes that work: what happens first, what exists at the end of it, what that makes possible next.

Phases also give you honest checkpoints. A three phase engagement with something reviewable at the end of each phase is easier to sell than an undifferentiated six months, because the buyer's risk is visibly smaller, and it is easier to run, because there is a natural point to say that something is not working. If you cannot describe the phases, the scope is probably not yet clear enough to price.

Proposals stall in the gap between reading and doing. A closing paragraph that hopes to hear soon leaves the next action undefined, and an undefined action is nobody's job. Name one step, name who takes it, and attach a date: a call already provisionally held, a start date that depends on signing by a given day, a price valid until a stated date.

The validity date deserves particular attention, because it does double duty. It protects you from being held to a figure costed six months ago against costs that have moved, and it gives the decision a natural edge without any manufactured pressure. Keep it plainly stated and genuinely meant. A deadline you do not enforce teaches the client that your dates are decorative, which is an expensive lesson to teach at the start of a relationship.