A business proposal is an argument which details how your product or service addresses your customer’s needs, desires, and hopes better than alternatives.
It demonstrates your understanding of your customer requirements, concerns, and priorities, and shows that your offer is credible, competitive, and value for money. The number of sections in a proposal will vary according to the product or service but the following are typical sections:
- Executive Summary
- Introduction
- Requirements
- Solution
- Implementation Plan
- Our Capability
- Costings
- Benefits
- How to make it happen
Executive Summary
The executive summary is the most important section of any proposal. Firstly, it is the one part of the document that everyone on the recipient’s team will read. Secondly, it sets the scene for the document and delivers the most important messages.
In the context of Sales proposals, the purpose of an executive summary is to sell your idea, technology, product, service, or idea.
Its purpose is to win over sceptics, appeal to the disinterested and influence the undecided. And to do that, you need to make impact from your first word to your last. In essence, you need to produce the finest piece of logic, reasoning, and persuasion based on the information you have at that time.
Never underestimate the importance of an executive summary. If you are a potential supplier, your executive summary may even make your first impression.
You should therefore think of your executive summary as your elevator pitch – a logical order of appealing reasons to justify your offer. It may determine whether you win or lose.
In practice, once your customer starts reading, you’ll have seconds to grab their attention. It is a competitive world and your document is likely to be one of many. As your customer’s eyes move down the page, your writing needs to convey value, competence, track record and knowledge of your customer’s needs.
If you haven’t hooked your prospect by your seventh sentence, their attention is likely to wander. That is why every word from the very beginning in every sentence must contribute towards your message.
However, before I continue with what an executive summary should contain, here are three things that it should not.
Number one: In the case of proposals, it should never include a “thank you” for the opportunity to submit. Statements of appreciation should reside in a covering letter.
Number two: it should not include a general profile of your organisation’s capability. Unless specifically asked for, such information should sit elsewhere in your document. Only include a statement of capability when it is specifically matched to your prospect’s business needs, aims and vision.
Number three: it should not overly-emphasise your technology, product, or service. Instead, it should focus on the business benefits your offer will generate such as to reduce cost, increase efficiency, maximise opportunities, or whatever it is that is critical to your customer.
So back to what your executive summary should contain. Your first sentence should comprise the most powerful, interesting, dramatic, and customer-appealing statement of which you can think.
It should answer the question in your customer’s mind, “What’s in it for me?” If you offer low cost, adaptable, complementary solutions which meet your customer’s aims, vision, and objectives, say so, up front.
Always link your solution to your customer’s needs with clear explanation. If your offer includes decision-influencing differentiators or (better still) discriminators, highlight these at the beginning. Your first sentence should set the scene for your proposal, or business case.
Details of your offering should be directly linked to your prospect’s needs. You should summarise each requirement and link it to your proposed solution, which you should then link to the customer benefits of your solution. By so doing, you are answering your prospect’s question “What’s in it for me?”
Provide sufficient information to get your message across effectively but never provide more than is sufficient. Detailed information should be contained elsewhere in your document.
Summarise your solution into coherent statements which encapsulates the unique benefits of your offer. You need to demonstrate the credibility of your proposition in the fewest possible words.
Refer to customers who have benefited from your technology, product, or service. Lower cost, greater efficiency, higher output, and increased capability are the type of things on which to focus. Ideally, you should be able to quantify the business benefits that have accrued from your offerings over time.
Finally, propose next steps. Suggest actions and timescales which need to take place to bring your offer into effect.
And finally – proofread. At each draft, ask your colleagues to check your writing for accuracy, appeal, grammar, punctuation, and spelling. Always draft your executive summary early in your writing process so that you have time for review and improvement.
Introduction
This section should set the scene, It should give background information if relevant, define the situation, state for whom the document is written, detail why it has been written, and summarise the scope, objectives and expected outcomes.
Requirements
This is a major section in the main body of the document. The need to be detailed in as much detail as required for your proposition to make sense.
This section should detail the methods you used to analyse the requirements – if relevant – to validate the information and consider options. This will provide credibility to your document
It should be written so that the proposition section of your document can link back to this section. If it is both a commercial and technical situation, then it needs to be structured as such.
Solution
This is the main part of the document. Link this section directly to the requirements section, and show how your proposition addresses individual requirements – operational, business, technical or other. This section should detail the value that your product or service provides – as in your value proposition.
Value propositions are persuasive statements that summarise why your client should purchase your product or use your service in preference to someone else’s.
Whilst a Unique Selling Point (USP) is a differentiator and sets out why an idea, product, or service is uniquely attractive and uniquely different from its competitors, a Value Proposition is broader. It is also customer-specific and can include emotion to communicate the value and benefits of a product or service.
A Value Proposition is about how your business, product or service offers higher quality, lower cost, or something else desired by your customer, that your competitors can neither offer nor replicate easily. A value proposition should comprise a simple set of statements which:
(a) Describe how your business, product, service, or idea addresses the situation – problem or opportunity.
(b) Detail why the situation should be addressed or needs can be addressed in terms of opportunity, difficulty, or cost.
(c) Explain the benefits of your business plan – your business, product, service, or idea over alternatives.
(d) State the cost advantages of your business, product, service, or idea over competitive alternatives.
Here’s an example:
a) Our Super Solar Panels are specifically engineered for people like you who care about the environment, wish to reduce property energy costs, and contribute towards a greener world.
b) You are currently spending comparatively high amounts to heat, light and cook, which in turn may adversely affect the saleability of your property.
c) The key benefit of our solar panels is that they are uniquely efficient. They extract X% more of the sun’s energy per panel surface area than can be extracted by competitive solar panels.
Our panels will enable you to reduce your carbon footprint by Y amount. Your property value will reflect the efficiency of our solar panels and your lower energy costs.
d) Based on our analysis of your past 3 years of energy consumption, our panels will reduce your energy costs by Z% annually which will be Q% higher than the results you could expect from alternative panels.
Implementation Plan
This includes a step-by-step plan for implementing of the solution, including timelines for each phase.
Resources such as people, equipment and materials required to implement the solution are detailed.
The deliverables by timescale need to be detailed.
Our Capability
This section should be focused on your credibility to implement the solution and provide reassurance to the client. It should summarise your company, mission, experience and success in implementing such solutions.
This is the place to showcase projects or successes that demonstrate your ability to deliver the solution.
If relevant, it should detail the key team members who will be involved in the project, to include skills, knowledge, experience and track record.
This section should also show how the solution matches the strategic objectives of the organisation and that it aligns, complements, and supports the client organisation’s objectives.
Costings
This section should detail the costs associated with the project which might include operational costs, people, materials and overheads.
It should also demonstrate the potential return on investment (ROI) your solution offers.
Benefits
List the key benefits from the financial to the operational to the strategic.
How to Make It Happen
Specify the critical path – a timeline – of all stages of approval necessary to implement.
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