As a startup, specially if you are in the B2B domain, you need to write a lot of Business proposals and send them to potential clients (mostly big companies) . These proposals play a very critical role when you are dealing with big companies, they are used to old way of doing things.  Here are some thoughts on proposal documents.

• Good proposal documents are like paintings
  • Writing a good proposal document is an art
  • It has to come from within, you need a deep understanding of “what does the proposal document stand for, what is it trying to accomplish, who is my audience, what do I need to communicate”
  • Once thats done just let your self loose and a good document will emerge
  • Review the document a couple of times to De-text and make it crisp and professional
  • Identify a few folks whose proposal reviewing skills are good and get them to give you critical feedback
  • Don’t ignore the feedback or parts of the feedback. Work on each point meticulously
• Overall Goals
  • Clearly document the goals of the proposal
  • What are you trying to achieve via this proposal ?
    • Make sure every word & every sentence in the proposal contributes to that
    • Dont get carried away and write stuff which is not directly related to the goal
  • Example Goals
    • Convince Westside to do a pilot in mumbai
    • Pilot should start in next 1-2 months
    • Get Westside to purchase stock against advance payment
• Communication goals
  • Document what are you trying to communicate through the proposal and ensure that of it (and not more than that) is communicated
    • Example communication goals
      • Who are we
      • What do we make
      • What are we selling to the customer and why should the customer buy it
      • What is a simple initial pilot we can get started with (initially try to get into a pilot which is simple and easy to get started with for both sides, you can get into deeper more elaborate partnerships later)
      • What are the mechanics of the initial pilot
        
      • What are the commercials
      • Other terms & conditions
        
      • How can we get started
• Audience
  • Define who is the audience, who will read it?
  • Step into heads of your audience and think what do they want to see so that they will make decision that you want them to make
• Overall structure and format
  • Create a document structure to accomplish goals listed above with the stated audience in mind
  • Fill in the content in the structure
• De-text
  • De-texting means going through the written text and removing unnecessary words / sentences that don’t all value to the content or don’t contribute towards the goals of the document / section
  • De-texting is an art and it takes patience to do it but once you practice enough you will become good at it
• Have just enough
  • You should have “just enough” content in the document
  • Every word / sentence / section in the document competes for attention of the reader
  • Hence every extra sentence takes away attention from existing sentences
  • So be careful and sure about every word / sentence / section – that its required to complete the document
  • Removal of every unwanted less wanted section will increase the chances of rest of the document being understand better by the reader

Please share your experiences / views in comments about the proposals. I plan to update the post based on feedback from readers.

PS: After reading this post again I realized that its equally applicable to other forms of written communications like presentations, agreements, e-mails, requirement documents etc .

Tags: B2B, B2B proposals, Business communication, Business Proposal, Communication, Proposal