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
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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
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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
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Example communication goals
- Document what are you trying to communicate through the proposal and ensure that of it (and not more than that) is communicated
- 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 .