How to Write the Best Proposal Templates?

The art of writing a solid proposal is a critical skill in business. Whether it’s an internal proposal requesting approval for your plan or an external one, pitching your product or service - you need a proposal. So it would be time well spent to structure your proposal outreach for success.

Proposal writing can be a time-consuming process, and this is where templates come in. Most proposals follow a similar format, and once you have the main structure you can add variables to further personalize them for your recipient.

Writing the Best Proposal Templates

Proposal templates are a valuable tool, but like all tools it must be used properly to deliver the results you are looking for. It’s important to point out a template only provides a structure for writing.

If you send a form letter with generic content, it’s easy to recognize and it won’t be long before your email ends up in the trash. Customize your template to address the needs of each recipient by making it personal and targeted to their interests.

The best proposal templates have a clean, professional design, and they can be customized to each use case. By implementing best practices when creating your template, you ensure it can be applied to most situations, and you increase the chances of success - whether that’s you or the teammate you shared it with.

Create the Best Sales Proposal Templates

In most cases, when you launch an outreach campaign, the goal is to generate qualified interest or better yet close a deal. But before you get there, your email has to get noticed in your recipients inbox, and more importantly opened, which is no easy task.

Applying some of these best practices is one way to improve the performance of your proposal. But you’ll need to employ other smart tools to leverage your survival in their inbox. Email automation with Gmelius sequences and smart tracking are invaluable tools when executing your outreach. Real-time notifications tell you exactly when they opened your email - allowing you to follow-up with perfect timing.

Appreciate and Value the Time of Your Prospects

Writing a long and winded proposal which takes too much time to read is a formula for deletion.

Put yourself in the position of the person reading the email so you can empathize on the impact of your email. If your email takes too long to read, is not easily understood, or screams sales - it’s time for a revision.

Know Your Prospect

Knowing your prospect makes it that much easier to write and create the best proposal templates. The first contact should identify the challenges your prospect faces and succinctly outline how your solution will help solve the problem.

What pains are they experiencing and what problems are they trying to solve?

A tailored proposal has a much better chance of getting noticed than a generic form without any real insight about your prospect. And as part of knowing your potential customer, you should also use language which is familiar to them.

A simple research on their site or social media page will let you know if they prefer communicating in a casual or formal style. Use this tone to match the conversation you have with them.

Deliver On Your Promise

You have to be crystal clear in what you can deliver. If you over promise, you lose trust and any potential for a long-term relationship.

Along these lines you also have to identify the deliverables, their timeline, and clarify the payment terms.

Review and Optimize Your Proposal

Reviewing your proposal is a best practice you must back with strict governance. Having a system in place with multiple reviews will ensure the final draft is mistake free.

Stakeholders may not look kindly on even the most simplest of faults, so err on the side of caution. Whether it’s a glaring error or a simple typo, they can sabotage your efforts.

In addition, many businesses have submission guidelines and your review process should make sure they are followed to the letter.

Direct Your Proposal to the Right Person

After putting in all the hard work into your proposal, it would be a shame if it ends up in the wrong email inbox.

Identify who the right stakeholders are and makes sure they get your proposal.

Best Practices for Client Outreach Proposals

Outreach proposals are a shot in the dark, especially if you are using cold emails. While reaching out is a good thing, getting a response is an entirely different matter.

When you create best practices for client outreach proposals, the same steps outlined in the sales proposals also apply. But adding some additional steps can help you warm the connections of a cold outreach.  

Explain Who You Are

One of the issues of sending outreach proposals is the prospect might not know who you are. Without going overboard, introduce yourself and state clearly what you can offer to solve their particular issue.

Above all, don’t keep emailing until you get a response. There are many reasons why a prospect is not answering. Again, Gmelius offers you a range of tools that take out the guessing game of when you should follow up and how often. Structure your outreach with various responses based on the interaction of your recipient - whether that’s a no-open, or an open with no-response.

This is a delicate process where one wrong move can jeopardize your deal. If you put in the time to structure your strategy, it will pay off.

Create & Share Your Best Proposal Templates

The best proposal templates allow you to work smarter by delivering a consistent message about your brand, one you can customize and scale as needed.

The good news is Gmelius has a feature for creating shareable email templates so you can save time, and improve the productivity of your organization. It lets you produce a standard template from your Gmelius dashboard or directly from your email compose window and save them for future use, and share them with your team.