After a brief glance, it turned out to be a technology proposal from one of my competitors, quoting a price for the replacement of a server and upgrading six existing office workstation for $12,000. This impressive one page proposal appeared odd, and to say the least, did not look like a lot of time was spent on it. This had made the dentist leery, requesting my opinion.

After a short search on the Web, we found the proposed $6,000 name brand server on the manufacturer’s Web site at less than half the quoted price. Then there was the $6,000 for memory, hard disk upgrades and labor on the client machines.

The outrageous price is not what got me thinking. What really went through my mind was that if you are going to screw someone like this, you should at least make your proposal look more professional. This thing had amateur written all over it.

If the writer of this proposal would have spent the effort putting this on a letterhead, used a business format, and spread it out over three or four pages, including some basic preliminaries, the dentist most likely would have never questioned the proposal and felt like he was in good hands.

This is where most technical people have a disconnect. No matter if your showroom or office is plastered with certificates and documents proving your technical excellence, no matter if you are the best technician in town, if you can’t translate your technical expertise and the value of services you provide into a basic proposal, you may as well close shop. Properly written proposals are the most important tool for bringing in business.

I used to loath writing proposals. They are time consuming, and there is no guarantee that the project will be awarded. Over time, I realized though that this is the one tool, the one shot I have to address customer’s expectations and set my service standard, therefore I plan my pitch carefully.

Ever since I changed my attitude about proposal writing and put the guideline below into action, I have increasingly won contracts based on overall appearance and the ability to show clients solutions and benefits rather than being the lowest bidder.

In effect, you are applying for a job and the proposal is your resume. If your proposal is poorly written and looks flimsy, how will that reflect on you or your company? It is good practice to use a previously prepared proposal as a master template. This will save time writing future proposals, but don’t forget that clients want to believe they are the only important customer in this universe. By acknowledging their unique needs and expectations, you are already light years ahead of the competition.

Let me share some basic, no-nonsense essentials which will assist you in organizing a proposal into a professional pitch:

There should always be a lead in or introduction that is brief and to the point.

Introduction:

Plan the introduction carefully, and, if possible, include the following items, keeping it short and sweet:
– Indicate that the following document is a proposal.
– Refer to the source of information for this project.
– Give an overview of the proposal content.

State the current condition:

Discuss what brought the project about, the existing problem, and the opportunity to improve the situation. Even though the client knows their challenges very well, by reiterating it from your point of view, you acknowledge their pain points and demonstrate your appreciation and understanding of their situation. Simply, I call this section “Where you are now”.

State the derived benefit:

Discuss the advantage or benefit of the proposed solution. This is where you sell the customer and introduce the expected return on investment. Here customers learn about the value your service provides. This is the “Where you want to be” section.

Describe the results of the project:

Give a written outline of the planned installation, assembly, or upgrade. Also, this is where you pitch available ongoing maintenance or service offerings after project completion. If it is a larger project, you should break it down into phases.

Describe the procedure:

Here you demonstrate that you use a well-thought through approach. This also acts as an additional persuasive argument showing that you know what you are talking about and that you are the right choice for the project.

Schedule:

Give a completion date, if there is not a set project initiation date as of yet, provide an approximate time span.

Qualifications:

This should contain a summary of your or your organization’s qualifications for doing the proposed work. List certifications, training, and education as well as similar successfully completed projects showing familiarity with this particular project and that you are suited to undertake it.

Cost:

Outline the cost and resources. List hourly rates, projected hours, hardware, supplies, and any other related costs and calculate the total.

Conclusions:

The final paragraph of the proposal should bring the customer back to focus on the positive aspects of the project after just showing the cost. You can end this section by urging them to get in touch with you to work out the details of the project. Remind them of the benefits, and put in one last plug for you and your organization being the right choice for the project.

Do you notice the overall logical movement through these sections? First you get the customer concerned about their problem or situation and instill the urgency to solve it. Then you get them excited and help them envision how you’ll fix the problem or carry out the project. Then you show the customer all the good qualifications you have and how you successfully managed prior similar projects. After that you hit them with the cost, but you come right back to the benefits and value of the project.

This is your sales pitch:

There will be times when you just can’t win. At one time, when bidding on a request for proposal (RFP) by a larger non-profit organization, I was beat by my competition. The interesting fact was the competition then proceeded to implement my network installation and software solutions exactly as I had outlined in my proposal. Later, I found out that this contractor and one of the directors were close friends. This is where I learned to write less detailed proposals. But I also learned that my proposal and its contents were understood by the board members and therefore they trusted and preferred my method.

I recommend not going into detail in all proposal sections (except your certifications, etc.) until the proposal has been accepted. I promise to provide a “scope-of-work” document with more explicit details after acceptance. Make sure the proposals doesn’t look too laborious or it will be hard to read and understand.

Always stay professional. If you respond to a request for thirty PCs to an attorney firm versus five laptops to the surf shop, the proposals should be equally professional. Just because a business owner met with you in flowery shorts and no shirt does not mean that you can go lax as well. (The surf guy showed up in casual dress, too.) Professionalism and following the rules plays an even bigger role when dealing with government and larger companies.

“It’s all about communication” says Rick Callaway, a purchasing manager at Harris Corporation, an international communications equipment company.

According to him, a proposal could be rejected if bidders violate the terms and conditions of the request for proposal (RFP) or request for quotation (RFQ). Reasons can be simple things like returning bids after the deadline and not having an extension requested or being non-responsive to questions after a bid has been delivered. The first page Rick Callaway turns to is the compliance section. He suggests that if there are certain specifications that cannot be complied to, make sure and note them in the proposal with suggested alternatives.

His advice after receiving an RFP is to read not only the technical specifications but also the general requirements on how to write out the methodology on which way the project would be implemented. According to him, this is where most bidders lack.

Also knowing the fine line between an RFP and RFQ is important. When he sends for an RFP, he appreciates getting a blue sky proposal suggesting alternatives in addition to the requested specifications. If he sends out an RFQ, he expects to get exactly what he asks for.

There are other rules to observe when writing the proposal, especially if you address smaller or non-technical companies. One pitfall is giving in to using our everyday technobabble. You should challenge yourself and bring a difficult technical concept down to layman terms.

Use professional looking stationery with letterhead. If you don’t have one, make one. All you have to do is put your company name and address in a different font on top of the letter. To get ideas, look on the Internet or see what some of your competitors are doing in this respect.

Are your proposals presented in spreadsheet format? Oh, brother, you need help. Use your letterhead form, write out the proposal sections, and put the data in a table. There are free templates available on the World Wide Web so you don’t have to recreate the wheel. Being someone working in technology, you should employ the technology at your fingertips to help you look your best. Especially if customers reading your proposal have not met you personally, they are going to judge you and your work ethics by the proposal’s appearance.

If your proposal is poorly written and looks flimsy, how will that reflect on you or your company? It is good practice to use a previously prepared proposal as a master template. This will save time writing future proposals but don’t forget that clients want to believe they are the only important customer in this universe.

As in the case with the dentist’s IT guy, even though he had been servicing the dentist for some time now, his mediocrities and unprofessional proposal led to a poor reflection of him and created distrust on the customer’s side.

In case this would have been a prospective customer, nowhere did the proposal demonstrate that the bidder or his firm had the experience and capability to carry out the proposed transactions. It didn’t even mention transferring data between machines.There was no head or tails to this. Even if this bidder would have been the best technical choice for this project, he blew his chance by way of ignorance.

The best proposals I have seen started out with an executive summary and continued written on a very personal level. Do you think they got the reader’s attention? Especially if you as the CEO or owner write it yourself, the reader will appreciate the fact and feel very special. These proposals did not exceed three pages but still followed the above outlined steps in a very loose format.

Make sure to live up to the professional image. You are setting the expectations for your service standard. If you win a project after supplying a superbly written proposal and the technician shows up the very first day in flip-flops and shorts, your company’s image will go right out the door. As a matter of fact, at one time a friend of mine landed a very lucrative web development job because his competitor showed up in sweats and a T-shirt. Hey, the old adage holds true: It’s not about how good you are, it’s about how good you look. Therefore, if you start out with a great looking proposal, your customers expect the service level to be right up there, too. And that, my friend, is perceived as value.

Remember, it’s all about the right pitch.