Create Winning Proposals to Land Consulting Deals
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One of the most important business activities you’ll conduct as an independent consultant is creating business proposals to submit to potential clients. Your written proposal is the first detailed sample of your work, your professionalism, and your expertise, and it will leave a lasting impression. It’s imperative that you put time and effort into this process, because it can make or break a deal.
Contact Information:
You should include contact information for both yourself and your potential client. Adding your logo, if you have one, at the top of a proposal will give it a more professional appearance.
Summary:
A summary section should be included at the beginning of your proposal, and it should provide a brief overview of the information that will follow in more detail throughout the remainder of the proposal. This is a useful section, because it allows you to highlight the core benefits of the plan that you are proposing, and gives you a prime opportunity to gain the interest of your reader.
Business Overview:
This section should also appear near the beginning of your proposal. It may also be referred to as “Background” or “History,” and it should include basic information about your client company, the current issues they are facing, current market trends, and any obstacles they are facing in reaching their goals, whether external or internal in origin. This is an opportunity for you to impress your client by showing that you have taken time to conduct research on the organization. Any potential client will be pleased to see that you are willing to dedicate the time to uncover the facts, and you may be one step ahead of your competition by already knowing the underlying issues. Be sure that your analysis of the client situation is as accurate as possible; just as this section could highlight your insight into the business, it could just as well draw attention to any lack of understanding of their business. Double check your description of the company with what is on their website or brochures; don’t rely only on your initial discussions with your contact to write this section.
Target Market:
This section is more for the advertising and marketing fields, but could possibly apply to other industries, such as Management Consulting. It may be more appropriate to identify this section as “Target Group” for Management Consultants or “Target Audience” for Corporate Trainers. This section identifies the population that is the focus of your efforts, whether it’s a specific age group that you’re targeting with a marketing campaign, a specific occupation within a company, or another set of customers that share a unique characteristic that differentiates them from the rest of the population.
Goals:
This is an important section, and should be included in every proposal, regardless of the industry that you work in. As a consultant, your role is to help your client organization achieve some sort of goal, or set of goals. This is your opportunity to put the goals in writing, and let your client know that you know what their objectives are. Be sure that you are as accurate as possible in this section, and clarify anything you’re not completely sure of before putting this in writing. If you’re off-base on a client’s true goals in your proposal, it could cost you the assignment. Avoid vague fluff and try to be as specific as possible.
Strategies/Deliverables:
This section should always follow the goals section, and should also appear in proposals across industries. This is the area for you to highlight exactly what it is that you’re going to do for your client that will help them achieve their goals. Deliverables may be the actual physical or electronic property that the client can expect to receive from you, for example, a deliverable for a writer could be a certain number of chapters of an ebook, or a certain number of articles consisting of a certain word count. The implementation and launch of a certain type of program may also be considered a deliverable, or it may be useful to discuss project milestones or timeline. Again, depending on the type of project, this section may only contain either strategies or deliverables, and if it’s a complex project, it may be more functional to split this section into two separate categories.
Reporting:
How will your client be able to review the work that you’ve completed? If you’re not providing a tangible product, you must provide some other means of showing your client what you’ve accomplished. Ways to report can vary widely across industries, but you want to let your client know that you’re making progress via some type of written communication.
Budget and Scope:
This section shows the costs for your project, and should include detail about specifics that are not included in this cost. For example, a web designer should make clear that the quoted price includes a set number of revisions, and at what rate additional revisions would be billed at. This protects you and your client from unpleasant disputes down the line, because it reduces the likelihood of a misunderstanding. Be sure to also itemize expenses that will be billable to the client, such as mileage, travel, or delivery fees.
Evaluation of Results:
Show your clients that you’re confident in your abilities by outlining a method for evaluating the results of your work. As an example, an energy consultant would provide a detailed description of what statistics will be reviewed upon completion of a project to determine if energy use has decreased, and what percentage of a decrease in usage would be considered successful given the project about to be undertaken. Make sure that the success metrics you select are reasonably standard for the industry, and achievable based on the work you will perform. Remember, it is better to under-promise, and over-deliver.
Ownership of Intellectual Property:
Freelance writers and IT programmers, in particular, need to be concerned with this section, as well as some other professions. Upon submission of your work, who has the copyright ownership of the content that you’ve created or the programs you have written? Will you place any restrictions on the ownership or use of the content? Will you retain any rights to the content? Be sure to cover all these intellectual property details to avoid a copyright dispute down the line – and include the same in the contract that gets drawn up later.
Call to Action:
Close your proposal with some kind of call to action, or proposal for “Next Steps.” In short – ask for the business! This may be as simple as a proposed project timeline showing dates for contract signing, research phase, project implementation, milestones, and maintenance. Or it may be a two line paragraph offering contact info for questions and to take the next step. You might be surprised how many proposals never actually ask for the business. Don’t neglect this step, and be sure your proposal makes it very clear to the reader who they should contact for questions and next steps, and that your pitch makes it obvious how to proceed.
Template, Design, and Professional Editing:
While this last item is cosmetic, it carries great importance. Use a professional looking format for your proposal. Look at templates available in word processing or desktop publishing applications, and search online for proposal templates that others have already developed. Select a template that is professional, elegant, and understated, and most of all appropriate to your industry and audience. Format the proposal well for good readability, and have at least one other person go over the document with a fine tooth comb to check for spelling or grammar errors. As a professional, I’ve encountered more than one proposal with the target company’s name misspelled, so above all, make sure you’ve spelled the name of the company the same way they spell it on their business cards or website!
Follow this outline to create a detailed business proposal that will close deals with your potential clients. Not all of these sections will be necessary for every assignment, and in some cases, it may be helpful to break up one section into two or more smaller sections if there is a lot of detail. Use your best judgment to determine which parts should be included in your proposal, depending on the type of project you’re bidding on. If you are responding to a formal Request for Proposal (RFP) then adapt the format of your proposal to the requested suggestions in the RFP.
Devoting the time upfront to submit a proposal that shows that you’ve put effort into creating a plan for success for your client will greatly improve your sales ratio. Your proposal still may not meet the needs of your potential client at this time, so you still won’t land every assignment you bid on. The client will be more likely to keep a detailed proposal on file for future use, however, and may even recommend your services to another organization. If you don’t win the business, be sure to give courteous follow up, and it is okay to ask for feedback on what influenced their decision. Every proposal is an opportunity to learn and refine your process.
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About the Author
Angela Stringfellow is a Marketing Communications Consultant. She recommends that Independent Consultants put due diligence into submitting proposals to land more deals.
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