Persuasive Business Proposals: Writing to Win More Customers, Clients, and Contracts

The Value of Your Proposals to You

Look at your proposals broadly as part of your overall sales and marketing activities, rather than narrowly as the formal means of responding to a specific request. Seen that way, a proposal can help you build your business in several ways, including some that extend beyond the immediate opportunity to which you are responding.

The obvious: helping you sell. The proposal’s most important job is to help you sell something. (In the nonprofit realm, it should help you obtain funding in support of your mission and objectives.) To go a little further, though, a high-quality, carefully constructed proposal can help you:

• Sell on value instead of price: Use your proposal to move the decision maker’s focus away from ...