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How to Write a Business Proposal [Steps, Tips, & Templates]

You need to send a business proposal, and you want it to close. But how can you improve your chances?

Every year, we analyze the proposals sent with our software to discover what makes closing more likely. We used this research to craft this very guide.

To help you write better business proposals, we’ve curated the essential proposal format, a step-by-step process, plenty of templates to help you get started, and strategies for following up.

From images to esignatures, keep reading for data-backed insights into the most successful proposals.

Proposify’s List of the Best Voices in Sales

Need to freshen up your LinkedIn feed with content relevant to your role?

LinkedIn can be a treasure trove of sales playbooks to try, mistakes to avoid, and good ole motivation.

But who do you follow to get the very best that LinkedIn #sales has to offer?

We’ve surveyed our own AEs and SDRs to find out who they love to follow on LinkedIn.

And so we present Proposify’s List of the Best Voices in Sales.

Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) Explained

If you want to know which contracts are in effect (and what stage they’re at), then you need to manage contracts throughout their lifecycle.

Unfortunately, we’re often too busy to manage contracts effectively. Managers and business owners simply save the PDF contract in their downloads folder, and forget all about it. But this paves the way for legal and financial risks.

Sellers need to improve their proposal and contract operations, while buyers need to rework how they track contract fulfillment, compliance, and renewals to be sure they’re maximizing every contract.

In this guide, we dive into the key stages of contract lifecycle management and showcase smart tools to help you manage your contracts proactively.

10 Steps for Fixing Your Marketing and Sales Alignment

On our latest episode of The Closing Show, Chief Revenue Officer Connor Cox and some of our marketing and sales leaders talk about the dire misalignment they were dealing with and how they finally got aligned.

Who Should Own SaaS Upsells? (And Why We Chose Customer Success)

In our recent episode of The Closing Show, we dove deep into our motivation for transferring the ownership of upsells from sales to customer success—and exactly how we did it.

The conversation included Chief Revenue Officer Conor Cox, Customer Growth Manager Scott Tower, and Customer Success Manager Jasper Goodwin. In this blog, Conor takes us through the SaaS upselling techniques shared in the show.

How to Write a Software Proposal (With Examples)

The software—or SaaS (software as a service)—industry provides customers with a unique mix of both products and services.

Many software companies offer implementation services, custom integration projects, employee training, and customer success manager check-ins. Large enterprise and government organizations tend to need many of these services in addition to the software subscription in order to help them get results from the platform.

For those reasons, software proposals are commonplace. Large companies are more likely to purchase software from a proposal than a one-size-fits-all subscription on the company’s website. A software proposal can clarify what an engagement includes while also selling a prospective customer on the fact that they will be fully supported in their quest for ROI.

How to Write a Proposal for a Project (With Examples)

An excellent project proposal should address the client’s main concerns and goals, sell your unique approach, and clarify the project process.

If the project is crystal clear to both you and your client, you can reduce confusion, scope creep, and complaints.

In this guide to writing proposals for projects, we dive into what this type of proposal must include and how to write one. Plus, we showcase excellent examples to copy and data-driven best practices to follow.

What’s in this guide:

• What is a project proposal?

• What to include in a project proposal

• How to write a project proposal

• Examples of project proposals

• Tips for writing a project proposal

Looking for proposal templates, automated follow-ups, and closing insights? Get a custom Proposify demo.

4 Tips That Will Make Any Proposal More Likely to Close

You’ve based your recommendations on your client discovery process. You’ve added all the essential sections to your proposal. You’re ready to hit send on the proposal and hope it will close.

But what if there were just a few simple tweaks you could do to make sure to increase the chances that it will close?

We researched over 1 million proposals that were sent with our software last year to discover what great closers do before and after they hit send.

Below, we’ve pulled out some of the best tips from this research to help you in the final stretch.

Get all of our research. We’ve included dozens of simple, data-driven proposal tips in The 2022 State of Proposals.

7 Essential Tips for Expert Proposal Follow-ups

Follow-ups are a normal part of sending proposals. But wouldn’t it be better if clients just said “yes” straight away?

Unfortunately, it doesn’t work like that. Proposals with reminders are more likely to close.

We analyzed over 1 million proposals sent with our software to get to the bottom of whether or not follow-ups really work, how to send effective follow-ups in less than a minute, and what you can do to close deals quicker with no follow-ups required.

Get all of our data-driven proposal tips in The State of Proposals 2022.

How to Create a Business Proposal That Closes Deals

When it comes to business proposals, there’s always room for improvement.

Small tweaks can make a big difference towards whether or not a client says “yes”—and how quickly they sign off.

Last year, over 1 million proposals were sent with our software, and we analyzed them to uncover trends. We dove into the details of what successful proposals have in common, as well as best practices that our users rely on.

We found out that winning proposals are interactive and feature multimedia content. In this post, we cover smart tips for creating proposals, based on our research.

For all of our the best proposal strategies, download The State of Proposals 2022.