OPPapers.com

Tips For Writing A Business Proposal

Tips for Writing a Business Proposal
by June Campbell

Business in the nineties means fierce competition, aggressive marketing and strategic alliances. The extent to which a business succeeds or fails often depends upon that business's ability to be awarded contracts or to attract other businesses into Joint Ventures or strategic alliances. To accomplish either one usually requires two key items: good ideas and the ability to present those good ideas in a superbly developed business proposal.

Business proposals are developed for one of two possible reasons.
(1) A business entity has called for tenders or has invited you to submit a RFP (Request for Proposal). In this case, your goal is to be "short listed," meaning that you will be one of the three or four bidders who is awarded an interview. Your proposal must stand among possibly dozens of submissions.

(2) You have an idea, concept or project that you want to propose to someone with the goal of gaining support, funding or an alliance. In this case, there is no competitive bidding process. However, your proposal must make a favourable impression and must explain all aspects of your proposed concept clearly and quickly. A document that is vaguely written, difficult to understand or that presents more questions than answers will likely be discarded promptly.

The following eleven tips are guidelines that I keep in mind when I develop a business proposal for a client of my writing service:

1. Clarity.

Before you begin to write the proposal, summarize the concept in 2-3 sentences, then show it to a lay person and check for understanding. If they don't grasp the basic idea, rewrite until they do. Until you can do this, you are not ready to start writing the proposal. How many times have you received a document that you had to read over and over before you comprehended the meaning? When this happens, it may be because your comprehension skills are under- developed, but it's more likely that the...