Make it easy for the reader
I get to read a lot of sales proposals in my role at Genie. Mainly because I’m asked to take a client’s existing proposal and re-write it ready for it to be loaded onto our automated proposal system.
I can’t think of a single proposal that I’ve read yet that I think that a reader will find easy to read. In the main, the sales proposal has been used as an information dump about anything and everything to do with the supplier and their products. The policy seems to be, if in doubt, put it in. And, boy, do they.
If you put yourself in the place of the readers of your proposal, what do you think they want to see?
They want to know that you really do understand their problem. And they want to know that you have a clear picture of the outcome they want to achieve.
They want to know that you have a solution that fixes the problem and delivers on their desired outcomes.
They want to know what kind of return that they’re going to get on their investment, that you can deliver on time and that you have the ability to deliver.
Now that’s no more than seven or eight sections, at the most. A maximum of about 12 pages.
It’s got to appeal to a wide audience many of whom won’t be technically minded, nor who will wish to read a technically based document.
Tags: Copywriting
