In today’s aggressive and fast-paced world, your ability to write a business proposal can be the life or death of your business. You may have the best idea, or the best product for your business but it will stay in the drawing board unless you can captivate and convince your investors with your business proposal.

Create a Compelling Business Proposal

In this post, we will give you tips on how to write a business proposal. For the purpose of this post we will use the Business Proposal Template for Word to help you identify and organize your ideas and highlight selling points that will convince the bank’s loan officer or any other investor to help you build your company.

Update:

The above link has been updated with an alternative template, since the original template is no longer available.

Highlight Your Edge and Include Necessary Details

So whether you are applying for a loan as a startup or are trying to sell your product or company, you will still need to write a professional, well-written, and compelling Business Proposal using the following tips:

  • Know The Basics. Determine what your company’s goals are and how you can reasonably achieve your goal. Have a clear game plan in mind that you can believe in. After all, if you don’t believe in your goal, your investors won’t either.
  • Do Your Research. Know your market and your competition. Find out what makes you better and highlight your selling points that will outshine your competitors. Provide a description of your products or services as well as your store or office location, organizational structure, and financial statements and sales projections. You can create 3- to 5-year projections and budgets as well as balance sheets to include in your proposal.

Include Tables, Charts and Diagrams to Your Proposal

  • Make your Proposal Concise and Cohesive. Organize your ideas and facts into sections that make up your Business Proposal. Start with an introduction and state your knowledge about the company, bank or investor you are addressing the proposal to. Then write your Objective, Scope of Services or Product, Your Responsibilities, Benefits, Costing and Fees, and Closing
  • It is important to remember to Highlight Your Opportunities over your competitors. Include special features or additional services that you offer. You can include diagrams and flowcharts to make your ideas clearer.

You may also want to read on articles on How to Write a Business Plan to follow up your proposal with more details about your company. Microsoft Office contains a wide array of business templates to help you get your company off the ground. You may also want to download a few financial templates to include in your business proposal.