Knowing how to write a great sales proposal is a make-or-break for sales professionals. It can be the difference between closing with a client who understands the value of your product and missing your quarterly revenue target. This blog will break down the essential ingredients for writing a successful proposal and provide tips on creating a sales proposal to outshine your competitors.
What is a sales proposal?
Put simply, a sales proposal is a document that your sales team uses to win new business. Some organizations call them business proposals, but they’re essentially a sales pitch in document form — an essential piece of sales collateral. A sales proposal should pinpoint a challenge that your prospect is facing and illustrate how your products or services can help them solve their problems and achieve their goals.
Who creates sales proposals?
Your sales team will typically create a sales proposal with support from other teams in marketing, finance, and legal. Your marketing team can support sales by providing on-brand templates for sales proposals, while finance and legal teams should enable sales to create proposals that meet your business’s legal and pricing requirements.
Discover: What Is Sales Enablement? Best Practices To Align Marketing And Sales
Why does a good sales proposal matter?
A good sales proposal showcases your understanding of the customer's needs, builds trust, and positions your solution as the best fit to solve their problems. It can be the final step in convincing stakeholders to buy, so it’s important that your proposal clearly shows why your products or services are the answer to their prayers.
What are the key components of writing a sales proposal?
Every sales proposal looks different, depending on the type of client you’re pitching to and the products and services you’re delivering. But, on the whole, there are a few building blocks that every good sales proposal should contain:
Executive summary
Summarize the key points that you’re going to cover in your sales proposal. This summary should be tailored to the decision-makers in your buying group, capture their attention, demonstrate your solution's value without diving into details. It’s usually the first — and sometimes the only — section that busy stakeholders have time to read, so you’ve only got a few words to make a big impact.
Problem statement
Summarize the challenges that your prospective customer is currently facing, demonstrating that you understand their specific pain points and priorities. A problem statement should pinpoint the problem, explain the impact of the problem, and set the stage for your proposed solution.
Here’s an example of a problem statement you might find in a sales proposal:
Marketing professionals at [example company] are overwhelmed by the number of internal requests for help with creating content that they get from other departments.
The impact of this is that the marketing team is unable to focus on high-priority demand generation and brand-building activities because they’re spending too much time producing content for other teams, such as HR or sales.
In order to take the pressure off the marketing team and make their workload more manageable, [example company] needs a solution that enables other teams to easily create their own content without relying on marketing.
Client-specific solutions
Outline your recommended approach, product, or service and highlight how it will help address your prospect’s specific needs.
Tip: Go the extra mile by personalizing your sales proposal to give it a more customized feel.
Benefits and value proposition
Explain which specific benefits and ROI (return on investment) the customer can expect after they use your solution. Here, it’s important to highlight your unique value proposition to differentiate your brand from the competition.
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Pricing
Share a transparent breakdown of how much your solution costs, the payment terms, and any other financial details they should know before they move forward.
Next steps
Finally, encourage your prospect to take the next step with a call to action, whether that’s signing your proposal or planning a follow-up meeting. Make this section as concrete and specific as possible, so there's no ambiguity about what needs to happen next.
Tip: Make it even easier for your prospect to take the next step by embedding an interactive calendar or a contact form into your sales proposal via a native or third-party integration.
How to write a sales proposal in 5 steps
Yours is likely one of many proposals that your client has to read, so it’s worth taking the time to craft a convincing, thorough document that helps you stand out from the competition. Here’s how to craft an unforgettable sales proposal in 5 steps:
1. Do your research
Before you even sit down to write your sales proposal, you need to be sure that you understand your prospect. Research their industry and get familiar with their goals, challenges, and competitive landscape. The last thing you want is to waste your client’s time with an unfeasible proposal, so make sure you’re clear on their budget and timeline. It’s also worth talking to other important stakeholders in their organization, so you’re clear on what they need from a solution, too.
Your prospect will be able to spot a poorly-researched sales proposal from a mile away, so it’s worth putting in the extra effort here to lay the groundwork.
2. Define the objective of your sales proposal
Be clear about the proposal’s purpose. Are you aiming to close a deal, present a solution, or set up a meeting with the prospect? You also need to make sure that you understand your prospect’s decision-making criteria and that you’re creating content that will help them in the process.
3. Pick the right format
There are a thousand ways to present your sales proposal — and the content format you choose comes down to the prospect and the goal of the proposal. Let’s say your proposal is in response to a formal request for proposal (RFP). Here, a long-form document is probably the way to go. But if you’re going to be engaging with an entire stakeholder group? A presentation-style format might be the best choice. It’s all about understanding your audience and what you’d like them to get out of it.
Tip: If you’re regularly sending out sales proposals, using a professional, branded proposal template can help speed up the process while keeping your proposals on-brand.
4. Create some structure
Now, you’re ready to structure your proposal into clear sections. Here’s an example of a classic sales proposal structure:
Executive summary: Explain your customer’s challenges and how your solution will address them,
Problem statement: Show you understand what they’re struggling with.
Proposed solution: Take them through your approach, using visuals and examples to strengthen your story.
Benefits and ROI: Quantify your solution’s value in hard numbers, using case studies or data where you can.
Implementation plan: Give prospects a high-level overview of your proposed implementation timeline and next steps.
5. Review and polish your sales proposal
Carefully proofread your proposal and look out for errors, typos, and inconsistencies. When you’re re-reading your content, refer back to the purpose of the sales proposal and the research you did at the start. Is the content in line with the client’s needs and expectations? Have you demonstrated a deep understanding of what they’re looking for?
If you can, get a second (or third) opinion from a colleague or stakeholder before finalizing your proposal — they might even spot errors or missed opportunities to demonstrate value.
5 sales proposal best practices
Now that you’ve got an understanding of what goes into creating a great sales proposal and how to get started, let’s have a look at a few best practices for creating a standout sales proposal:
1. Focus on your customer’s needs
Your sales proposal should be about your client and what they’re hoping to achieve — not an essay about how great your products and services are. Make it clear to your prospects that you understand their ambitions — as well as their frustrations – and show (rather than tell) them that your solution will help them get where they want to be.
2. Keep it short and sweet
Brevity is levity, as they say. Your prospects are busy — and so are their stakeholders. So, make their lives easier by getting straight to the point and using clear, jargon-free language. Adding visual elements like photography, data visualization like charts and graphs, or even videos can make your sales proposal even easier to digest.
3. Make it personal
There’s nothing worse than feeling like a number. So, make sure you show your prospect that the proposal was crafted specifically for them. As well as referring to their specific pain points and focusing on the features you think they’ll love, make sure to personalize your content, address them by their name, and use their company branding (where appropriate).
4. Include testimonials and case studies
Social proof goes a long way in building trust with prospects. Research by Foundry revealed that a whopping 92% of B2B buyers were more likely to buy after reading a trusted review. So, be sure to include customer testimonials in your sales proposal — bonus points if the customer operates in a similar industry to your prospect.
5. Opt for an intelligent format
There’s nothing more nerve-wracking than sending out a perfectly crafted sales proposal and then just…waiting. You want to know: Which parts of the proposal did the prospect find interesting? Did they share it with anyone? And (worst of all), did they even read the proposal to begin with? Traditional sales proposal formats like PDFs give you almost no insights into your prospect’s reading behavior. Switching to an interactive content format with built-in analytics can give you a better understanding of your prospect’s level of interest so you can be strategic with your follow-up.
See: Why B2Bs Are Ditching PDF White Papers for a Better Format
Sales proposal example
You're almost ready to get started with creating your own sales proposals. But first, it's time for some inspiration.
Wondering how to present your pitch in a more compelling way and keep prospects reading? Check out the example sales proposal that we’ve created. Or explore our sales proposal templates for even more inspo.
Ready to create winning sales proposals?
Transform your sales process with engaging, high-impact proposals that close deals faster. Visit our Sales Team Solutions page to learn how Foleon can help your team craft proposals that stand out.
