More and more visitors that arrive at my writing help websites are looking for information on how to write “proposals”. However, it is often not clear exactly what type of proposal they need help with.
In fact, it turns out that there are more than 20 commonly written proposals of various types including: business proposals, grant proposals, project proposals, sales proposals, project proposals, funding proposals, and many more.
Over the years I have written a couple of articles about proposal writing but they were hidden away, deep inside my website. Finally, I got around to centralizing my proposal writing links all in one place, on this page.
Proposal Types
As I said above, my research into this has revealed that there are well over 20 different types of proposals that people are involved in writing on a regular basis. Here’s a page that lists those and provides additional specialized resources for some of them:
Proposal Types
Proposal Writing Tips
Over my professional career I have been involved in both writing proposals and evaluation proposals submitted by others. Here’s an article I wrote based on my experiences on both sides of the proposal fence.
Proposal Writing Tips
Proposal Template Sample
Over the years, I have written thousands of business documents, including hundreds of proposals for many different situations.
During that time, I learned the hard way that the most effective way to develop a proposal is to work from a model that has already been created for another proposal submission situation. It doesn’t need to be for the exact same situation; as long as it is along similar lines.
The important thing is to be able to use the approach and structure of the sample template that you work with as your guide for the new proposal that you need to draft. Using an already-proven template that matches your situation as closely as possible can have numerous benefits as follow:
- You will save significant time by not having to start from scratch.
- The template will act as a “checklist” to ensure you cover everything.
- A template will tend to stimulate your thinking and give you new ideas.
- You will know you are using an approach already used successfully by others.
In the end, using a previously developed proposal should give you a result that is even better than the model you are working from.
How To Write A Business Proposal
The term “business proposal” is one that has a number of different meanings and connotations, depending on who is using the term. In reality, these documents can differ significantly in length, anywhere from a few pages to a few hundred pages.
A simple business proposal could be a five page document proposing a fundraising event for a charitable organization. A major proposal could be a multi-volume document for the multi-million dollar development of a new airport terminal building.
Because of this wide range in type of application, intended audience, and scope, there is not one simple formula for writing a business proposal.
Nevertheless, the one thing that all business proposals have in common is that their primary purpose is to propose the solution to a known problem and to convince the intended proposal recipient that the writer (or proposal submitter) has the best and most cost-effective solution to that problem.
It so happens that many people arrive at my writing help websites looking for info on how to write business proposals of one form or another. To address this need, I have put together a number of resource pages that will give you a better idea as to what proposals and proposal writing are all about – especially business proposals.
Business Proposal Writing Resources
Among other things, those resource pages cover such subjects as: proposal types, proposal writing tips, and samples of different business proposals.
Some people are not interested in writing their own proposals from scratch and would rather work from an already proven template.
Business Proposal Tools and Templates
Based on my research into what’s available online in terms of proposal writing tools and templates, there is one package that I believe stands head and shoulders above anything else when it comes to quality and quantity; that’s the proposal packs offered by Proposal Kit.com.