Business proposal template

Engage leaders and prospects from the start with a business proposal template that demonstrates your understanding of the business, the problems at hand, and how your proposed solution meets their goals.

What is a business proposal template?

Whether you’re presenting a business-level solution to clients or a project to stakeholders within your company, business proposals highlight the benefits of your solution with a clear understanding of the problem it solves. A template for a business proposal ensures that you can clearly define these critical elements and effectively get your message across.

Benefits of using a business proposal template

Time efficiency

The business proposal template streamlines the process of collecting and organizing content and building the presentation, saving valuable time by including the most important information. Confluence templates, such as the business proposal template, offer macros so that you can insert project calendars, timelines, and table formats for time-based action items. Teams no longer have to sift through emails and notes to check on the status of a requested review or questions in the proposal. Everything is in one document, making it fast and easy to see what is still outstanding and what they have resolved.

Consistency

Managing multiple proposals doesn’t have to be complicated. With the business proposal template, you can maintain a uniform format and structure with professionalism and clarity across various presentations. Confluence pages offer flexible documentation that includes text, images, code, and tables. Confluence spaces allow you to organize all necessary and supporting documents in one location for easy reference, and flexible permissions let you determine who can see or edit which documents are within the space.

Cost savings

Reducing the time necessary to create proposals saves businesses money. The business proposal template streamlines organization and formatting information so that you can ensure your proposal includes the relevant information and move on to presenting your proposal.

Flexibility

Confluence allows you to customize business proposal templates to suit various business needs or industry requirements. You can also customize multiple templates to align with different projects or clients.

Collaboration

Collaboration is key to top-notch proposals, and the multi-user version of the business proposal template allows team members to edit documents simultaneously. Members can add comments, @mentions, and emojis to collect and discuss feedback while working in a standardized framework.

Guidance

The business proposal template from Confluence includes prompts and guidelines to guide you as you create your proposal. For example, have you clearly articulated the problem or challenge at hand? The template helps you answer the audience’s questions before they ask them.

Featured product: Confluence

Confluence offers a connected workspace that brings team members together to collaborate and seamlessly move from proposal to project. Teams can create, edit, and share all the necessary elements of a project or plan in one location, keeping everyone on the same page.

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How to use a business proposal template

Write an introduction

The introduction of a business proposal is a concise summary of what you’re presenting. It provides information about your business or project as it fits into your strategic plan.

The introduction is an excellent place to include your mission and vision statements so your audience understands how you perceive your work. Avoid adding too many details to the introduction; you can do that in the sections below.

Define the problem statement

Clearly state the problem or challenge your proposal aims to address. For example, a retail solution may address the poor user experience ratings customers give self-checkout kiosks.

Present a proposed solution

The solution is where you can truly shine. Your audience is already familiar with the problem, so include detailed information about what your solution does, how it works, its benefits, and its overall feasibility. You can also include your business or team’s unique experience and qualifications to solve the problem.

Provide an implementation plan

An implementation plan demonstrates your preparedness. Detail the steps to implement the proposed solution, including the timeline and the project management approach. Call out significant milestones here to help your audience visualize the linear project plan.

Outline costs

Whether you’re presenting to leadership or to a client, you must include the estimated cost of the project. Break down the financial costs with budget estimates and resource requirements. If possible, consider giving the recipient options, such as the cost to provide Good, Better, and Best solutions, with details of what each cost breakdown provides.

Conclude with a call to action

Don’t forget to ask your audience to take the desired action. That may be project approval, collaboration, or a request to do business together. For more complex projects and implementations, you might include collaborating on a strategic planning framework or setting goals. Keep the conversation open for future opportunities.

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