How To Write A Proposal That Closes

Most proposals lose because they are about the agency. Pages of process, team bios, a list of services, and a price at the end.

The prospect reads none of it. They scroll to the number, feel the number, and decide based on how they felt on the call.

A proposal's job is to make the yes easy for someone who has already half decided.

Write it in their words, not yours

Open with their problem, stated the way they stated it.

If they said "we get leads but they're tyre kickers", the first line of the proposal says that. Not "lead quality optimisation". The exact phrase.

This does one thing extremely well: it proves you listened. A prospect who reads their own sentence in your document stops evaluating whether you understood the brief and starts evaluating whether the plan will work.

Which means the proposal is written after the call, from notes on the call, and it cannot be a template with the name swapped. That is also why the first 30 seconds of a sales call matters more than the proposal does.

Put the outcome before the method

They are not buying content. They are buying the thing content produces.

So the structure goes: here is where you are, here is where this gets you, here is what we do to get there. The method is third, not first, and it is short.

Nobody has ever bought because the process had six phases instead of four. They buy because they believe the outcome is likely.

Make the outcome specific enough to be falsifiable

Vague promises read as hedging. A number reads as confidence.

At Ignis the guarantee is 1,000,000 views in six months or you don't pay until we do. That is a sentence a prospect can repeat to their business partner, and it carries the risk on our side of the table rather than theirs.

You do not need a guarantee that aggressive. You do need something that could be measured and failed, because a promise that cannot be failed is not a promise.

Price it as a decision, not a menu

Three options at most. One recommended.

A menu of twelve line items invites the prospect to start removing things, and the first thing they remove is always the part that makes the rest work.

Three tiers works because it reframes the question from "yes or no" to "which one". Most people take the middle. Put the recommendation on the middle one and say why.

And put the price in the document. A proposal that makes somebody email to ask the price has added a step to the close, and every added step loses people. The same logic as why your enquiry form is too long.

Answer the objections in the document

Write down the three things they are going to worry about and answer them before they ask.

How long until we see something. What happens if it doesn't work. Who actually does the work.

A proposal that pre-empts the objection closes faster, because the prospect does not have to go away, think of the concern, and come back. Most deals die in that gap rather than at a no.

Those are the same questions worth asking from the other side, which is the whole of questions to ask before you sign a marketing contract.

End with one action

Not "let us know your thoughts". Not "happy to discuss further".

One sentence that says exactly what happens next and what they have to do. Sign here. Reply with a yes. Book this time.

Ambiguity at the end of a proposal is where momentum goes to die.

Send it fast

Within 24 hours of the call, while they still remember how the call felt.

A proposal that arrives a week later is competing against a cooled-down version of the prospect, and against whoever sent theirs on the same day as the call.

Speed is a signal in itself. It says this is what working with us is like, and that signal does more work than any page of process diagrams.