Create a Winning Project Proposal

More than anything, writing a great proposal means making the client confident in your understanding of their business and how you’ll improve it. Pollen’s proposal process has won numerous projects with Fortune 500 companies. It has also supplied freelancers with the foundation to charge higher prices, increasing their overall revenue.

The template listed under assets contains all of the pieces that make a strong project proposal. Below that, you’ll find a completed version of the template that closed an $80,000 project. For privacy reasons, the company and project details have been changed.

Not all proposals need to be as rigorous as this, and you might add, edit, or remove some sections to tailor them to the scope of the project and what the client needs. And, once you develop one quality project proposal, you can reuse that proposal as a template for all future projects.

The foundation of any good proposal is deep client understanding. This begins with identifying your client’s obstacles and problems. You can gather this from publicly available company information, any discovery calls, email exchanges, or other touchpoints in the process. Acknowledging these problems makes it clear that you’re paying attention and allows you to identify where they need support and how you’re uniquely positioned to help them.

To make a proposal truly great, you want the client to feel like you understand their business as well as they do. At the end of the day, they are trying to drive business results and are hiring you to do that. You can demonstrate this understanding by including a summary of the business context in your proposal. Check out the example below for inspiration.

The Business Problem

After making acquisitions in 3D and immersive spaces, Stark Industries is integrating LexCorp into the main brand. To generate awareness and organic traffic to these products, Stark Industries should establish its web presence as an industry leader.

In order to do this, Stark Industries should pursue an SEO strategy that:

• Consolidates multiple domains and content portfolios into one
• Targets high value, relevant keywords
• Produces high-quality content optimized for SEO that will rank
• Ensures web technical presence is SEO-friendly

To ensure the June product launch's success, Stark Industries needs a comprehensive SEO content strategy and a clear, actionable roadmap to move from its current position to a leadership position in the space.