Key points
- A proposal is a sales document, yet the best ones explain plainly what lies ahead. Most buyers lack technical training, and cannot approve what they cannot follow.
- Most work suits a short structure. Restate what needs solving and how success is judged, in the buyer's phrasing, to show you listened. Recommend an approach, with reasons and the simpler options weighed. Then list deliverables and exclusions.
- Give the measure, how you will track it and what counts as success, and what you need from the buyer, with dates. Add stages with estimated durations, a price per part plus expected running costs, risks with your response, and ownership, handover and exit.
- Define each technical term in the sentence that first uses it. Use short sentences and common words. Describe the system through the buyer's work, like drafting supplier replies for staff to check. Avoid hype, because it breeds suspicion.
- For each part of the work, name the kind of AI tool or model, why you chose it, and your fallback if it becomes unavailable or too costly. Say what a person will check. Proposals that answer these first stand out.
- Informed buyers often ask where their information goes, who sees it, whether it trains anyone's AI models, what the system does unaided, its running cost, what they can change themselves, and what happens if they want to leave. Answer these up front.
- Keep the proposal brief: a handful of clear pages persuades better than a long document. Technical detail belongs in an appendix.
- Clear structure and plain words help a buyer understand a proposal. Write one they can follow, because a buyer cannot approve what they cannot understand.
Transcript
A proposal is a sales document, yet the best ones explain plainly what lies ahead. Most buyers lack technical training, and cannot approve what they cannot follow. Most work suits a short structure. Restate what needs solving and how success is judged, in the buyer's phrasing, to show you listened.
Recommend an approach, with reasons and the simpler options weighed. Then list deliverables and exclusions. Give the measure, how you will track it and what counts as success, and what you need from the buyer, with dates. Add stages with estimated durations, a price per part plus expected running costs, risks with your response, and ownership, handover and exit.
Define each technical term in the sentence that first uses it. Use short sentences and common words. Describe the system through the buyer's work, like drafting supplier replies for staff to check. Avoid hype, because it breeds suspicion. For each part of the work, name the kind of AI tool or model, why you chose it, and your fallback if it becomes unavailable or too costly.
Say what a person will check. Proposals that answer these first stand out. Informed buyers often ask where their information goes, who sees it, whether it trains anyone's AI models, what the system does unaided, its running cost, what they can change themselves, and what happens if they want to leave.
Answer these up front. Keep the proposal brief: a handful of clear pages persuades better than a long document. Technical detail belongs in an appendix. Clear structure and plain words help a buyer understand a proposal. Write one they can follow, because a buyer cannot approve what they cannot understand.