How To Write a Business Proposal and Other Marketing Documents

Lanette Inc. Zavala

Description

Building a small business or establishing yourself as a marketing executive can prove to be the toughest of challenges in your career. But it can also be one of the most rewarding decisions a hard-working achiever can make. As lucrative opportunities demanding your products and services become available in various industries, you can stretch the earning capacity within your sales and marketing department with effective business proposals.

Business proposal writing may often be a simple task. In other cases, it can be complex and time consuming. The demands and interests of decision-makers influence the level of effort you as a supplier will have to produce in a proposal.

How To Write A Business Proposal And Other Marketing Documents provides business insight and steps on:
How To Write A Business Proposal Four Different Ways
How To Write A Business Marketing Portfolio
How To Prepare An Oral Presentation

Using sample business proposals (in the formats of outline, summary, and basic quote), a sample business marketing portfolio, and sample business cover letters, author Lanette Zavala offers practical advice for small business owners and executives in Corporate America.

Sujets

• Entrepreneuriat
• Marketing
• Sales
• Business
• Economics
• Selling
• Employabilité, métiers et formations
• Vente

Informations

• Publié par: eBookIt.com
• Date de parution: 21 février 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781456610708
• Langue: English

Extrait

How To Write a Business Proposal and Other Marketing Documents
 
by
Lanette Zavala


Copyright 2012 Lanette Zavala,
All rights reserved.
 
 
Published in eBook format by eBookIt.com
http://www.eBookIt.com
 
 
ISBN-13: 978-1-4566-1070-8
 
 
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
 
Introduction
Writing a business proposal starts a major project that delivers revenue for your company and bears its overhead expenses. Carrying that proposal out to the last step successfully finishes the project. To say that preparing and writing a business proposal before implementing it requires hard work would certainly be cliché. Realistically, of course, “hard work” accurately describes business proposal writing and the tasks that surround it. When there is a request for a business proposal by a prospective client, what lies ahead is more than just the opportunity to generate new business.
My parents, who have been entrepreneurs since 1977, have pointed out that sometimes an entrepreneur or executive has to work during hours when everyone else might be asleep. (Of course, that possible mindset of an achiever does not negate maintaining adequate rest for clear thinking.) What their statement does affirm – based on their own successes, hardships, and even some failures within Corporate America – is this: Effective enterprise within sales management far exceeds routine tasks contained within normal business hours and mere procedural activity.
Well-planned hours are spent developing and innovatively re-developing the tools that are keys to maintaining an industrious workload within your company’s production department. These essential tools, to which I’m referring, precede a good business proposal. They are the same tools that establish your business: well-defined services or products within a resourceful business plan, a recurrent market that demands what you’re selling, and a solid marketing strategy.
How you spend your time before, during, and after the development of a business proposal can determine your sales activities. The sales activities of a profitable company are so ongoing that they constantly keep your production and administrative departments busy. So, as the necessary fuel for such activity, business proposal writing is not just another job task. Good business proposals, which reflect upfront the actual objective of your business, are core ingredients to the entire operation of your own company or to the client-based accounts that you manage.
 
Allowing A Well-Drafted Proposal To Speak In Advance For You
 
As does a business marketing portfolio, a proposal details every angle that you would discuss in an oral presentation if you were given the time and opportunity. Initially, the benefits that your company offers are more important to you than they are to a prospect who has no full knowledge of your credentials. Conveying the value of your knowledge and expertise can not only be a challenge when drafting an effective proposal but also when delivering it into the right hands. Therefore, utilize electronic communication to send a well-drafted presentation of your proposal in any slide show format while you also make it available in an attractive tangible form.
There is reason to believe that, in today’s society, the younger generation of managers and decision-makers often demonstrate less interest in interfacing with others in business than did the managers in older generations. Because we live in an age where emails, text messaging, and tweeting dominate communication, the last millennial business world has drastically adjusted. With this type of adjustment that has shaven the routine methods of person-to-person and even phone correspondence, companies everywhere have found very time-efficient ways to assign more tasks to a single person who has little personal interaction on the job.
As a result of this quantum leap that we have taken from “old-school” business, there is rarely opportunity and sufficient time to present a thorough sales presentation. At this point in our electronically savvy age, a well-drafted proposal fits the purpose of most salespeople. But does it fit the schedule of most busy prospective clients?
Once brochures and portfolios have been reviewed and a door has been opened to present what your company can do as a supplier, a business proposal can potentially speak in advance for a salesperson as well as point out pertinent details that may be unspoken during a presentation on valuable time. (This does not suggest that an aggressive, outspoken salesperson can no longer be as effective as in the days when electronic communication didn’t distract or replace person-to-person correspondence. What may be more effective is initially utilizing written presentations – sometimes sent electronically – to ensure vocal follow-up.)
If your business proposal can capture the interest of your prospect, it can further open doors for follow-up discussions. As you may know, one common routine of a buyer or procurement manager is to review a business document from their prospective vendor and request more specifics as follow-up. It certainly can give you opportunity to communicate more with your target.
 
Highlights Of The Following Chapters
 
Before a business proposal is written, effective actions must be implemented. These actions strategically lead up to the opportunity to write it. Then, after the business proposal is written, every method of follow-up increases in importance because, if a deal is terminated, all time and money spent up to that point has been wasted.
Although this book begins with “Open The Door To A Proposal With A Business Marketing Portfolio”, the step-one action toward writing a business proposal can practically start at the point of revisiting your company’s or department’s marketing plan – sometimes. (In order to tailor an introductory sales presentation of your business, marketing research is effective when getting familiar with the practice of your prospective clients and pinpointing their specific needs.)
 
Before working on the business proposal, perform or ask yourself the following:
 
1. Research your target market – your prospect and their customers.
 
A. What is your prospect’s line of business?
 
B. Who are your prospect’s customers?
 
C. How can they use your product or services as a necessity for their success?
 
D. What are their specific needs? How can your company accommodate those needs in a way that would set you apart from other potential suppliers or providers?
 
2. Plan a procedure for corrective actions should unexpected problems occur during the proposed contract period. This plan neither has to be verbalized nor written to the client if it is not discussed. However, there are ways of writing a business proposal for a supplier’s failures during a contract period.
 
3. Finally, treat a business proposal as a vital prop for building small business and as enhancement for a sales department in a large corporation. With this objective, apply strategy and quality control to every bit of information that you provide in documents (like business letters, marketing portfolios, and even mere emails) leading up to a business proposal.
Chapter 1
Open The Door To A Proposal With A Business Marketing Portfolio
As a small business owner or as a department executive in Corporate America, you already know the importance of keeping a competitive edge in your industry. You also know that, at times, there will be larger companies that are likely to allot more generous budgets toward their marketing than you are able to budget for yours. Current economic challenges impose grim uncertainties on small companies that struggle to lock horns with their regional, national, and global competitors.
So, to suggest large spending on innovative marketing for the purpose of wooing an existing client or prospect is not my objective. Outline your company’s maximum features in an attractive and concise presentation. Today’s portfolios are primarily electronic presentations. But there are companies with decision-makers who prefer reviewing most documents in hardcopy.
The following steps include ways of building an attractive portfolio that would be portable during sales visits, by online downloads from your company’s website, in hard copy, and by email attachments.
 
1. Make available two ways through which you will present your company’s portfolio: In an attractive spiral-bound document and in an electronic file. (Today’s paperless trends allow companies to save money by providing presentations in electronic form only. If your prospect welcomes this type of presentation, seize your opportunity.)
Always keep in mind that many executives also like to keep documents at hand for convenience. While traveling on flights, having time to review documents over dining, experiencing computer system failures, or simply experiencing electronic overload mentally (this actually being the experience of many computer users), some decision-makers appreciate the additional option to review tangible documents.
 
2. To begin your portfolio, include (in any order that you choose after your table of contents page, which is optional):
 
A. A mission statement that specifies the goal and objective of your company. If you are unable to tighten a paragraph, which may currently state too broadly why your company is in business, consider placing the mission statement toward the back of your portfolio. (Otherwise, if you are in a position of authority to do so, adjust the mission statement to read more clearly.) Placing the statement in back, do so strategically, as mission statements are usually placed in front. Consider printing it a