A proposal template for a professional services engagement

A proposal for a professional engagement works in four pages: what you understood, what you will do and deliver, who does the work, and what it costs with one clear next step. Write page one first, in the client's own words from the meeting, and do not fill it with your credentials. The client reads the first page to learn whether you listened, and a page of credentials answers no.

Page one: what we understood

Open with the client's situation in three or four sentences, using words they said. Quote them if they allow it. Then state the outcome they want, and the one constraint that matters most: a date, a budget limit, a person who must be persuaded.

Close the page with one line that begins "What we have not assumed", and name the one point you are still unsure of. It invites the client to correct you before you have spent a week on the wrong thing.

A good test: could a colleague of the client who missed the meeting recognise the company from this page alone? They should.

Page two: scope and deliverables

List what the client will hold at the end. Nouns, not activities: "a written sales process document", "two half-day workshops for twelve managers", "a revised fee schedule". Under each, say how the client will know it is finished.

Add two short lists beneath: assumptions (the client provides access to X by a date; one person approves) and what is not included. The out-of-scope list is where later arguments are prevented, and our note on presenting fees goes into that wording in detail.

Page three: who works on it, and how

Name the people who will do the work, with a line each on what they do on this engagement, not a biography. If a senior person sells and a junior person delivers, say so, because the client will find out in week two.

Then set out the approach in four or five steps, with the client's tasks marked. Engagements stall because the client's side does not know what is expected of it. If a step depends on a document the client must supply, the page should say which, and by when.

Page four: fee and the next step

State the fee once, with what each invoice covers and when it falls due. Give a validity date for the proposal in plain terms ("this proposal holds until Friday the 14th"), because a proposal with no end date is easy to put aside.

End with one next step: "Reply to say yes, and we will send the engagement letter and begin with the first document request." One step. Not three options. Three paths make it easy to take none.

What a page one looks like

Invented for illustration, and written the way the trainer in the next section might have put it:

You told us that too many walk-ins leave the showroom without giving a name, and that the sales team treats a quiet Tuesday as a rest day. You want the team to ask for a name and a number politely, by the festival season. The constraint is that showroom staff cannot be pulled out on Saturdays. What we have not assumed: whether the two showrooms in the other town follow the same routine.

Five sentences, all of them the client's own facts. Nothing on this page could be pasted into another firm's proposal, which is why the client keeps reading.

A skeleton you can copy

PAGE 1  We understood
  Situation (their words)  |  Outcome wanted  |  The constraint
  What we have not assumed

PAGE 2  What you will receive
  Deliverables (nouns)  |  How you will know each is done
  Assumptions  |  Not included

PAGE 3  Who and how
  People and roles  |  Steps, with your tasks marked

PAGE 4  Fee and next step
  Fee, invoices, due dates  |  Valid until  |  One next step

An invented case: a sales-skills trainer in Chennai

Take an invented trainer in Chennai asked by a dealer-network company to improve how its showroom staff handle walk-ins. Earlier proposals ran to eleven pages, opening with the trainer's career. The company's head of sales read two paragraphs and passed it to the finance manager, who asked why the fee was a single line.

The trainer rewrites it on the template. Page one opened with the head of sales' own sentence about walk-ins who leave without a name. Page two listed two workshops, a scoring sheet for showroom visits and a one-page script, each with a "finished when" line. The finance manager now sees what the money bought and approves on the strength of page four, but trims the second workshop to save cost, and the fee drops by a fifth. The proposal did not win everything. It did make the trade-off visible, so the trimming was a decision and not a dispute.

The old document had been about the trainer. The new one is about the showroom.

One more habit helps. Before sending, read page two aloud as if you were the client's finance manager, who was not at the meeting. Every noun that prompts "what is that?" needs a plainer word. Replace it, then send.

Engagements this shape cannot carry

It fits engagements priced as a project. For a standing retainer, add a page on how requests are raised and answered. For a statutory or regulated appointment, the appointing body's terms come first, and rules differ by body and change, so check with your own adviser. For a very small job, page two and four on one sheet will do.

Do not use four pages to hide thin thinking. If you cannot write page one after the meeting, you need a second meeting, not a longer proposal.

Draft page one tonight

Take your last prospect meeting. Write page one alone, in their words, in about two hundred, and send it with the question "have I got this right?" before you write the other three pages. If you would like a second reader, proposal development is the service, the professional services hub has more for firms like yours, and you can tell us what you need.