How to write a proposal when the buyer will show it to three other people

Write the proposal for the person who was not in the meeting, because that reader decides whether it moves. The contact who liked your pitch will forward it to a partner, an accountant or a committee, and each of them reads it cold, usually on a phone, with one question in mind. Page one has to answer those questions without you there, and your contact needs a forwarding note ready to go with it.

Who is the second reader?

Ask in the meeting: "Who else will want to see this before a decision?" You will hear one to three roles. You need the roles, not the names.

• The person who signs the payment wants the total and what it covers.
• The person who will live with the result looks for what changes for them on Monday.
• The senior person who never asked for this wants to know why now, and what happens if nothing is done.
• The technical checker reads specifications.

Ask your contact which of these is hardest to persuade. Write page one for that person first.

What belongs on page one?

Assume page one may be the only page read. Fill it in this order:

1. Your situation, in their words (two sentences)
2. What we propose (one sentence a stranger could repeat)
3. What you will have, checkable later (three to five lines)
4. Price, what it includes, and the main exclusion
5. Next step: what, by when, who on your side

The forwarding note (see below) sits just above this block in your covering email, so your contact sends both together. Behind page one, two to four more pages are plenty for a small job.

Everything else sits behind page one: method, team, past work, terms, technical detail marked clearly for the checker. Many pitch documents open with "About us" because the writer likes it. The second reader does not care yet.

How do you give your contact something to forward?

A forwarded email that says only "see attached" is where a proposal stalls. Write the note for them. Put it at the end of your own covering message, ready to paste:

"Forwarding the proposal for the treated-water reuse system. Page one has the cost and what we get. The one thing to decide is the trial on Unit 2 before we commit to all three."

Three lines, naming the one decision. It tells the second reader what to look at and what is being asked of them. Your contact is busy and will use it, because it saves them composing their own.

How do you test it without being in the room?

Hand page one to someone who has never heard of the deal, such as a relative or a friend in another trade. Give them thirty seconds, then ask what is being offered, what it costs and what happens next. If any answer is wrong, the page failed, however good the rest looks.

Then cover your logo and ask whether a competitor could have sent the same page. If so, you wrote about yourself.

For example: a water-reuse installer in Erode

Imagine an installer in Erode proposing a small treated-water reuse system to a textile processing unit. The contact is the plant manager, who liked the demonstration. The proposal will go to the owner's son, who handles money, to the elder director, who dislikes new vendors, and to a consulting engineer who reads every line.

The first draft opens with six lines about the installer's history and a list of equipment. The plant manager forwards it with "see attached". The elder director replies on the family group: "Why do we need this? The tanker supply is fine." Nobody answers him, and the item falls off the agenda.

The rewrite opens with the plant manager's own complaint: tanker water costs rise every summer and the supply is never certain. Page one proposes a trial on one dyeing line, shows the cost of the trial (₹4.2 lakh, an invented figure) beside the present tanker bill, and says what the unit must supply (a pit, a power point). The son finds the number. The director finds a small step he can approve without staking their name. The engineer finds the specifications on page three. The installer's price is unchanged. The result is partial: the director approves the trial, but the engineer asks for an effluent test first, which adds weeks nobody planned for, and the order is not yet signed. The paper now does the talking the installer cannot.

How do you handle the person who does not want it?

Do not argue with that person in writing. State the cost of carrying on as things are, using facts your contact gave you, and offer a small way to try. A trial on one line, one tower or one month gives the doubter something to say yes to.

If you have no small trial to offer, do not invent one. Say what the commitment is and where the buyer can stop. That honest exit point does more than an argument would.

When is a full proposal the wrong tool?

Skip it for small jobs where a quotation does the work; the post on a quotation format buyers can compare covers that case. Hold back also when you still do not understand who decides. A proposal sent to find out where you stand gets treated as a quotation and compared on price, so ask for a second conversation first.

Rewrite your latest page one

Take the last proposal you sent and write its page one again in the five blocks, then draft the forwarding note to go with it. Read both aloud to someone who was not at the meeting. Proposals are one stage of the sales process; if you want a second pair of eyes on one, proposal development is that work, and telling us what you need is the way in.