Proposal of Services

[TheGaffer]

Evening all

Just after some advice if anyone can help out.

Although I am in my early 30's I have a very old school style of doing business - Pick the phone up, agree a deal (send price by email, basic quote), do the work and get paid.

However, I have recently connected with a large London based company on LinkedIn who are interested in my services, and if I win the work, would mean life changing things for me.

They have a asked for a full broken down pdf file proposal of what I am offering. Along with a full backround on myself, my company and all the resources I have access too. I am capable of doing this no problem, but are there any templates, layouts I should be employing ? Also, any advice for when sending proposals to extremely large organisations ?

Would I even be better off paying someone to write this for me ?

Of course I can google 'business proposal template' but I am lazy and it is just a wash with thousands of links to look through.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Cheers

 

[Kev2017]

If you paid someone to do it, you would still have to go through the details yourself to A). Tell them and B). Check it. Just sit down with a red bull multipack and I'm sure you can sort it.

 

[AsianBay Limited]

No advice I wouldn't know where to start just wanted to say Congratulations that is a huge achievement being invited to tender. Good Luck!

 

[ethical PR]

Evening all

Just after some advice if anyone can help out.

Although I am in my early 30's I have a very old school style of doing business - Pick the phone up, agree a deal (send price by email, basic quote), do the work and get paid.

However, I have recently connected with a large London based company on LinkedIn who are interested in my services, and if I win the work, would mean life changing things for me.

They have a asked for a full broken down pdf file proposal of what I am offering. Along with a full backround on myself, my company and all the resources I have access too. I am capable of doing this no problem, but are there any templates, layouts I should be employing ? Also, any advice for when sending proposals to extremely large organisations ?

Would I even be better off paying someone to write this for me ?

Of course I can google 'business proposal template' but I am lazy and it is just a wash with thousands of links to look through.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Cheers

Well they have already given you the template above.

I would suggest

1. Start with their brief - what do they want (demonstrate you understand the requirement)
2. Your proposal - how are you going to provide support, key benefits of working with you, your experience
3. Team delivering services and what specialisms/resources you have access to
4. Experience - provide relevant examples of how you have done this before
5. How you would deliver the services (systems and processes)
6. Costs (include added value)
7. References

If you haven't done something like this before, it's probably worth having someone else who is suitably experienced to review/edit once you have a draft.

If it's such a big deal for your business it would be worth paying someone to do this.

 

[Root 66 Woodshop]

Good Luck!!

We were asked to provide such details for a national company, took about 3 months of fine tuning details etc as they wanted to know every single procedure on everything we did from payment all the way through to the installation and how it would affect, hinder or benefit the company...

Still didn't get anything from them, other than the knowledge that they are still using a national based "sub-contracting" company that end up sending any Tom, Mick or Harry - who from experience from the local "franchises" that we deal with within the national company/service provider end up using us to rectify the original work that Tom, Mick or Harry botched!

So... Bonus all around really

 

[Mitch3473]

Have you done a back ground check on them.....

 

[Dave Tidwell]

I was the head of global sales operations for a Silicon Valley Giant for many years. I always told my sales folks that the receipt of an RFP (Request for a Proposal) that they hadn't informed to an extent that the requirements were written by them is a sure way of losing the deal.

That was point one!

Point Two, was;

You lose 100% of the deals you don't attempt to close. So, my recommendation is at this stage give them a preliminary brief, a one pager and offer that initially. It will focus your mind on your USP's if you haven't done it before. If they come back to you with an ongoing request for a full blown proposal ask to go and meet with them to better understand their requirements. If they accept, great, go and get the details you need to win. If they reject your approach to visit to learn their requirements first hand then they probably aren't worth the effort of doing the response for. If you have NO existing business relationship and they approached you 'out of the blue' then there's a strong probability your are what we call 'cannon fodder' in the trade. You are there so that they have enough responses to meet their sourcing and procurement objectives; or to leverage a better price offer from their incumbent supplier in a renegotiation.

 

[ethical PR]

Why would you offer only a one page proposal when the client has clearly specified what they are looking for?

I also commission work and if a supplier ignored my requirements and didn't provide what I had asked for, I wouldn't consider their bid. I know lots of other commissioners that work in the same way.

Nor do I agree with your advice that if they don't allow you to visit it's not worth pitching.

Some companies have quite strict bidding processes. They may agree to a telephone meeting or email inquiries, but I don't know of any that agree to face to face meeting. Some ask for presentations as part of the bidding process but rarely would they do a physically meeting before this.

I do agree though it's worth finding out more about their requirements and on what basis they are inviting you to pitch.