How to Write a Contract Proposal

Any business that supplies goods and services to another company will be invited to submit a proposal for some type of contract at one time or another. Preparing a solid contract proposal takes a combination of skill, accuracy, the ability to follow instructions and meet deadlines. Several basic factors go into the design of a high quality contract proposal, regardless of the industry or profession involved.

Things You'll Need

• Word Processing Program
• Background Information on the client
• Request For Proposal document (optional)
• Style Guide
• Telephone
• Internet access

Instructions

1. Ask for specfic guidelines for the proposal. Often a prospective client will prepare what is known as a Request For Proposal or RFP. This document provides a step by step structure for the design of your contract proposal. When an RFP is provided, it is important to read the document carefully before beginning work on the proposal. Often, the RFP will contain specific instructions about how the proposal is to be structured, including where to place supporting documents within the body of the proposal, section headers, and other important data. A proposal that fails to follow the instructions within the RFP will probably be rejected at once.

2. Get at least a few basic details from the client when a formal RFP has not been provided. When drafting a contract proposal from scratch, any insight into the needs, desires, and thought processes of the client will help immensely. This can be handled with a simple phone call and asking what goods or services are most helpful to the customer. A few questions emailed to a central contact person regarding how they currently utilize the types of services you provide will also help provide some direction for the proposal. In short, any information regarding specific interests of the customer will help the overall quality of the proposal content.

3. Have answers to all the basic factors that come into play with a business relationship. Define on your end who will be responsible for taking care of the customer. Also address what has to be done in order to meet and exceed customer needs and expectations. Determine where these actions will take place, how they are achieved, and when they will be done. Last, be prepared to document why your procedures and policies are in the best interests of this customer.

4. Begin to compile the data and documents that will address the wants and needs of your prospective customer. If a formal RFP was submitted, this will mainly consist of following the requested format and inserting the correct information in the right places. If no formal RFP was provided, make use of what you can learn about the customer through research and interaction with the contact person. Make sure any specific needs and wants you uncover during the research and discussion phases are addressed clearly and concisely in the body of the proposal.

5. Keep the document as simple and focused as possible. Use a style guide to make sure you are on track with verbiage and sentence structure. Avoid unnecessary phrases that are obviously sales pitches and stick to the facts. Anyone reading the document should be able to quickly and easily identify all the benefits of doing business with your company without having to work through a lot of fluff.

Tips & Warnings

• Depending on the situation with the prospective customer, it may be appropriate to include testimonials from existing clients. However, make sure this is acceptable before automatically including them within the body of the document, or even as supporting documents.

• Always ask about submission formats if this is not clearly addressed in the initial request. Many companies prefer electronic submissions, but others still prefer hard copies delivered by a certain date and time. Also ask if multiple copies are needed.

• Never try to fit the specific proposal requests of your prospective client into some proposal template. Make sure the data is arranged according to customer specifications and always address the queries directly. One sure way to have the proposal rejected is to assume you know better how to arrange the contents of the proposal and intentionally disregard the instructions provided.