The Business Proposal Template

- Design & Layout

Use a business proposal template and save yourself lots of time in making your business
proposal look just as professional as it now reads.

As looking at your proposal's design and layout is one of the later stages in writing a
business proposal I'm assuming that you've gone through the process of analyzing your
client requirements and developing a Winning solution. If not, it'd be well worth the time
to review those modules - click here to find modules on all you should do before you
begin to write.

Also, I'm assuming you've completed the process of outlining your proposal and writing
the body content, right? Again, if not, I recommend you take the time to check out these
key modules.

If you've done all that then let's not delay - let's look at anything we can do to make your
proposal's design & layout as professional as possible.

Business Proposal Format - a Winning Structure

A successful business proposal template begins with a compelling framework - a
structure for your proposal that sells your ideas and solutions.

This section introduces the Winning proposal framework - a structure that will maximize
the success of every proposal you write in future.

This logical six-section structure provides a start point for all proposals - one which will
not only make all your future proposal writing much quicker, but will also engage your
readers right from page one to the end of your proposal.

Proposal Design - Step-by-Step

First impressions undoubtedly last - and you have a fantastic opportunity to make the first
impression your readers get of your proposals so impactful that, even as they begin to
read, you can have them in a more positive frame of mind than they will bring to reading
another proposal with a less attractive, less professional appearance.
So you've done an outstanding job of analyzing your client requirements, developing a
great solution, and writing up a really compelling proposal - now let's make it look really
sexy.

This module will show talk you through all of the key decisions you must make when
deciding upon your business proposal layout or even designing your own professional
business proposal templates.

Business Proposal Layout

- the Importance of Choosing the Correct Fonts
Regardless of the business proposal template you select the typeface or font you select
conveys a very strong message to your reader as to how you regard your content.

The font sends several very subtle messages - e.g. it quietly tells the reader where the
content is fun or serious, flippant or formal.

Most of the proposals the majority of us will write are likely to be serious, and are likely
to be presented in a somewhat formal manner.

Take no risks in your font selection. For business proposals, even in 'fun industries',
always err on the side of being safe and, if you are in doubt about a font, do not use it.

Here's how to choose the right fonts for your Winning proposal.

Creating Your Own Business Proposal Templates

It's well worth putting some time into designing the look & feel of your business
proposals. The resulting layout can be saved as a template that you can reuse again and
again into the future - making it better and better each time you use it.

Happily Word for Windows make the creation of your own business proposal template
child's play - here's a step-by-step guide to creating your own templates.

Coming Soon! Free Business Proposal Templates

Keep an eye on this section - I'll shortly make a free business proposal template or two
available for download.
These templates are being professionally designed and will save you hours of effort in
choosing fonts and styles.

Return from 'Business Proposal Template' to 'Home Page'

Proposal Design
- Step-By-Step
Proposal design is critical.

First impressions undoubtedly last - and you have a fantastic opportunity to make the first
impression your readers get of your proposals so impactful that, even as they begin to
read, you can put them in a more positive frame of mind than they will bring to reading
another proposal with a less attractive, less professional appearance.

Before You Start - Is the Layout Mandated?

If your business proposal is being written in response to a Request for Proposal (RFP)
then the layout may be mandated. If the client has requested a particular layout then
respect this request - unless you have prior permission to depart from their mandate. To
see how to handle this issue check out the module: "What about Client Specified
Layouts?".

Which Proposal Elements Need Design?

If the layout is not mandated then you have 'carte blanche' to create a proposal design that
makes a business proposal stand out from the crowd. The Winning proposal structure tells
you what design elements you are going to have to consider when you begin the work of
creating an attractive presentational layout for your proposal. In making a business
proposal maximally attractive you'll need to design:

• A title page for your proposal

• Table of contents
• A title page for each section and for each appendix in your proposal
• Fonts for all of these title pages
• Fonts & styles for the different headings within your proposal
• Fonts for the body text of each section
 • A style for the headers & footers

Let's take each of these elements and examine the best way to handle them - starting with
the first part of your proposal the reader sees: the Title Page.

The Title Page

Your title page should communicate a few basic facts:

• The Client Name (Logo optional)

• The Proposal Title
• Name of your company or your name
• Date
• Corporate Address Information
• Contact name & details
 Figure 1: Title Page

Figure 1 above is the cover page from the template developed to illustrate this chapter.
You can see the effect that good proposal design can have on the visual impact of your
proposals. Note the use of the graphic to make the design a little more impactful.

When you set out to design a good title page you obviously have to look at the layout of
the various elements you will display on the page (title, sub-title, address information etc)
but you will also at this early stage have to consider what typeface to use. Your decision
on typefaces is an important step in your proposal design, and it will have an impact on
all aspects of your proposal - not just the readability.
Your selected fonts will also dramatically impact the 'look & feel' of your business
proposals - the first and last impressions they make and their readability. There's a
separate module on selecting the right typefaces / fonts coming soon: ignore this critical
element at your peril!

Headings

In the modules on outlining and writing you learned how to outline the messages in the
various sections of your proposal so that the reader was drawn through your 'story' - from
idea to idea. They would start reading at the uppermost level of the title of your section,
and be drawn deeper into your discussion of the section, idea by idea, level by level.

The physical layout of your proposal will need to reflect the relationships between the
various ideas in your proposal's sections. To establish those relationships visually your
proposal design should use a series of headings that have a visually hierarchical
relationship that reflects the hierarchical relationships of your ideas - going from major
ideas down to minor detail.

Figure 2: Heading Designs

Figure 2 shows you how the various headings in your proposal layout should be related.
When the reader sees any one of the headings above it should be very easy to establish
the relationship between the information it presents and the information presented under
all other headings.
Once you have selected your fonts and designed your heading levels, formatting the rest
of your proposal becomes very easy indeed.

Table of Contents
All proposals should have a table of contents to help orient readers on where to find key
information.

Figure 3: Basic Table of Contents

Figure 3 above show a simple Table of Contents for a smaller proposal - and it includes
the very minimum information you include in your table.

The minimum level of detail for the Table of Contents in any proposal is top level section
title headings - and you should expand your Table of Contents to include as many levels
of sub-headings as you feel is necessary to make your proposal easy for the reader to
navigate.

Figure 4 shows an example of the same Table of Contents fleshed out one further level of
headings for Section 2.

You should build in as many levels of headings as you feel are necessary to make the
proposal easy to navigate.
 Figure 4: More Detailed Table of Contents

Title Page for Each Section

Including a title page for each section gives your proposal design a much more organized
and professional appearance.
 Figure 5: Section Title Page

Figure 5 is the Section Title Page from the template developed to illustrate this chapter.
Keep the section titles as clear and legible as this example. On a point of design: notice
how the simple blue line used in the section heading ties into the blue proposal title you
saw earlier, and in with the blue motif used in the content pages (you'll see that later).
 Proposal Content Pages

Earlier in this module you saw how to select different format styles for the various
elements of your proposal - it is in the content pages of your proposal that the wisdom (or
folly) of your selections will become apparent.

Figure 6: Content Page

In Figure 6 you can see how contrasting the Sans Serif fonts of the headings with the
Serif font used for the body text results in a very legible document.

Body Text for proposals should typically be 10-12pt in size - I favor 12pt for clarity and
legibility.

Note how the different heading styles make the relationships between the various sections
on the page very clear indeed. The additional use of the indent on the second level
headings enhances this effect.

Finally, note how a very simple motif (the small blue square) gives the document a
professional finish and a certain flair. These are elements that a designer will naturally
bring to the table when making a business proposal stand out - another argument for the
modest investment required to have a professional produce a unique template for you (if
you're interested in contacting the designer who create this template please Contact Me
(and I'll send you her details).

Paragraphs and Alignment

In figure 6 note the use of 'justified' alignment - i.e. the left and right margins are even
and not uneven or 'ragged'. This simple formatting choice makes for an overall
impression of a very neat and tidy presentation of your content.

Margins

Vast tracts of text can be intimidating to a reader and so you will find that most well-
designed templates will include a lot of 'white space' - afforded by the margins of the
document on the left/right and top/bottom. White space makes a document appear more
inviting and easier to read.

In general your proposal design should include margins that are no less than 0.5 inch /
1.25cm - and a little more can dramatically improve the attractiveness of your document.

If you are printing on a single side of the page only (recommended) then it is a good idea
to allow a little extra space in the left margin to allow for the space your binding will take
from your pages.

Headers & Footers

There are two other elements obvious on the content page in Figure 6: the headers and
footers - those two lines at the top and bottom of the page which effectively frame the
page.
The footer is the ideal place to put the page numbers that make navigation a lot easier,
and along with the header is great for making a proposal feel more 'published'- allowing
you to add information like the proposal title and the name of the proposing organization
(as in Figure 6).

Make Sure Your Content Page Styles Work

The content pages are where your readers will spend most of their time when reviewing
your proposals. So, when you have settled on a set of styles for the various elements of
these key pages be sure that the overall effect is one that encourages you to read the
proposal.

I would strongly recommend that you have some colleagues (or even existing clients)
review your proposal design - providing feedback on any aspect of it that they find less
than clear or friendly (again, having a designer produce a template for you makes much
of this process very easy indeed).

Creating Your Own Templates

When you go through the work of selecting appropriate fonts, headings and a good look
and feel it makes a lot of sense to save that proposal design work in the form of a
template that you can use and reuse in the future. There are a few ways that you can go
about creating your own proposal templates - all of which are discussed in the module
entitled 'Creating Your Own Business Proposal Templates'.

Good Proposal Design is Essential

There is an old saying: "clothes maketh the man". How your business proposals look and
feel, how easy they are to read, and the extent to which they look like some effort was
invested in turning out a quality product all give you an additional edge over your
competitors.

Do not cheat yourself out of more proposal successes than you deserve by skimping on
the time, effort or money necessary to produce a proposal design that clothes all of your
Winning proposals in the finest proposal design and layout you possibly can.

Return from 'Proposal Design' to 'Design & Layout'

Business Proposal Layout
- Choosing the Right Fonts
As important as any element in your business proposal layout is the selection of the right
fonts for your business proposals.

Typefaces & Typography

Although the two words 'typeface' and 'font' do not mean precisely the same thing you
will frequently see the terms used interchangeably. For our purposes, when talking
business proposal layout, any time I use the word 'typeface' or 'font' I will be referring to
the choice of typeface.

As there are literally tens of thousands of typefaces already in existence you do not have
to become a typography expert to create readable proposals. However, you do need to
understand one or two key principles in order to be able to make the best decisions when
it comes to selecting the fonts you will use in your proposal.

Typefaces & First Impressions

The typeface you select conveys a very strong message to your reader as to how you
regard your content and really forms the foundation of a successful business proposal
layout. When it comes to proposal evaluation your readers will 'read' the subliminal
messages that your fonts send about your attitude to the content just as surely as they'll
read what you actually write.

Look at the typefaces below - in this example all are used to present the same message,
but the typeface ensures that there is some considerable variation in the way that message
is conveyed:
 Figure 1: The Impact of Font Selection

The first two typefaces presented above (Times New Roman and Arial) are very widely
available, tend to be standard inclusions in pretty much every word processing program,
and are classic business typefaces.

The last three suggest varying degrees of informality, and even fun, and would be
appropriate in many social or personal situations - but almost never in proposals (unless,
that is, fun and informality is a key part of your message).

As the majority that most of us will write in proposals is likely to be serious, and is likely
to be presented in a somewhat formal manner - then the fonts you select for your business
proposal layout are critical and your choices will either support an appropriately serious
tone or defy it.

Take no risks in your font selection. Always err on the side of being conservative and, if
you are in doubt about a font, do not use it.

If you are without any other options the two classics above are always perfectly
acceptable and will convey the sort of impression you are striving for.

Serif & Sans Serif Typefaces

All typefaces can be split into two main classes - 'Serif' and 'San Serif'.
Serif typefaces tend to have small 'feet' at the base of letters like 'T' and 'l', and to have
'curly parts' at the top and bottom of other characters like the 'y' and 'j' (look at the Times
New Roman sample above).

Sans Serif typefaces have no such ornamentation - look at the 'Arial' sample above.

When to use Serif vs. Sans Serif

For printed documents like proposals readers find Serif fonts easier to read - the
additional features on each character make them a little easier to recognise and read. So,
Serif fonts are recommended for the body text of your written documents.

Sans Serif typefaces make excellently clear and legible headings and are strongly
recommended any time you want to make any element of your proposal stand out from
the body text - title pages, headings, captions, headers and footers, etc. Their differing
lines will stand out from your Serif body text.

If you spend much time on the internet you will likely observe that much of the body text
in web-based documents is presented in San Serif fonts. This practise has emerged
because the resolution on many screens is much lower than in print - so the additional
ornamentation on Serif fonts can often be 'fuzzy', and can therefore sometimes interfere
with legibility.

However you present your documents online do not be tempted to abandon Serif
typefaces in your business proposal layout - they will always enhance readability and
convey a slightly more formal air.
 Figure 2: Cover Page - Serif / San Serif Combination

In the cover page presented in Figure 1 the title and sub-title are in a 'Calibri' (Sans Serif)
and the address information is in 'Constantia' (Serif). The overall effect is one of formal
and serious clarity, quality and legibility.

Mixing Typefaces & Colour

Your requirements for most proposals will be perfectly well met by a combination of a
single Sans Serif font for titles etc and a Serif font for body text. Unless there is a
compelling reason to do so you should avoid introducing any more typefaces into your
proposal and, in any situation, 3-4 is the absolute maximum you should mix in any
document. Any more and your proposal could begin to look more like a ransom note!

Colour can be extremely useful in establishing relationships between headings and in

introducing a more attractive and 'designed' feel to your proposal. However, the advice
for use of colour in your business proposal layout is similar to that for mixing fonts: use
these combinations carefully - do not confuse your reader with too many colours in
headings.

In Figure 2 the use of blue for the main title and grey for the sub-title serves well in
drawing the reader's eye through the elements on the page in the order you would want
them to read them.

Introducing even one more colour into such a proposal could make the overall effect
garish and confusing. Use coloured headings sensibly.

The choice of fonts should be made early in the business proposal layout process - and
should be made with care. Get it right and you set your business proposals up for success.

Return from 'Business Proposal Layout - Fonts' to learn more about proposal 'Layout &
Design'

FREE Business
Proposal Course

Want to learn how to write Winning Business Proposals quickly and easily?
Click here to follow the FREE 12 step course.

reating Your Own Business Proposal

Templates
Business proposal templates are really pretty straightforward to construct.

Before we look at that in detail let me ask: have you come to this page without reading
the module on proposal design?
If so, then I'd strongly suggest you review that module of the FREE Business Proposal
Course - this page refers to some concepts and points raised in that module, and the ideas
discussed here will make more sense having covered that module.

Once you have settled upon suitable styles for each of the key design elements in your
business proposal (see the module on proposal design) you are in a position to create your
own proposal template should you wish to do so.

If you do decide to create your own proposal template then there are three options at your
disposal:

1. From a Blank Document

This is the most time consuming approach - you start with a totally new document
and begin, one-by-one, to create and save all of the style elements for your
business proposals.

2. From an Existing Document

If you have business proposals with styles that you have found effective then you
can create a proposal template from that document with a few simple clicks of
your mouse.

3. From an Existing Template

Most word-processing programs come with a business template selection for
different purposes - but most do not include a specific business proposal template.

If you have a business template that simply needs a little update and adjustment to
turn it into a proposal template then this is a very straightforward process

For example, you could take the copy of the template used to illustrate my
Business Proposal Course, which I will shortly provide free of charge for in the
free business proposals section of this site, and adapt that to your particular
requirement.