A business proposal plays a great role in securing new clients.
Create a quality proposal and the business deal will be all yours. Create a bad one and you might lose it, even if you’re offering quality services.
Having said that, it is important to ensure that your business proposal looks promising so that the client can put his trust on him. After all, business is all about trust. Isn’t it?
Although, the question is:
How to create a great business proposal?
Before we proceed to answer this question, there are a couple of things you need to know first. Let’s begin with the basics:
What is a business proposal?
In a layman language:
A business proposal is a document sent to a prospective client, in which you explain why you’re eligible for the project, mentioning details like your basic information, the services you offer, and the projects you’ve completed in past.
There are two types of business proposals:
- Solicited
- Unsolicited
A solicited business proposal is the one which is requested by the prospective client after he/she sends you a RFP (Request for Proposal).
On the other hand, an unsolicited business proposal is sent by businesses to prospective clients in the hope of convincing him to do business with you.
This makes solicited business proposals easy to sell because the client is already interested in doing business with you. All he want is to know more about your organisation and see how well you can execute his idea.
Unsolicited business proposals on the other hand are more like a sales pitch in which you have to convince your client to outsource his/her project to you along with detailing
3 PS of business proposals and why should you keep them in mind?
A business proposal is made of 3 Ps: Problem statement, proposed solution, and pricing.
The first P deals with addressing the problem that the client wants to solve with his/her app.
For example: WhatsApp is meant to solve the distance problem among people, LinkedIn resolves the issue of finding a job, and Truecaller lets you identify and block annoying callers.
In second P, solution to the problem is proposed. For example, WhatsApp resolves the distance problem by offering chat, voice calling, and video calling facility. You also have to propose a solution for your app.
Third P details the budget that will incur for developing the project.
Without these 3 Ps your business proposal is incomplete. So, make sure they are properly addressed.
Steps for Creating a Business Proposal
Step 1. Understanding Client Requirements
The first and foremost thing you need to know before writing a business proposal is to know what does the client want?
For this, you need to go through client requirements in detail.
Step 2. RFP Analysis
Nothing can give you the better idea about the client requirements than Request for Proposal (RFP), in which clients clearly state what they want and what they don’t, so that you don’t have any problem in preparing business proposal.
Step 3. Feasibility Study
There’s is no use of pursuing an idea if it’s not feasible. It’s important you do feasibility study before preparing the business proposal.
Step 4. Framing down the scope of project
Once you’ve figured out an idea’s feasibility, the next step is to conceive the scope of the project. Here, you need to mention who will benefit from your project and see if the idea is going to succeed or not.
Step 5. Evaluating the Solution
Offering solution to some problem is not difficult. However, for ensuring that the solution is the most effective one, extra efforts are needed. Hence, it’s recommended that you continuously evaluate your solution and improve it till you’re sure that no further amendments needs to be done.
Step 6. Competitor Study
You can also learn from your competitors a lot. All you need to do is study their work and see how you can benefit from it.
Step 7. Platform, Technology stack analysis
The next step in proposal making is to decide the platform on which the app will work best.
Step 8. Describing user types and user stories
Now, you’ll need to select the type of audience for your project (young kids, teens, working people, or senior citizens) and prepare user stories accordingly.
Step 9. Describing Key assumptions and software features
The next step is to describe the assumptions and features related to the project you're developing.
Step 10. Preparing data flow diagrams
On the basis of user types, platform, user types, and key assumptions – data flow diagram will be prepared.
Step 11. Wireframing and Prototyping
Once the data flow diagrams are created, designers create wireframes and prototype of the products on the basis of it.
Step 12. Calculating timeline and financials
The next step is to prepare a timeline for all the tasks and then decide the project budget accordingly.
Step 13. Summarising the Company Standards
Almost done! Now you just need to check if the solution, wireframe, time schedule, and budget are in accordance with company standards.
Step 14. Proposal Writing
Finally, begin writing the proposal. Once done, review it again and again and edit wherever necessary. You can also ask someone to review it.
How to Ensure that Your Business Proposal is Great?
Below are the points that differentiates a high-quality proposal from an ordinary one:
- Client requirements are clearly answered.
- 3 Ps are clearly mentioned.
- The solution you’ve offered is simple and efficient.
- The app proposal content is short, crisp, and easy to read.
- Your business proposal is not too self-centric, which can be a major turn off later on.
Hopefully, these tips from the experts in Oman’s leading app development company will help you a lot. Still, if you have any queries, feel free to contact.
