One of the cornerstones of maintaining focus and clarity of vision when writing business proposals is to understand your target readership and what they are looking for in the proposals. Use a mind map or any other visualization tool to help you outline your discussions with prospective clients clearly and highlight the area where he/she puts the greatest emphasis on. The last thing the prospect wants to see from a proposal is one which briefly touches a multitude of topics and achieves no real impact.

Just the other day I requested a proposal for an in-house motivational training package for our sales personnel. I had a long talk with the program director and told him the specific areas we wanted the training to help us with. However, I was most disappointed when I got the proposal. It started off highlighting all the training packages the company offered and had conducted. It then went right into the training material for the course I had requested. It went into much complicated detail and then concluded with some benefits and an overview of the course. As you can imagine, it was most unhelpful. You have to develop and build your idea in a gradual manner to introduce the reader to the concepts, preferably one at a time. You need to do away with all the complicated and flowery vocabulary and keep things simple. Keep the customers needs and requirements at the forefront of your pitch. In this way the customer will be able to keep pace with the developments and be able to fully understand the value of your offering.

Three fundamental tenets of your business proposal should be:

1. Know your audience: Keep in mind your proposal’s readership and the key areas they have requested emphasis on.

2. Purpose: Why are you writing this proposal?. What is your primary objective?. By answering these questions you are able to develop a framework to work within, in order to best address the situation.

3. Clarity: Keep things simple by not using complicated language and diagrams. Have a clear theme running through your proposal to get your message across.