Know-How Exchange : Advertising/PR

I wouldn't be the one to write the proposal either... in fact, if anyone reading this is good at this sort of thing, please contact me offline... but I agree that a professionally prepared proposal can make a good impression.

Could I share one of my favorite stories? When my daughter was in about the third grade, she invited me in to "career day" to introduce the elementary school students to possible careers. One of the folks I was representing at the time was a design and print firm - and so I took a stack of brochures, some professionally done, some obviously done in house.

I spread out the brochures in front of the children, and said, "My company produces sales literature. Sometimes one company will decide whether to business with another company based on their literature. What do you think of these companies? Would you do business with these companies?"

The reaction was amazing. The 3rd graders would pick up a brochure, and examine it. If it was a professionally prepared piece, the would smile and say, "This is a good company. I would do business with this company".

If it was one of the desktop published in-house pieces, they would frown, hold the brochure at arms length, and make a comment like, "this is a very small company, I would never do business with this company".

None of them read a word of any of the brochures. But they made very good judgements about the companies from the weight of the paper, the quality of the design, the use of white space, and other design elements which I am not qualifed to discuss (I'm a telemarketing guy, not a graphics guy).

In my experience, Presidents of companies act exactly the same way. They will not read your materials - but they will spend a minute looking at your package to assess the professionalism of your company, and the likelyhood that you have the resources to follow thru.

I totally agree with mbarber. Do not do this yourself - hire a pro.

If you can't afford the cash, find the best design firm you can, especially one who specializes in proposals, and offer to clean their offices in trade.

If you want to look at a sample proposal (for consulting services, but the principles are exactly the same), there's one in the appendix to Rasputin For Hire : An inside look at management consulting between jobs or as a second career.

There's actually an entire chapter in the book about writing an effective proposal, and it was written with input from about a dozen successful consultants. Again, it's about consulting proposals, but the principles apply to almost any kind of proposal.

While presentation is important, content is too. You need to have some compelling reasons why you're the right person for the job, and they need to be presented in a way that will really make an impression on the decision-maker. Make sure it's mostly about the customer's needs and situation, and how you're the right person to address them, not mostly about how great you are or how much you want the business.

If you want a copy of Rasputin For Hire, you can get it online at Amazon.com or bn.com, through most bookstores in the US, or at the website www.rasputinforhire.com .

Good luck.