Entrepreneur starts by having an investor or a place to spread his business. One of item to help him gain attention and network is by preparing proposal design. How to make it? Before you start to make it, you need to know kinds of proposal. Freelance proposals and freelance contracts. The components in each of them will discuss below. Here are 10 important things for your proposal design.
1. Win customers by proposals
Finding a work, if you think proposal is only for that, you are in a wrong idea. It is to build block of your relationship with clients. They will know your professionalism by reading your business proposals. They could determine your work and plan, fees, and timeframe only by seeing proposals. Well, it is time to feature what you could give to clients.
Remember that proposals are sales pitch. Why clients should chose you to do their job must be explained in it. Sell what you can do for them and it is not only for yourself. Clients need the detail of your steps to help them gain their goals. Be sure to give the detail about their need and it is not only about your business in general.
To attract their attention and help you build good impression, you can include portfolio as a sample of what you have done. Introduce yourself only for prospective clients and it means you are not wasting time to present in nonsense. It is not like you make diary that you could easily put any color based on your mood. You should make the same style and format for the whole page. You cannot use acronym and jargon. Make sure you use the right spelling and grammar. Readers avoid the consequences of this disconnect. They grow tired of the inconsistencies and instead of reading on proposals.
2. Talking about price
If you are strict on price, clients would run away before you finish to describe your business. It is better to have options for it and they will be comfortable to choose. You could build bigger packages with higher prices. Give them detail explanation of what benefits and weakness of each point. Smaller price will be smaller packages and sure, low risk. Scale the work with milestone. You may take a note for finished products. Clients will be easier to break down their payments. The good feedback from them will be yours after completion the work.
Try to calculate well and take a step by step of the work to do. Quality in lines to price. Clients will know that. However, not all clients want the best. Some of them might only need the average work type. It is your turn to organize it and help them to decide.
Also Read : 10 Essential Tips of a Winning Proposal
3. Using templates
Save your time on proposal design template by finding ready – to – use- template. Experiment by choosing different templates is good. In addition, when you choose a ready to use item, you will be able to use it over time. It builds consistency in front of clients. What is the effect? You will gain better impression. Brand awareness is easy to reach.
make sure you are not cut and paste content for multiple only. It has to serve each client individually. Therefore, you should prepare some resources. Check the availability of the suit proposal. Otherwise, you could hire professional to help you or select template from UI Creative.
In the first page, if you have to fill vision and mission of the company, it will be great. If it is same for year by year, copy the data. Use the old data. Prepare everything with data. It helps you to look professional. Look at the reports that your managers and executives use regularly. What other performance data are you already tracking, and can it be used in the report?
4. Prepare Contracts
Before you start to work, make sure you have signed contract. Contracts are not for big corporations. Freelance contracts also important and should be in your tool kit. This is your next step to client. Make the outline and bring it inside proposals. It will help you to clearly define the work to be finished. It is including timeline and payment schedules.
If you are a freelance contract, set clear expectations for you and client. Your business professional should be established too. clients will feel save too after they get the contract like both of you are engaged.Always have a contract although you know the client, you got the work without proposals, and the project is small or short timeframe. Complex or not work a job is, a contract is essential. You may use freelance contract template instantly from your browser.
Also Read : Best 25 Business Proposal Templates
5. Insert the detail in the contract, including a retainer agreement
Remember that contract should input a clear description of the work to be done. How you will be paid and when your work will be completed. It includes milestone and incremental payments in it. The intellectual property is explained detail in contract. Who will have it and how it would be later?
You may think it is time wasting, but clients would come to you and give you more work than you intended to do. Therefore, you should go with enough detail including revisions on finished product. Contract will protect you. Also, consider retainer agreements. Since you may have repeat clients, you need it. It could be structured in different ways. The detail work will be done for some months or a year. Freelancers would get payment in exchange for doing work or ‘on call’. It could be per month or per hour in a month.
Using retainers will be more effective since it enables both sides to have long term relationship. You have a set monthly salary and clients know your working amount. It could be hours and months depends on clients and you agreement.
6. Begin with Layout
Skip the contracts and so on, now let us move to proposal design making process. For creative work and more commercial success, check the layout to use. Remember, the main point should be clarity. Well, it is not only about showing off your great cutting edge art direction. It is also not about a time to use explore avant garde design, but it is about a clear and consistent layout. The impact is clients would easy to read your proposals.
You could find some examples in our site and grab them in affordable price. You also could keep it forever. It is editable and well organized.
Also Read : You Want to Get Stunning Proposal Design Just Follow These Proposal Design Tips!
7. Concern on Iconography and Typography
The readable contents help to deliver the point and message of your proposals. Not all clients know the type of fonts and understand design. However, it keeps important to you to make it attractive and clear. Clarify your content by having the great iconography and typography.
In psychology, square and rectangular symbolize trust and stability. They are indispensable when you need to focus the visitor’s attention on the company’s reliability. Circle, round, and oval symbolize security and infinity. put the most important information or calls to action in it. Round shapes are perfect for designing the background, menu, to design illustrations and photographs. It is because visitors would be more focus in this shape.
Progress and direction come from triangle. Our eyes automatically move up the triangle or in the direction of an acute angle. You can use them in creating improvised pointers that draw attention to the key information. Call to action as the headline could be followed by triangle. Polygons like hexagons, pentagons, and others will help your website looks more attractive, modern, and as a symbol of cooperative. It is better than use normal rectangular or square. Try inserting text inside these shapes or cutting out your images as geometric shapes, or use them as the pieces of a large composition, or use them to organize the information. You can even break these shapes into smaller shape-pieces to create a kind of progression.
8. Choosing the tone
Yo do not need to have the same proposal design as your brand or app. however, your document should match to your client’s business. It is would not make sense when you try to have punk rock tone. It is better to have natural look, nice, and soft. It would be different if you prefer to have modern and contemporary style. Information is important, but do not skip it with only image. You need to insert eye catching and attractive color of graphic. Mark some important words there and let readers quickly read it. It means the more efficient you made it, the higher prospect you will get in the future for long investment.
9. Make Professional Portfolio
Include a sample of your work. Try your communication skill in this part. As a good brand or potential job seeker, you should show how you could communicate well. Make a good narrative for portfolio you made. Explain about the job you have done, for example the work art you have made, the story behind, the difficult part on making it, and more. Therefore, you already made readers (recruiters or investors) are there when you made it. The sensation to grab them into your world would remind them somehow. ry to make it simple, readable, and scannable. Use clean and clear layout. Make sure you use bigger font size for headline. It is to help readers find the points they want to catch from your portfolio. Even the use of font should be readable and save like Arial, Times New Roman, and Helvatica. The color of the font should contrast to layout. Make it bright in single space. The normal font color is 12 and for the title or headline is 14 or 16. Even readers do not read the detail of your portfolio, they get the points.It is not difficult to navigate and the most important thing is focus on your personal information, especially your contact information.
Also Read : 10 Important Things for Your Proposal Design
After you ask someone’s advice and check again your work, it has come to you to proofreading the portfolio. Spelling mistake should be avoid. You could use computer system to check the spelling, so they would be marked and you could easily find them and edit.
10. Prepare Details
You may go to the website that provides ready to use template. For example is UI Creative. It has lots of template to pick. All of them are in affordable cost. Report few of few elements there because if you directly put too many reports on it, you will get stress.Some companies, investors, and clients need a fact of your work and skill. It is good to add the value in yours by displaying the job you have ever finished. They could see how you work on it and make a fast decision. You must be have a feeling to finish it as soon as possible. That is good if you want to finish it fast, but check the content of your proposal design template again.
Check everything inside the portfolio and proposal. Is it already the best effort you could do? Remember if it influences your reputation. It is better to work slow, but perfect with no mistake than work faster, but you should edit it in the end. It would be more tiring. You should work twice and spend more energy, money, and effort. Again select the best image quality, check the font, ask someone’s advice, let your friends read it first before you end this project of proposal. They could evaluate your work.
Also Read : 10 Tips How To Write Winning Sales Proposal
