4 proposal templates to close the deal faster.

Title page. Our template starts with a title page. The title page will include your contact information and the name of the business or individual you are pitching to. You’ll also want to come up with a good, simple, yet descriptive title for the specific service or project you’re offering.

Executive summary. The next page from our template will prompt you to title and write an executive summary. The title should be snappy and give the client an idea of your brand. In your executive summary, you’ll start by introducing and showing off your company. Try to make a short but attention-grabbing paragraph about it. When you’re talking about your company’s accomplishments and giving them a feel for who you are, try not to just give a generic description. Tailor your executive summary to pique the interest of this client in particular while accurately reflecting your business.

After you’ve introduced your company, the executive summary should focus more on the product you’re offering. Why should they want to partner with you? How can you help them? You don’t have to get into the details of the offer yet, but this is where you show them the benefits of accepting a proposal with you. Maybe even highlight the relevance of your service at this particular point in time. For example, “Social media marketing is growing, and with our experience, we can help you establish a social media presence that grows your brand.”

Project details. Next on the template, you’ll find a page dedicated to the proposal itself. First, identify the problem you can solve for your client. You can go more in-depth here. You want the client to know that you really understand what they’re facing — you get them. These problems might be specific to the company, and they’ll often be common problems as a result of current changes in the business.

Then, spend some time detailing your insightful solutions. This is where preparation will pay off. If your team has unique ideas to offer, they will shine in this section.

Qualifications. Our template puts this section right next to the project details section. Here, you have an opportunity to concisely recount your excellent track record of solving the same kinds of problems.

Steps and deliverables. Clearly and accurately outline the steps, timeline, and budget of your services or project. You might title the steps to keep things simple. This is where you get as specific as you accurately can. Try to give the client the best picture of exactly what working with you will look like for them.

Call to action and team introduction. Thank your client for their time and give them a strong call to action. Describe how you want them to reach out to you. Also, include names and maybe even photographs of the team they’ll be working with.

If you want to expand your business proposal beyond what we’ve included in the template, you can simply go into greater detail for any of these sections. If your proposal ends up being very long, you’ll want to write a table of contents. A few other optional sections for a business proposal are:

• Terms and conditions
• Field for signature
• Appendix
• Competitive analysis
• Graphs or charts

The detail in your proposal will depend on the scope of your work and on whether your client requested a proposal. You can also check out these tips on how to write an effective business proposal.

Title page. Our template starts with a title page. The title page will include your contact information and the name of the stakeholder(s) you are pitching to. You’ll also want to come up with a good, simple, yet descriptive title for the project you’re proposing.

Executive summary. The executive summary should be relatively short, although it covers a lot. Start by quickly going over the problem that your project is aimed to solve. Make sure to focus on who your project will benefit and how your solutions are tailored to them. You don’t have to go in-depth about the history of the problem yet, but make sure they know you really get it.

Then, summarize your roadmap. How long will this project take? When will the halfway point be? Give the reader an idea of what the budget will be and make sure they understand which resources you need. Remember, though, this is a summary, and you don’t need to flesh out the details yet.

Finally, summarize what a successful project looks like. If you can, make sure this is measurable. This is the point where you want them to get excited about what your project can accomplish for them. Realistically, promise a return on investment for your stakeholders.

Based on the pain point you’re solving, come up with a short and compelling title for the executive summary page.

Background. The next page in our template is about the background. This deep dive into the problem behind the project shouldn’t be too lengthy. Make sure your stakeholders understand how knowledgeable you are on the subject. You’ll have to do your research to ensure there aren’t other more easily accessible solutions to the problem. Talk about the research you’ve done and the gaps that this project is going to fill. It’s possible that others have attempted to tackle this problem before. Maybe their efforts didn’t pan out, or maybe the scope or nature of the problem has changed. If you can explain why there isn’t yet an adequate solution, that’s even better.

You’ll also want to come up with a title for this page that summarizes the background in a few words.

Plan of action. This part of the template begins with a short paragraph for you to clarify your solution to the problem and how you will measure success. You can even talk about how reporting that success will work.

The rest will be an outline of your action plan. Use titles for the different milestones you’re planning on achieving. Then, include deliverables and timelines in the description for those milestones. Remember that over-promising could just come back to bite you, so be realistic in the schedule you include for these deliverables. The titles you include here are another great way to give a brief idea about what your project will accomplish.

Requests. This is where you’ll give your budget and resource requests. You’ll also want to break down allocation for that budget and include a total.

Conclusion. Come up with a title for your conclusion that highlights the benefit the project will bring to stakeholders. Then, use this page to briefly review what you’ve promised for the project and the resources you’ll need to complete it.

Include a graph for something like a return on investment analysis. Have a written explanation for the ROI analysis that you choose to include as a graph. This summary should be easy to digest and motivate the stakeholders to back your project.

If the project you’re proposing is for an outside party, you can also include pages introducing your business and your team. If it’s for your company, you might want to turn it into a presentation by converting PDF to PPT with Adobe Acrobat online services.

Title page. The first thing you’ll see on our template is a title page. The title page will include your contact information, the name of your organization, and the name of the business or individual you are pitching to.

Cover letter. The cover letter will have much of what will be in the rest of your proposal, only summarized. It should be fairly straightforward, with a specific request for a specific number of funds. You can express enthusiasm and give a good taste of the vision of your organization in the cover letter.

Executive summary. Your executive summary will be a crucial piece in your grant application. First, come up with a title that captures the vision of your organization. Then, give a brief explanation of the history of your organization, highlighting your most recent or relevant successes. Focus on your vision and the different ways you’ve been able to accomplish it. If you are able to squeeze a brief story into a sentence, include a story.

Next, describe the problem that you or your organization is trying to tackle. You can mention the other grants that are helping you, but emphasize why the grant program you’re applying to is a great match. Talk about how your organization is doing a particularly great job at solving the problem.

Finally, summarize the budget and timeline of the project. Go into a little more detail about how you will measure success and maybe include a reminder about past successes that you’ve had.

Request. Come up with a title for the request that briefly states the positive impact of your organization. This section is where you can go into greater detail about the problems you’re aiming to solve and why you have unique solutions. If you can, include the numbers behind the problem and how you think they’ll improve over a certain timeline. Try to provide a brief story about an individual case that was helped. Emphasize that yours is the best organization for solving these problems and perhaps even point out where other organizations have differences in focus.

Goals. Give a few concise but specific and measurable goals here. These goals could come with dates that you expect to have them accomplished. Repeat the amount of grant money you’re asking for in this section.

Strategy. Here’s where you need to go in-depth about how you’ll accomplish the goals you listed on the last page. What are the strategies you have in place? What are the new ones you plan on using? Can you tell any stories to illustrate the specific ways this grant will help? Help the reader feel a sense of urgency about the problem and understand that you have good strategies to solve it.

Budget and evaluation. Give your budget for how you’ll use the grant money, item by item or project by project. Detail here how you plan to evaluate and measure your success. Give a schedule for reporting back about how well things are going. Ending with this will get your donors excited to see success from their grant.

You might have already written several of these documents (like the cover letter) in a Microsoft Word document. Fortunately, it’s easy to convert from Word to PDF.

Title page. The first thing to fill out in our template is a title page. The title page will include your contact information, the name of your research, and the name of the school or individual you are pitching to.

Introduction. In your introduction, you want to make sure that your reader understands why this research is interesting and relevant. Summarize other information that is known about the subject, and then highlight the gap in the research that you’re trying to fill.

Research questions. Share your research questions. You may have one main question, but you will possibly have several concise research questions.

Problem statement. Your problem statement will anticipate results that you think you will get and how they will make a difference.

Literature review. The literature review will show other research and sources associated with your topic. Only cover the most relevant ones. Use this short paragraph to summarize the findings of the other literature and talk about how you may agree with or challenge those findings.

Then, fill out a chart in the template where you cite the literature and offer very brief summaries of the findings.

Research methodologies. Use this space in the template to briefly explain the reasoning behind your methodologies. And give a description of your type of research design.

Fill out a chart about your research methods and reasoning.

Briefly explain the practical considerations that you anticipate. Give a simple version of the timeline and budget.

Conclusion. In this conclusion, go back to the purpose of your research and emphasize the problem it might solve. Summarize the key context and methods.

There are many different types of research proposals you might write, and our template offers a pretty basic version. You can always add to the template instead of starting from scratch. Here are some additional sections you might include:

• Table of contents
• Abstract
• Bibliography
• Budget
• Timeline
• Contribution

If you do find yourself needing to customize your template, you can edit the PDF template with Acrobat online services.