How to Write a Construction Proposal: 5 Essential Components
The winner is definitely in the details when it comes to amazing construction proposals. Your sales team likely already has a complicated relationship with proposals. Construction proposals are the lifeblood of any firm-- it’s how your team brings money into the company.
Without this critical document, you don’t have a business. Creating these proposals however can be a massive burden on your team. Without proper process and workflows put into place, it will eat up the time of your entire sales team -- writing, pricing, designing, proofing and then sending the proposal to your prospect can ultimately cost you business.
Closing more deals at a quicker rate means you have to eliminate unnecessary work for your team: you have to automate the construction proposal process. Identifying the essential elements for a great proposal is a critical first step to creating an efficient sales process for your team.
A great construction proposal should effectively convey the parameters of the project and your firm’s approach so that the client understands the full scope of the work while keeping things concise. You could always use one of our construction proposal templates as a starting point, but if you want to create one from scratch, here are the five essential sections to include in your construction proposal.
1. Executive Summary
The executive summary serves as an important part of the process as the standing introduction of your firm, your team, and your process to the prospective client. This section offers a big picture view of the entire document and includes information about your firm, an outline of the prospect’s needs and most importantly, it positions your firm as the one to choose for the project.
This is the point where you need to detail the unique benefits that choosing your firm entails -- reasons that will motivate your prospect to close the deal.
This section should be focused and comprehensive, outlining the main points of your proposal in a congruous, engaging way that piques your client’s attention to keep them reading the rest of your document.
2. The Proposal
This section is your opportunity to take a deep dive into the details of your offer and how it addresses each of your prospect’s needs in this project. This is the perfect place to begin with a problem statement that identifies and demonstrates your understanding of the project needs.
Follow this up with a description of your solution, keeping the focus on what you can do for the potential client. This helps keep your proposal relevant and tailored to your potential customer’s specific needs.
Provide an outline of the deliverables and milestones required and a pace at which they’ll be completed. Your objective in this section is to let the client walk away from your proposal understanding exactly what they will be getting and the process it will take to complete the work.
3. Pricing
This is perhaps one of the most important sections of any proposal-- both to your team and your prospective client’s point of view.
While determining a price point for the project and materials could effectively be its own article, there’s a lot of opportunity in this section to demonstrate the monetary value in your services. For example, you can give your prospect a choice between several different project scopes and ideas or even try to upsell by giving the prices of optional extras.
If you’re using an online proposal software like Qwilr, you can easily add optional line items and give your prospect a choice between different project packages in your pricing section. This will allow the client to select the items that they want and the final price will update in real time.
4. Accept
You would be remiss if you left out the “accept” section in your construction proposal. This is where the signatures are placed and typically follows the Terms & Conditions. Qwilr makes creating this section of your proposal easy-- all you have to do is add an Accept Block to your document and your proposal is ready for the prospect to close the deal.
Tools like Qwilr allow your firm to be agile and produce a full audit trail of the entire interaction so it’s fully compliant with all eSignature laws, which means it’s as legally binding as a paper contract.
With a PDF or (goodness) a paper document, the process of getting a proposal signed fully can take days or even weeks. Online documents can be viewed at the prospect’s leisure and can help you get the signatures you need to close the deal faster.
5. Social Proof
Everyone looks at the reviews before they make a buying decision and business partners are no different. About 90% of businesses read online reviews and forums before they make a purchasing decision.
Social proof has undeniably become an important part of the buying cycle and decision-making process before making a purchase, and as such, it would be a missed opportunity if you don’t include a section that shows off your greatest success stories, past work, and previous achievements.
Include your choice of case studies, testimonials, or awards in this section to create trust with your prospective clients and prove that you can produce results.
In a case study, be sure to outline the previous project’s unique challenges and needs and highlight the steps you took to help the client overcome each one of them. Back this up with numbers and boom, you’re one step closer to convincing your potential client to sign the proposal.
Start Creating Your Construction Proposal
There you have it, the five sections that you should include in every construction proposal. These core sections will help you to clearly communicate to your prospective client that you understand what they need and are able to demonstrate how you can provide value to them by helping them get there.
