May 12, 2024

Keeping Every Proposal Recognizably Yours

A client who reads two of your proposals should recognize the same firm. In many practices, they would not.

Consistency is a trust signal

Buyers read proposals as a sample of how you will work. Inconsistent fonts, contradictory descriptions of the firm and mismatched team titles suggest a firm that does not coordinate internally. That is a small signal, but it lands on the wrong side. Small differences add up, especially when a client receives several documents from your firm in a single quarter.

You are not aiming for uniformity for its own sake. You are aiming for a document that looks like it came from one organization that knows what it sells. Use a one-line test: would the client be able to tell these two documents came from the same firm?

Decide the few things that must match

A long brand guide will not be read at proposal speed. Pick a short list: how the firm is described in one sentence, how service lines are named, how team titles are written, the logo placement, and the cover and closing pages.

Write these as a one-page reference. If a rule cannot fit on the page, it probably matters less than the ones that do. Ask the newest member of the team which parts of the guide were unclear.

Names and claims drift fastest

Layout drift is visible. Claims drift is worse because it is invisible until a client notices. One proposal says the firm serves a certain number of clients, another says a different number, and a third uses a name for a service that was retired last year.

Keep an approved facts sheet with the wording for credentials, offices, service names and headcount. Date it, and treat any number on it as needing a source and an owner. Keep the source files for the cover and closing pages in a place everybody can reach.

Voice matters as much as layout

Tone varies between authors, from stiff to casual to over-promising. Choose a house register: plain, specific, no superlatives, first person plural. Share two or three before and after examples from your own past proposals.

Partners will still write in their own way, and they should. The goal is to keep the range narrow enough that the client does not feel the seams. Agree on a single spelling and date format, since these small differences are the ones clients notice.

Build the defaults into the template

Consistency that depends on memory fails under deadline. Put the approved cover, headers, fee table style and closing page into the starting document, so a new draft begins on-brand without anyone thinking about it.

Assembly tools help here, because the approved blocks arrive already formatted. The person tailoring the draft spends time on the client, not on margins. Include photographs and graphics in the same review, not only text.

A light check before sending

Assign one person to do a five-minute pass on every outgoing proposal: firm description, names, titles, numbers, cover and closing pages. Give that person the authority to fix without a meeting.

Keep the check light. If it becomes a second review round, it will be skipped, and you will be back where you started. Revisit the facts sheet whenever the firm changes an office, a name or a service.

Handle exceptions in the open

Some proposals will need a different look: a joint bid with another firm, a client that requires its own format, a government form. Decide in advance who may approve a departure from the standard and how it is recorded.

Exceptions are fine when they are chosen. They become a problem when they pile up unnoticed. A short list of approved exceptions, reviewed each quarter, tells you whether the standard needs to change or whether people are simply working around it.

VIPMarketing Editorial