By John Tellis at February 14 2020 18:43:29
If you're in the business of sports, the odds are that you are perpetually seeking new clients. In days past, you could get by with a phone book listing, maybe a newspaper ad, and word_of_mouth recommendations. Those days are long gone. These days, the competition is fierce. Whether you are opening a new franchise, recommending an employee health program, starting a youth sports program, or engaged in adventure tourism, you need to know how to write a proposal to pitch your idea or services.
They lead to entrepreneurs skimming over the research component leading to a proposal that is disjointed and fails to make a cohesive business case. Having a sample business proposal as a guide detracts from the entrepreneur engaging fully in the business planning process in that they will have only a cursory understanding of the finer details of their proposal. It will not prepare the entrepreneur for detailed questioning around their business strategy and by association their financial projections. We have seen this all too often in presentations for equity finance. It is glaringly obvious when someone does not understand the proposal intimately and this devastates credibility and trust, virtually nullifying your chances of convincing an investor to part with their cash.
What is The Solution? This might all seem a little bleak but there is an easy solution to this dilemma and it demands a little more of your time and effort in return for a deeper understanding of your business. You have to learn to write a business proposal rather than using a sample business proposal to take a short cut. Don't do the latter as it will make the experience of approaching investors and financiers unnecessarily painful and will dilute your experience of creating your vision from scratch and your strategic understanding of your own business. Plus, you will be found out!
So How Should I Use A Sample Business Proposal? We genuinely believe that using a sample business proposal is not a good idea unless you are only looking for a structural outline. Even in this case you would need to scan a fairly broad cross section of examples to get a representative sample to form an independent opinion. There is nothing more frustrating than a pitch which doesn't flow and where the entrepreneur is clearly "winging it". We have rejected more pitches for this reason than any other.