Agency proposal template
An agency proposal that gets signed
Scope, dates and a priced breakdown that adds itself up. Fill in the fields, and the document is built for you.
- Free to use
- Your colors and fonts
- Signed in the same place
PROPOSAL
Brand sprint
Rookery Coffee Roasters
Scope
Positioning, identity and a packaging system for the three core roasts, delivered as a working brand kit.
Deliverables
| Discovery and positioning | £1,200 |
| Identity and logo system | £2,100 |
| Packaging, three SKUs | £1,500 |
An example, with your branding applied
A proposal is the document that turns a conversation into work. It says what you will do, when it will be done, what it costs, and what happens if any of that changes. Everything else is decoration.
What should a marketing proposal include?
Six things. Anything beyond them is usually the agency talking about itself.
- Who it is for and who it is from, with a date. Proposals get forwarded.
- The problem in the client’s words, not yours. This is the part they check first.
- Scope: what you will actually do, specific enough to argue about later.
- Timeline: when it starts, when it delivers, what you need from them and by when.
- Price, broken into deliverables, with a total.
- Terms: payment schedule, what happens to scope changes, how long the price holds.
The section people fight over afterwards is scope, which is why it is worth writing carefully. "Social media management" is not scope. "Twelve posts a month across two channels, with monthly reporting" is.
How long should a proposal be?
Two to four pages for most work. Long enough to be specific, short enough to be read before a meeting.
The instinct to pad comes from feeling that a bigger document justifies a bigger number. It does the opposite. A client reading twelve pages of agency credentials to find the price learns that you are not sure the work speaks for itself.
The case for going longer is genuine complexity: several workstreams, a phased delivery, or a procurement process that requires certain sections. Otherwise, cut.
A useful test: could the client forward page one to a colleague who has not been in any of the meetings and have them understand what is being proposed?
How should you present the price?
Broken into deliverables, with a total. Not a single figure, and not an hourly rate.
A single figure invites the client to decide whether the whole thing is worth it, in one judgement, with no way to negotiate except downwards. A breakdown lets them see what they are buying and, if the total is too high, remove a line rather than reject the proposal.
Hourly rates are worse. They shift the conversation to how fast you work instead of what the work is worth, and they make every efficiency you gain a reason to pay you less.
Deliverable pricing also survives scope changes better. When the client asks for a fifth channel, there is a line to point at and a number to add.
What makes a proposal get rejected?
Rarely the price. Usually the client cannot tell what they are buying, or cannot tell whether you understood the problem.
The most common failure is a proposal that opens with the agency: how long you have been going, who else you work with, your approach as a philosophy. The client already decided you were worth a conversation, which is why the conversation happened. Starting there wastes the page they read most carefully.
The second is vagueness dressed as flexibility. "We will work closely with you to develop a strategy that meets your needs" commits to nothing and reads as though you have not thought about it yet. A specific proposal can be argued with, which is much better than one that cannot be evaluated.
The third is a missing timeline. A price with no dates leaves the client unable to judge whether it fits their year, and the usual response to a decision that cannot be made is to postpone it.
When should you send it?
Within two working days of the conversation it came from, while what you discussed is still what they remember.
The proposal that arrives a week later has to re-establish context the meeting already built. The one that arrives the next morning reads as a summary of an agreement rather than a pitch, which is a much easier document to say yes to.
This is the real argument for a template. Writing a proposal from scratch takes an afternoon and gets postponed. Filling in fields takes twenty minutes and happens the same day.
What you fill in
- Client and contact
- Who it is for, and the person who will read it.
- Project title
- Short and descriptive. It becomes the document name.
- Scope
- What you will do. Two or three sentences of specifics.
- Approach
- How you will do it. Phases, method, what happens when.
- Start and delivery dates
- Both, because a start date alone tells nobody when it lands.
- Deliverables and prices
- One line each. The total is calculated for you.
- Terms
- Payment schedule, validity period, what happens to changes.
What happens after you fill it in
Your branding, applied
Set colors and fonts once. Every document you generate uses them, including ones you made months ago.
Sent for signature
Request a signature from the same place. The signed copy comes back with a record of who signed and when.
Every version kept
Each save keeps the one before it. Restoring an earlier version does not lose the newer ones.
Questions
- Can I change the wording?
- All of it. The template supplies the structure and does the layout; every word is yours.
- Will it use my branding?
- Yes. Set colors and fonts once in your brand kit and every generated document picks them up.
- Can the client sign it?
- Yes. Send it for signature from the same place, and the signed copy comes back with an audit trail.
- Can I reuse it for the next client?
- Yes. Each document is separate, so start a new one and only the details change.
- Do I need to install anything?
- No. It runs in the browser and produces a PDF.
Use this template
Free to start. One project, no card needed.