How to Create a Winning Proposal (With Template)

0:00:00
What’s up everybody? So today I’m going to walk you through my actual process of creating a proposal from scratch, not really from scratch. It’s from a template that I created inside of Pandadoc. So I’m going to tell you into my Pandadoc accounts. I’m going to kind of go through it exactly the way that I would if I was actually creating a proposal. I’ll show you all of the various parts of the proposal and I’ll show you how Pandadoc really helps me in this process so you guys can get an understanding of why I chose Pandadoc. Obviously, Pandadoc is not the cheapest solution for creating proposals. I do use it for a lot more than just proposals, by the way though. But I just really, really like how it works for proposals. And I think you’ll see why. So let’s go ahead and jump right in. So this is Pandadoc, well part of Pandadoc.

0:00:48
This is the templates area of Pandadoc. And I do like how it allows you to organize all of your templates into different folders. So I’m going to click on the projects folder. We’ll open that up. And you’re going to see that I have two different proposal templates. I have the main proposal template and I have an alternate proposal template. I’m not going to cover the alternate today. I’m going to cover the main template because this is the template that I use 80 to 90% of the time. The alt template is the template that I use when it’s a more complicated project, a more involved project. Maybe it’s a situation where discovery has to be done first. This is more of a salesy type proposal. Whereas the proposal template that I use most often is the proposal that’s like just the facts, ma’am.

0:01:38
Like it’s, you know, here’s everything we talked about on the discovery call. Here’s everything we’re going to do for you. We’ll break it down and show you. But this is the primary template that you’re going to want to create in your own agency. And then later on, we’ll take a look at what this alt template looks like and why it is the way that it is and what it does for you. And maybe some of you are in the position where you would maybe want to use that one. Sometimes, again, I don’t use it that often. All right. So I’m going to open up the digital gravy proposal template. Actually, let me move some, you guys can even see these windows. I’m going to move some stuff out of the way from Ecam, but here we go. Okay. So I’m going to open this template. And the first thing that we do, we actually don’t do anything with this template except create this, click this green button, which says create document.

0:02:26
So I’m going to go ahead and click that. We’re basically creating a new document from this template. Okay. So it’s going to say who is the sender, a default to me, and it says who is the client. So I can just start typing like test person and you’ll see how this works. So test person and their email is testattestattest.com. And you can put additional fields in if you want to, but you know, I don’t need to do that. Let’s see, is it not letting me add because that’s not maybe it recognizes that’s not a real email address or something or I don’t know testattest.com. Maybe it’s like wanting more so one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, zero in our company name test. Now I can add the contact. Okay. Cool.

0:03:14
All right. So I’m going to add the contact and I can see there that they’re going to be the signer as the client and then I’m going to hit start editing and it’s going to do its thing and it’s going to open up a brand new document. If I had edited the previous thing, I’d literally be editing the template, which I don’t want to do. I want to create a document from the template. All right. So here we are with our template that we start with. Now let me talk about this because there are a lot of ways to style these proposals. You can do slide decks and keynote. You can do yada, yada, yada. I want to say a couple things to this because what you’re going to notice is this is not a flashy template. This is not, I wouldn’t even call this a well designed template.

0:03:56
It’s clean, but there’s nothing fancy going on. There’s nothing design wise. It’s going to impress a client or a prospect or anything else. So, but it’s that way for a reason. The reason is simple. When I started doing proposals a while back, I asked myself, like, do I have a plan? Do I want to put all of this into creating like this gorgeous proposal template? A higher graphic designer will deck it out. We’ll really impress people with the visual appeal. Or do I want to just do something that’s easy, that’s easy to edit, that’s straight forward, that doesn’t have a lot of fluff, that the client can easily understand and not have to go through it. Like, I don’t want the design to be a distraction. Now I didn’t know at the time. I didn’t know at the time which one would work better.

0:04:45
And I even thought to myself, like, well, maybe the simple one works better, maybe the really decked out one will work better. But what I do know is I can get started a lot faster and test out the easy version, right? The simple version. Let’s just stick to the facts. Let’s make it nice and clean and super easy. And that’s what I did. And I said, if that doesn’t work, if I get too many rejections of this proposal process just not working, I’ll try a fancy template. I never had to try the fancy template. So I didn’t make one. That’s why that is. And it turns out this is extremely easy to edit. And it’s extremely effective.

0:05:24
So the old saying goes, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. That’s kind of what I’m doing. All right. We’ve got this cover page here. It says my company name up here, Digital Gravy. It’s a digital services proposal. This proposal includes the web design development and digital marketing services recommended for test company. Now, notice that when I created the document, I told it the name of the company. It actually went through and everywhere that’s referenced automatically, it has the person’s name, it has the company name in it. Look at all these yellow boxes. Those have been filled in. It looks really awkward because it says test company. But if that had that actual name of the company, I mean, look at all the work that’s been done for me already, right?

0:06:05
Just with these merge tags where everywhere that’s referencing the prospects name or their company, it’s already taken care of. I don’t have to go through a manual document like, where’s all the places I referenced their name and type it in manually. Pandidoc handles that all for me. That’s cool. That’s all that’s on the cover page. We’re going to scroll down and we’re going to look at the next page. The next page is a table of contents. In Pandidoc, this is automatically generated for you, which is absolutely fantastic. If I click on this little properties button here, I selected, hey, take all the H2 headings in this document and put them into this table. You could turn on H1s if you want, which I don’t think there are any. You could turn on H3s. You’d have to regenerate the table.

0:06:54
So there you go. It put in some H3s. If you had H4s, I don’t even know if there’s any H4s in there. Yeah, there definitely is. Okay. But you can see that really starts to clutter things up. So I’m just going to take those out and I’m going to leave it as H2s. So this tells everybody what’s in this proposal, what page everything is on, and I don’t have to touch it. It’s automatically generated. If I add pages, it automatically updates the table of contents. Fantastic. Okay. So I’m going to keep going. I’m going to scroll down.

0:07:23
We get to the introduction page. So here’s what the purpose of the introduction page is. This is my personal note to the prospect. So we’ll just read it. It says, thanks so much for taking the time to speak with us. I wanted to follow up with a project proposal based on our conversation. This often says me, but in a lot of cases, I actually have someone from my team on the call as well, and that’s why it says us. But if it was literally only me, I would go in and change it to me to make that make sense. So I wanted to follow up with a project proposal based on our conversation. And I just kind of outlined what’s in the proposal. You’ll see a cost breakdown, payment structure, and timeline. I realize that this is your first time with us. So I want to make sure that you’re completely comfortable before we proceed with next steps.

0:08:09
Please review this document thoroughly and let me know if you have any questions. And I already set up the follow up here. So I say, if I don’t hear anything, I’ll follow up later in the week to gather your thoughts. My contact information is listed below. So they already know that I’m going to contact them to follow up if I haven’t heard from them. Typically, that’s not a problem, as you’ll see in the end, how I deal with this. The proposal itself has a call to action in it. Because I’m sending the proposal with eSign software, there are like nine out of ten times they go ahead and do the eSign process. Because they think they’re supposed to. And that’s great. So it’s not just me asking for a yes or no by email or something like that. They’re literally prompted inside a panda doc to sign the document. And it gives them all the instructions.

0:08:56
You’ll see when we get to the end. But it’s that’s been fantastic for conversion rates on like getting a decision made. Okay. So I’m going to scroll down. Next we have the executive summary. This is written as if we’re writing the proposal to our team. And the company is listening to us talk to my team listening to me talk to my team. If that makes sense. So based on our conversation with test from test company, we understand that test company is experiencing. And then I always edit this. Okay. So we’ll write the full like the challenges that they’re facing. And it’s in short terms because we do go into further detail here. But I just kind of overview the call, right?

0:09:40
And then we get to the client’s problem. So I define the exactly what the client’s problem is. Now in this section, the client’s problem, it’s not just reiterating stuff that we talked about on the call. I uncover issues on the call, but in this client’s problem area, I expand on those. And I give them extra insights. Okay. As to what the real problems and cost to them is of those problems. All right. And then game plan overview. I literally outline exactly what we’re going to do to solve these problems. The steps we’re going to take, the strategies and tactics we’re going to employ. The results we typically get from those things, you can make that as detailed as you want. And then I have the proposed start date and the proposed completion date. These I can click on and I can literally just type in whatever it’s going to be.

0:10:35
So we’ll say like December 1st, 2021, hit enter. And then because these are referenced other places in the document too. And now all of those will be filled in. So the work completion date, let’s say is like February 28th, 2022. So now we’re good. All the dates are taken care of now. All right. So we’re going to come down and the next section is why us. And I don’t go into like, we’re the best. We’re this for that. Let’s just go ahead and read it because I use this section to talk about our philosophy of web design. Because our philosophy of web design is different than the prospects philosophy of what they think web design is, which is why this is important. So it’s to get them on the same page, but it’s also selling.

0:11:26
It’s selling a different way of thinking about what they’re buying. So it says for us and the clients we work with a website is more than an online presence. It’s a small business growth engine. It’s your number one digital marketing asset. Your number one digital sales tool and your number one digital brand awareness tool. This is why digital gravy. We want you to think differently about web design and the kind of web design company you should hire. So I’m already telling them like, obviously you’re considering us, but it’s not 100% lock that you’re going to choose us. So if you’re going to consider other people, make sure they think the way that we do about this stuff. Because once you read this, it’s kind of like, oh, okay. Well, if other people don’t think like that about web design, we probably don’t want to hire them, right?

0:12:12
So I’ll keep going. It says more specifically, we want you to separate the art of web design from the science of web design. We aren’t just artists when it comes to web design in EG, designing pretty websites. We’re scientists. We study, experiment, and hone our skills so that we can design websites that drive rapid business growth. We’re going to architect your website so it’s well organized and achieve top rankings on Google and search engines to bring you lots of traffic. We’re going to help craft what your website says. So it sells for you on autopilot 24.7. We’re going to create a visual design and layout that communicates trust and authority and that elevates your brand. We’re going to create a user experience that drives visitors to take the exact action you want them to take, like call you, email you, or buy something directly.

0:12:57
In short, we’re going to engineer a central online marketing hub that develops, that helps you dominate your market. In order to do this, we need to make sure you understand our process, the experience and expertise needed to do this successfully, and exactly what you’re investing in, and the type of ROI that you should expect out of it. Okay, so I don’t know what you guys think. I feel like that’s pretty solid and it’s worked really well and it’s the truth. So it checks all the boxes. But if you’re going to take this template that I’m giving you, and I am going to give you this template, what I would ask you to do. Obviously, it’s write your own copy. Don’t just steal my copy and use it. Write your own why us incorporate what you believe about your philosophy of web design and digital marketing and all of that. But you can use this as a guide.

0:13:49
All right, so I’m going to keep going. Next is our team. I want them to know who we are, who they’re going to be working with, what our main roles are. So we’ve got myself, we’ve got Andrea, the lead developer, Patsya, the lead developer, we’ve got Shazia, our designer, we’ve got Nick in there, we’ve got Jess in there, and then we have the rest of the team, which is support staff contractors, so on and so forth. So they get to read this and they get to understand that, okay, I’m not just working with a freelancer. There’s a lot of support here for us. They’re going to be able to tackle this project and get it done. Yadda, yadda, yadda. Okay, so obviously these aren’t your team members, so don’t copy that. Go ahead and create your own.

0:14:31
Now if you’re a freelancer, you’re going to want to say about me and you’re going to want to do something to instill the confidence that, like, and I’ve written about this before that companies should be kind of iffy about working with freelancers. Honestly, like, I mean, if you got hit by a bus tomorrow, what’s going to happen to their website? That kind of thing, especially if you’re in the middle of the project. So there are advantages to being an agency, to representing as an agency. Don’t get me wrong. But you can do it as a freelancer. You’ve got to build in some confidence there that, yeah, you’re a one-man show, but things are going to go well. Things are going to go well. All right, so next is a full, this is like, this is a long section. This is the process overview. So one of the things you have to understand about this proposal process and prospects and web design is that you probably already somewhat know is that the client, the prospect, they’re thinking web design, web design, web design, web design.

0:15:34
They’re not thinking about all the actual stuff that goes into the process. They don’t know. They don’t know about discovery. They don’t know about UX. They, like, web design to them is the UI step. So this proposal is not just selling. It’s selling, but it’s selling through teaching. So if I teach them about the process, things that they had no idea about, things that other, and if they’re comparing me to three other agencies or freelancers or whatever, and those agencies and freelancers aren’t teaching them about the process. So what the process should look like in order to have a rock solid plan of action and a project that doesn’t get derailed and a project that doesn’t go over budget and yada, yada, yada. If I’m the only one talking about that, they’re going to be far more confident choosing me versus these other people who aren’t talking much at all about a process, or they’re just talking very loosely about a process, and they’re not including all of these steps.

0:16:29
I’m including all the steps, what they need to know about these steps, why we’re doing these things. The client feels very educated in this, and it makes them very confident in choosing us, because they understand that we know what we’re doing, that we’ve got it all organized, that we’ve got it down to a science, right? So overview step one is discovery. I provide a little graphic of keyword research, like what discovery tends to look like online. But I explain it in text. Every website project must start with a discovery phase, which includes keyword research, competitor, research, general market research, and a review of the existing site, as well as a full SEO audit if you have an existing site and more. The discovery process gives us raw data that relates to how the site needs to be structured, what pages need to exist, and what type of content needs to be on those pages. In short, the discovery process ensures that what we build has a type O, has a strong chance at being effective at achieving the wide range of goals businesses have.

0:17:32
I think it matters. I switch back and forth in this a lot. Sometimes I reference businesses in general. Sometimes I reference their business, right? I might come in strong chance of being effective at achieving the wide range of goals that you have for, and then I put their company name. I’ve debated putting that into the template, whether I want to do that every time, or just some of the time, or what. A lot of times I’ve just been going based off of feel, like if I feel like we need to be more personable to this client. The generic is easier to maintain and manage, but the personable nature of personalizing it, how many times can I say that word? I think does help in certain circumstances. Do you have the wide range of goals? I’ll put it back to the way it was.

0:18:26
Businesses have. Okay. Look at one of the key factors here. The key things. Every website project must start with a discovery phase. What am I telling them? I’m telling them that their project must start with a discovery phase, which also means I’m not really open to debating this. You’re not going to get, when you word it like this, you’re not going to get prospects who come back with like, yeah, we saw that price for discovery. We don’t really want to do that part. Let’s just leave that part out. I’ve already in their mind set it up that no, this every website project has to start with discovery, which honestly to really do your job right, it does. I’m not lying to them, it makes our job a lot easier, it makes the results better.

0:19:09
It just literally does. It needs to start with discovery. I’m just positioning it in a way where they’re not going to try to take it out. That’s what I would recommend you do as well. Next thing is site architecture. I have a little site map graphics so they can see that and then I’ll just read it. We use insights from the discovery process to create a visual site map for your new website. This ensures that every page of your website has a purpose. All possibilities for ranking are uncovered and planned for and that there’s a clear roadmap for future growth. What am I doing here? Planting a seed that there’s going to be more work here. There’s going to be more work in the future. I want them to know that because I don’t want them to freak out when they see the site map and all the things that we need to do.

0:19:54
This is all about the future and we can go at any pace you want to go at, but this all eventually needs to get done. Getting out the site architecture is important to both SEO and user experience and needs to be done prior to design or development. Look what I said again. Needs to be done. Again, I’m not presenting this as well if you want us to, we can kind of come in and do this big site architecture thing and it’s going to cost some money, but it’s worth it. That’s not how I’m positioning it. I’m positioning it as this is what we do as our process. This needs to be done. When they see it itemized, they don’t say, well, let’s take that out and let’s take that out. That looks a little expensive. It’s like, no, this needs to be done.

0:20:38
I use the house building analogy all the time. I’m like, you wouldn’t tell the builders, you don’t need the architect. Just wing it. You wouldn’t say that to a home builder. The home builder needs the architectural plans. They need the blueprints to get the job done. I tell them the exact same thing about their website. It’s very, very simple. I even call out other agencies and freelancers. Many freelancers and agencies don’t design a proper site architecture, which is a costly mistake in both time, money, and lost opportunity. We ensure that your site has the proper roadmap before we start building. I’m selling by instilling confidence while also telling them to be wary of all these other people who probably don’t do this stuff. Selling them why it’s so important.

0:21:29
This is all sales, but it’s not me, me, me, me, me, sales. It’s like, I’m selling the process. I’m selling what’s going to benefit you in the end. Next thing. Step three, UX design. I show them a bunch of wire frames and stuff. Since every website has a unique goal and every page of a website serves a different purpose, each page requires a unique layout and content structure. Be sure pages are intuitively laid out to make it easy for visitors to consume, navigate, and comprehend the content. Requires a lot of expertise and experience. Notice, I’m showing. Whenever I say it requires a lot of experience and expertise, I’m getting you ready for the number. I’m like, this ain’t going to be cheap.

0:22:14
It requires a lot of experience and expertise. This is called UX design. Designing the experience the user is going to have is a navigate through the website. Again, this is what people don’t even think when they think web design. They think, just make it pretty. Just build me something pretty. That’s typically what a lot of them are thinking. You’ve got to be like, but do you want this to actually work for your business? Do you want this to actually sell? Do you want this to be the things I told you about earlier? The number one digital sales tool, the number one brand awareness tool, the central marketing hub for your online efforts? If you want it to be that, then we got to think a little differently. We got to think beyond make it pretty. That’s kind of the message I’m trying to deliver to them.

0:22:55
Effective UX design, and I’m telling them the ROI now. Effective UX design can more than double or triple your website’s conversion rate, slash your website’s bounce rate. That’s the percentage of people who leave after viewing only one page. Make visitors more likely to return in the future. Those are obviously all things businesses want. The wireframes we generate during the UX phase are like blueprints for a house. They’re critical to initial website prototype design. They’re communicating the UX to the development team so we can build your site correctly and efficiently. Once again, I’m saying they’re critical. This is not a step we’re going to remove from the process because you want to save some money. I’ve said that three times now about all three of these steps. Next is step four, outlining and copywriting.

0:23:42
Copywriting is the art of persuasive marketing. Copywriting is the art of writing persuasive marketing and promotional content that motivates people to take some form of action, such as making a purchase, clicking on a link, calling a phone number, or scheduling a consultation. What we have to do in sales is make the connection between what we’re doing and why we’re doing it. Otherwise it’s just we’re tacking on nonsense, right? So copywriting, they think of a just fill the page. It needs content to just fill the page. No, we’ve got to fill the page with stuff that makes people want to purchase or click or call or do something. In doing that, we’re going to get back to the experience and expertise. A page on a business website typically has anywhere from 500 to 5,000 words of written content that persuades the visitor to take a specific action. This content is arguably the most important part of the site because it’s directly responsible for generating conversions.

0:24:50
What am I telling them? Pay attention. This is important. This is not something we’re leaving out. This is not something we’re leaving to you. Mr. Prospect, this is something we’re going to do. Content is also one of the most difficult aspects of creating an effective website. Anytime I say difficult, takes time, expertise, experience, it means money. I’m just prepping them. No, the same cheap because you can’t just whip it up. Someone has to determine what that content is going to say and then physically write it while keeping both SEO and sales conversion in mind. I’m also teaching that this isn’t just about filling a page. It isn’t just about conversions. There’s also this whole SEO topic that we have to be considering when we’re writing all this content for you.

0:25:37
Since your website’s copy can make or break the website’s effectiveness and timeline, if it’s not delivered on time, it’s a good idea to have it professionally written by our writing team. Now this is one of the areas where sometimes they already have their copy and I don’t want to be like, well, no, we have to rewrite it all. I’m not saying we have to do it, but I am saying it’s a really good idea to have it professionally written by our writing team. All right, number five, and this should actually be, now I was moving things around earlier to prep for this video and I obviously didn’t number these correctly, but this is that number five is UI design. I give them a little UI design taste here and then it says UI design is the process of making a website visually appealing while ensuring that it matches the brand essence. This is the step that most people think of when they think web design. As you can see though, it’s only a small step in the process of creating an effective website. For most projects, we don’t have to design every single page.

0:26:38
Instead, our design team designs the homepage, navigation, footer, dynamic templates, and a UI style guide that governs the look and feel of all the core elements of a website. Really that should say your website. These prototypes combined with the UX wireframes are all the development team needs to build the website. That’s cool. All right, so some little things to patch up here in there. I explain that to them, the design process. I also like to put in that we don’t have to design every single page for two reasons. Number one is we don’t. That’s the honest reality. We don’t have to prototype every single page. We have the wireframes. We have a UI design style guide. I’m communicating that we’re not charging you for things that aren’t necessary, which is important because I’m charging for all these different things and how do they know what’s really necessary or not.

0:27:34
Well we get to the UI design phase and I’m like, look, we don’t have to do all that and we’re not going to charge you for it. Now they’re getting even more confidence. They’re like, here’s an example, a big example of where they didn’t just charge me to charge me. They could have told me they need prototypes for every single page and charged me for it, but they didn’t. My confidence is growing now. You see how that works? It’s just the reality. I’m just being honest. I’m just being transparent. We don’t need a prototype for every single page. Okay. Moving on.

0:28:05
That was step five. Is this numbered properly? Yes. Now we’re on step six, which is correct. Responsive development. Once you approve the visual design of your new website, it gets into our development team who constructs and codes the website while making sure the website is responsive, meaning it looks great and functions perfectly on every device. When developers have proper wire frames, I’m backtracking, not backtracking, I’m reiterating things we’ve already discussed and why they’re so important. When developers have proper wire frames, a professional design to work from and professionally written copy, development is extremely fast, smooth and efficient. They want that to be their project. So I’m reiterating. Here’s all those components we’ve started to review.

0:28:50
Here’s why it’s so important when we get to this step. Most of the big issues that occurred during the website development process occur when the previous steps of UX design, UI design, copywriting, etc., are skipped, neglected, or attempted simultaneously. By following our process, we’re able to make sure every project is delivered on time, on budget, every time. All right. So this is instilling more confidence, but it’s also reiterating the value and the necessity of all the things that we already talked about previously. All right. We’re going to move on to step seven, optimize and launch. As development is being finished, the process of testing and optimization should begin. Our development team will test your new website in all major browsers and on all major devices and screen sizes. Additionally, we’ll make sure that all images are appropriately sized and optimized. If the code is clean and efficient as possible, and then all the technical SEO requirements are implemented.

0:29:46
Once testing and optimization is complete, we will launch the site so it’s live to the public on your domain. This will conclude phase one of your project, at which point we will begin the website management and marketing phase. All right. And we move on to step number eight, which is management and marketing. This is how you set up your ongoing retainers for maintenance, but we don’t call it maintenance, right. We call it management and marketing. And how you set up what usually comes in a separate proposal, which is a marketing and advertising proposal. All right. And we can go over how that works later and how these get combined and the order you send them and all that good stuff. Okay.

0:30:25
So this has an effective business website is a living, breathing thing. I’m setting this up for the future. Successful companies with successful websites don’t take a, set it and forget it approach. They know that their website will only work when they follow a consistent marketing and development road map. Some of our ongoing services include content marketing, SEO, ongoing research, the re optimization of existing pages, the production of new long tail pages, content marketing, digital PR and so on, and digital advertising, usually with paper, click, PPC campaigns. Additionally, websites require ongoing hosting, basic maintenance and security monitoring, which needs to be done by trusted professionals. A website without an active management and marketing road map is a website that’s dying a slow death. Competitive businesses will easily outrank and outperform your site if it isn’t being actively managed, which is why actively managing your website is part of our long term commitment to each and every client we work with.

0:31:28
We structure most management marketing campaigns as annual campaigns since the strategies and tactics require a long term effort. What am I doing with that line? I’m cutting off potential objections for people who say, well, we only want to test the waters for three months or we’re not sure we want to do a year like we have to know up front. This is a long term effort. This stuff doesn’t happen overnight, right? We can’t just manage your website for three months and then say, good luck. This is long term stuff. All right, so get on board. Basically, what I’m telling them. What else am I telling them in here? So I’m setting up here’s all the services we offer in case we didn’t already cover that, and then why the management is important.

0:32:13
I’m telling them that their website is going to die a slow death if it’s not actively managed, which honestly isn’t like it’s a little hyperbolic, but it’s not inaccurate. I mean, how many companies have had a website that they just build? They think it’s like, build it and they will come, right? I just put a website up. All the people will come. They’ll buy all my stuff. It’ll be the greatest thing ever. When in reality, it sits there. It sits there. It sits there. It doesn’t do what it was intended to do. And over time, it degrades. It’s not modern anymore. The design gets, you know, poo poo, yada yada yada.

0:32:45
And it’s just, I mean, what happens? It dies. It dies a slow death. I’m, yeah, yeah. Maybe it’s a little hyperbolic, but it’s pretty close to reality, right? We’ve seen it all time and time and time again. So an actively managed site, that doesn’t happen. And that’s the point that I’m trying to convey. All right, so we’re done with the process here. Next phase is the statement of work. This is, I do combine this in this proposal type. I don’t put a statement of work in the other proposal type, okay? So in this type of proposal where it’s just a fax man, you’ve already got him on the phone. You already pretty much sold him. They’re already confident to work with you, pretty confident to work with you.

0:33:23
You’ve already discussed price. You’ve got to range. You got to bracket. You got to budget, okay? It’s fine to put the SOW in. So at this point in, um, Pantadoc, what I can do is I already made a list of everything that we need, right? Before I can go to their existing website, I can, I know the industry, yada yada yada. We’ve already discussed all the requirements. So I can literally just come in and just do home and then I can do about and then I can do, uh, let’s say services and I’ll do service page one or I’ll put in the specific service page name if I already know it. But for this purpose, I’m just going to do this for, you know, shits and giggles. Okay. See, I’m just sitting tab, tab, tab writing, tab, tab, tab, it’s very, very fast.

0:34:04
It’s building out the table for me. Uh, an error occurred. Some changes may be lost. Please reload the page. Okay. Let’s reload. It auto saves as we go. Some, for some reason it logged me out. It never does that. It’s just because I’m screen recording probably. Um, but it’s going to reopen the document. We’ll come down and, uh, yeah, we got to scroll way down here. Okay. So see, it, it saved some of them. Um, service number two, service, I didn’t completely lose everything.

0:34:33
Service number four. All right. And then we’ll do like contact, whatever, you guys get the point. Then I can come down to UI and we’ll do home. We’ll do template one. We’ll do template two. We’ll do, uh, blog, whatever. You guys get the point. Okay. Those would be the UI design deliverables. Then copyright deliverables. We’ll do page by page how many words? So it would be like, um, service number two, 800 words, something like that. All right. So we get nice and specific there with the word count because that’s how we price, copywriting is based on the number of words.

0:35:06
And then page development deliverables, these are actually creating the pages. So there’s going to be a lot of overlap. Like there’s a UX design for every critical page, which means all those pages are going to get listed again right here. A lot of times I can just copy these and paste them in here. And then we move on. Then I do the dynamic templates, which also includes custom post-tites, um, custom fields, things like that or really sets of custom fields, uh, functionality deliverables. This would be like a contact form and inquiry form, uh, custom pricing form, anything that they’ve requested in terms of functionality, uh, we’ll do like, wow. Okay. Literally, this is because I’m screen recording. It never does this. Um, all right. I’m not going to type in this thing anymore because it’s obviously doesn’t like me screen recording and trying to type in here at the same exact time.

0:35:57
All right. So I’m going to come down. Okay. Um, yeah. So it might be like email marketing, um, integration, things like that. That go, that all goes in functionality deliverables. Then the launch deliverables are almost always the same. So I just have them preloaded in there. But literally I can build out an SOW very, very, very quickly, even one that’s really, really detailed. And notice Panda doc, it automatically handles all the page breaks for me. So I don’t have to like add a page, add another table, move stuff around. I literally just hit tab type, tab type, tab type, tab type. It’s very, very fast. All right.

0:36:34
So I come down here. Now we get to the project costs. One of the great things about Panda doc is it has this section called catalog. And you can go to the catalog and put all your products in and you’re pricing. And then I’m going to show you what’s fantastic about this. Okay. Because it perfectly aligns with how I like to send proposals. So look at the quantity column. All right. So discovery. It’s already loaded in here. One, $1,500. Now this is a big client. If they’ve got multi location business, if they have to do a lot of extra discovery, let’s say they have five locations.

0:37:08
Okay. Changed out to five. Boom. $7,500. Or they’re like a really big company. Boom. $7,500. Whatever. Whatever it’s going to be very easy to just change the quantity and get the amount that I want that I’m comfortable with. Okay. Web UX design. I literally go up here. How many wire frames? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.

0:37:28
Let’s just go down and we’ll pretend that that was enough and we’ll do eight. Okay. And it automatically gives me my UX cost. I come down here for Web UI design. And these are, you know, numbers that you can change in the system. I just have this as my default for right now. But we’ve been higher than this before. We’ve been lower than this before. It all depends on the size of the client that I’m working with. Go read my article on value-based pricing. And you’ll understand, like, what makes this fluctuate? I already talked about it a little bit in one of my other videos on how to scope a website project. This is just the defaults, like, it’s kind of the base. So Web UI design.

0:38:09
I go up and I do UI design deliverables. One, two, three. And then there’s the, obviously, the UI style guide is in there. So one, two, three, four, five. Let’s just pretend that that’s what we’re doing. And I come down here and hit five. Perfect. Okay. So now I have my UI cost. I copy writing cost. I come up here. I add up the entire word count. So let’s say that’s, let’s go in like 7500 words. So I come down here and I just put in 7500. That gives me my content count, right?

0:38:41
Then I have my base development fee. Leave that alone. And that, it says what it includes. All projects set up planning, infrastructure, build out DNS, testing, launch deliverables, all the incidentals. Next is template development. I come up here. How many templates are we making? I say it’s five. All right. Great. I come down here. Change that to a five. All right. Then advanced integration hourly covers functionality, build out implementation, testing for things like forms, facets, advanced queries.

0:39:08
So I kind of take a look at like what’s going to be on these pages based on what I know about the project already. Requirements I’ve been given. Yada, yada, yada. Let’s say that comes out to like nine or something. Okay. Then we have page development. We’re going to go up and do all of the pages from this section right here, which would most likely match pretty closely to UX design except it’s going to have a lot of incidental pages as well that don’t actually need UX. So it’s probably going to be a higher number. So we did eight for UX. I’m just making shit up, honestly, right now, like for the purposes of this training. This is an actual project. So if we had eight UX, we might have 12 pages.

0:39:50
Okay. So that gets put in and then project management is the only one that’s really manual here. And it’s based on a percentage that I choose. So it’s giving me a total here of 22,150. And I’m just going to do times 0.12. And that’s going to say that 2658 is project management. And sometimes I do, oh, I didn’t make that editable. Oh, I think I know, I think I know because I hid the actual price column. That’s why. All right. So insert column to the right price. That’s why it’s not letting me. Okay. So I can go back select project management. I forgot that’s why it does that.

0:40:29
I need to change it in the price column. So what do I say? It was going to be 2658. Okay. There it is. Now I can just hide the price column again. And it stays 2658. Okay. So now I’m done, right? This is my number, but I don’t want this. I don’t want the quantities in there. All I want is the category and the cost of the category. So PandaDoc literally let you go in and hide this column without messing with the numbers. It doesn’t change my cost column. So now they don’t know the quantity.

0:41:03
They don’t know the price per item. They don’t know any of that stuff. They just know what the category is that they’re paying for, the step in the process effectively and what that step costs. And then they have their total down at the bottom. That’s why I really like PandaDoc. I don’t really know of any other systems that allow you to do that, but PandaDoc allows you to do it, which is absolutely fantastic. All right. So there you go. We’ve got our little proposal made and then we come down here to management options. Here’s another thing that I really like about PandaDoc. You can make certain things optional. And by the way, I can make any of these optional if I wanted to, but again, we’ve already talked about why they’re not optional.

0:41:41
But look at this. I can make this optional. So we have the website management options. We have the base fee of $69. That’s mandatory. You can’t check the box next to it. It’s just there. That’s the mandatory thing that we’re going to be charging you. But if you want advanced management, it’s an additional $81. Right? And again, these can absolutely be hidden. So I can hide this column and this way, typically do. So now they can come in and say, yeah, we do want custom and custom analytics dashboard. I got to finish filling that out for myself. But they just check that box. It adds the 81 to their total that they can see.

0:42:17
Or if they’re like, no, we need a leak management, which is a dedicated server, advanced analytics, advanced visitor tracking, all of that, they can add that and it makes it 450. So they have the power to do this when they’re in the reviewing process, which is really fantastic. Which like, well, they check these boxes and automatically as I just sold it, like the proposal sold the thing for me. I don’t even have to do it. What I can also do is if I know this client’s going to be doing advertising, like a digital advertising campaign, I actually need the advanced analytics dashboard. I don’t want to be messing around and Google analytics and all that stuff. I want the advanced analytics dashboard. So what I can do is I can go in and I can say recipient options, enable optional item. Nope. It’s not optional. It automatically adds it. And I’ll tell them, I’ll add a little note and say, because we’re going to be doing digital advertising for you, this is an additional, we need this advanced analytics dashboard, this custom analytics dashboard to be able to track the things that we need to track easily and not have to go into your accounts and all of that stuff.

0:43:24
So that’s it. I get to send it. And they can still upgrade to a leak if they want to. But and then at that point, I would change that number, obviously, to make it work the way that it was earlier. So there’s a little bit of finagling to go in here, it’s not a super advanced system, but I haven’t found another tool that allows me to do stuff like this. So I’m going to go back and make that optional. Okay, cool. Let’s keep moving on project timeline in milestone. So I literally, you know, sign contract and pay deposit. I’ll put a date in for that. Let’s say that’s going to happen on November 1st, 2021. And here’s how I do the dates, because this confuses a lot of people. So project kickoff will be, we’ll say November 3rd, 2021.

0:44:06
So what do they know? If I don’t get this, this ain’t happening. This project kickoff only happens if this happens. Discovery deliverables. So I give myself one to two weeks for discovery, depending on how much discovery we’re actually doing, one to two weeks would be like the standard. So in here, I can just cheat. I can say weeks one, two, two. All right. And then I don’t have to put actual dates now. So UX deliverables. I can come in and say, this will be weeks two to four. Now there is going to be some overlap here, because in UX, we also do some content development. So this will be weeks, but it takes longer. We’ll be still doing content after we’re done with the wireframes a lot of times.

0:44:47
So I might say like two to six. And then UI deliverables will be weeks three to six. And then development will be weeks four to 12. And then punch list and testing will be weeks 11 to 12. And then launch. We already have a target launch state in mind. So I’ll say I’m not going to add all that shit up, but we’ll just say like January 15. Well, in actually in the beginning, launch, we put, what do we do? And you can even use the merge field, honestly. Where was it? February 28. Okay. And yeah, you need to make sure all the weeks and stuff add up to your target. Cool. So we just do it like that.

0:45:30
And that’s what there’s a little schedule would look like. Then we come down payment options. Okay. So here’s where we get into our payment options. So we have 24808. So I come down here and I put in zero dollars monthly. And I take 24808. We get the 15% of that. So it’s like 3721. They’re saving. And we’re just going to pop in 2187. So put 21087. And then there’s their single payment option. They save 15%. Sometimes I make that 10%.

0:46:08
So it depends on the size of the project, really. But you can fluctuate. It depends on how badly you want the project or how badly you want to make a single payment. You can change this stuff up. You can do whatever you want. Super flexible. Okay. I’m not saying do it this way every single time. Right. Just understand the principles and then mold it to. Some of this is art. Some of this is just feeling the person out. Some of this is just like, you know, doing what you need to do for your company or their company to get the project, like whatever. But you got to be comfortable with everything.

0:46:39
All right. So two monthly payments. So literally I would just say that this is going to be our original project price. So I never copied it. 24808. And then yeah, I try to make sure this always has like the dollar sign and always has a comma, so it can be like nice and easy for them. So we’re just going to divide that in half. So it’s 12. If I can click in 12 404. Okay. You get the picture. Then we would do three monthly payments, which I typically add 5% or 10% to their total and then divided by three. And so if they want, and this is only, I’ve explained this before, but I’ll explain it again.

0:47:22
So this oftentimes will be six monthly payments or four monthly payments. It’s got to be beyond the end of the project. So if it’s a two month project, you can make it three monthly payments. That’s extended. That costs 5% extra or 10% extra because you’re taking a risk letting them pay beyond when it’s live. But if it’s a bigger project, you could do four. You could do six. You could do 12. You could do whatever you want to do. Like I said a minute ago, it’s flexible. It’s whatever you’re comfortable with. Okay. So if you’re going to be paying money beyond when the website goes live, that’s a risk to you, not to them.

0:47:58
So they got to pay extra. They’re financing the website basically, right? So there’s got to be some percentage in there extra. All right. You get the picture. What’s great about PandaDoc is they get to check these boxes, whichever one they want. They check off. And then I don’t have to ask them, which payment planner you comfortable with, Mr. Client, like they’ve already told me which one they’re comfortable with. So if you don’t like talking money, this is a perfect process for you because you won’t have to talk much. They select a box. You already know. All right. Call me a send you the invoice for that option.

0:48:30
You show us, right? Nice and easy. Last but not least, let’s read this very carefully. I started putting this in year or two ago. It’s been a game changer, right? A lot of times people will send off a proposal and they’re like, hit me back if you want to go forward. You know, that kind of thing. And then you don’t hear from them. And then they’re like, well, I didn’t even review it yet, right? The thing about Panda Doc and really eSign software using eSign for proposals is when you open a, there’s a different psychology of mindset that people are in when they open an eSign document. Number one, it loads in the eSign software and it’s prompting them like, you’re going to need to do something at the end of this.

0:49:11
Okay. So that gets them already into, I need to know what I’m signing. I need to review this thing. I need to pay attention to details, right? Even though it’s not a contract, it puts them in the mindset of like, this is kind of feels like a contract, right? So I really need to review what’s going on here and I need to make a decision and it increases that rate of people actually taking action on the proposals you send. Absolutely critical. But read it, this is not a contract. Your signature is simply an acknowledgement that you would like to green light this project according to the outline scope and price. Once we receive this acceptance signature, we’ll send a separate master service agreement for signature to make this project official. So I’m telling them, this is not a contract, but we need your signature.

0:50:00
But what’s going to come next is the actual contract. Okay. So what happens is I hit send, send via email. It sends, okay, it says you have three unassigned fields. So I basically have to assign this to the person. I’m down here, that’s how easy it is. Click the field, assign test person. Click the field, assign test person. Okay. Now I can send the document via email and it gives me a name. We’re going to say test, proposal, save, continue. Okay. I can write a message, hey, Mr. Prospect. Buy my shit. Okay.

0:50:38
And then I hit send document and it sends it to them. Actually it sends it to me first. So it sends it to me first, I review it, I sign it. Then once I sign it, it goes to them. They see it with my signature on it, which is another kind of, hey buddy, you need to do something with this. You need to sign this, right? Like I did it. Now you need to do it. So you’re putting them in that mindset again. If they don’t want to sign it, then they’ll, they feel like, shit, I didn’t sign that thing I was supposed to sign. And so they reach out to me and they say, here’s why I didn’t sign it. Cool. I know why they’re not signing it and I can address the problem.

0:51:16
Okay. So it just works, it just works and you should do it too. I would recommend it. So I hit send, Pantadoc takes care of the rest, I just sit back. And by the way, I also know when they opened it. Let me go back to camera. Can I go? Yes. So I also know, Pantadoc tells me, hey, test client just opened your proposal. Okay. Now sometimes what I’ve done, if a client’s on the fence, if I’m iffy, client opens the proposal, I’ll take out my phone and I’ll shoot them a text and I’ll tell them something nice and friendly or whatever, right? They don’t know I know that they just opened the proposal, right? But I’m like, dang, they’re like in touch.

0:51:56
I got the proposal. Like it just put, you can put a little extra into the presentation, so to speak, right? All right. Cool. So that’s it. Like that’s the process. You’ve seen the entire proposal. You’ve seen all the sections you need. You see how I send it, how I create it. The thought process that goes into the copy. The thought process that goes into why I’m using Pantadoc and eSign for proposals that aren’t actually contracts and yada, yada, yada. Okay. If you have any questions, let me know. I’m here to help, as always.

0:52:27
And if you have any objections to anything, let me know. I’ll take it under consideration. But that’s it. And that’s it for me. I’m out. Peace. Peace.