Proposals — writing the document that gets decided, not filed

The problem

You send a twelve-page proposal. It goes to the finance head, who did not attend any meeting. She reads the price, sees no stated outcome, compares it with a competitor's cheaper quote for something different, and asks for a discount.

What you need

Their words: 'We're doing stock reconciliation across three plants in Excel and it takes my team two days every month, and we still find differences.' Current cost: 2 days × 3 people monthly ≈ 72 person-days/year, plus unquantified write-offs from unreconciled differences. Met: Operations director.

The tool

Any assistant, with your discovery notes

The prompt

What comes back

PAGE ONE The problem — In our meeting on 14 March, you described it as: 'We're doing stock reconciliation across three plants in Excel and it takes my team two days every month, and we still find differences.' What it costs today — Two days a month across three people is approximately 72…

Verify before you use it

• Confirm the quoted words are accurate. Misquoting the customer on page one is worse than not quoting them.
• Check the 72 person-days arithmetic and label it as your estimate based on what they told you — not as a measured figure.
• Verify every exclusion is something you genuinely will not do. An aspirational exclusion creates the dispute it was meant to prevent.
• Have someone who was not in the meetings read page one and tell you what problem is being solved. If they cannot, rewrite it.