Acquiring new business for your new business often starts with the download of a free business proposal template. A quick search on the Internet and you get a handful of download links for these business proposal templates. You can also find lots of paid advertisements on Google for this type product (Proposal Kit). From experience I know that these free proposal templates are not always the best match when it comes to get new business. And here is why:
You are new in business with a consulting or service providing business. You are hurting for customers and finally the big moment has arrived and you need to come up with a business proposal to land that first job for your new business. If you are like many new businesses, you probably held off from buying any professional proposal kit or a set of important business forms because of the cost and because you did not know when you would need them. When starting out spending money on items not necessarily right away is prohibitive for many new business owners. But when the time comes and the need arises, the struggle and hassle is big. The new business owner gets on the Internet and starts searching for a free proposal template. 10-15 minutes down within the search process there is possible success – a set of free business proposal templates. The download is initiated and then the work on that proposal starts. Hours later the free template has been adjusted and customized as much as possible to the needs of the business and then the actual proposal work can begin.
Again, several hours later, depending on the complexity of the work to be done, the proposal is finally finished. It’s late at night and you go to bed to be rested for the next day when handing off the proposal. In the morning you proof-read the proposal just to realize that this is in no state to be handed off to a potential customer and additional hours of work are required to fix mistakes and issues. You get the idea of what I am trying to say here. In this case you got what you paid for – free can be good, but you really have to think about what a free business proposal template download is really worth?!
I started my own business back in 2002 and I had to be careful how to spend my startup funds. I had $1,000.00 and I knew I had some investments to make before I would even be able to do some marketing. I relied a lot on free stuff and while sometimes this worked out, in many cases I had to go back and fix the situation by spending money. If I would have not been so cheap in the first place in these occasions, I would have been able to save myself a lot of time. Free does not always mean it is really free and being cheap when it matters does not get your business really going.
In early 2011 I started a second business with a few business partners. I was the only one who really had business experience under his belt while the other guys were still employees. Going through the startup process the different mentalities became visible and at one point I decided that the only way to get this cleared out once and for all is to let my business partners have it their way in a specific situation. I stepped back and let them have at it (after making my initial point earlier within that specific process). You can guess how this ended. Half way down the road it became apparent that the free solution was not really free and that we were not as efficient as we had anticipated. Fortunately I had already put enough guidance into place so that we could address the situation fairly quickly and were able to move on and be successful. For my new business I purchased the Proposal Kit Professional early on and I spent time to prepare a custom proposal based in this business proposal template. When the time came where we wanted to send out a proposal, we were ready to re-act instantly and to deliver a bid-winning proposal that covered both sides of the deal and look professional. I recommend you do the same – it’s of really good quality and costs much less than you would ever expect. Click here to ready more details on the Proposal Kit Professional.
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