How long should a proposal be?

I probably hear this question more than any other. Unfortunately, there is no clear cut answer. Remember back in school when you were assigned an essay, and everybody’s first question was, “how long should it be?” The teacher responded something like this: “it should be long enough to make your point, but be concise.” Writing proposals is kind of like that. Your proposal should be long enough to make your point, but it should be concise.

Truth be told, though, this answer always frustrated me because it never gave me what I was really looking for—a frame of reference. So with all that said, here’s how long a proposal should be.

Most of the sales proposals that I write are between 15 and 25 pages long. But understand, those pages aren’t solid text. If fact, if you were to remove all of the formatting, they’d probably be no more than about ten pages.

They are formatted and modularized, and include pages like a title page, table of contents, etc. Further, long sections of text are broken into smaller paragraphs preceded by bold headings. By breaking text into smaller chunks in this way, it’s far easier for the person to read, and less daunting than a solid page of unbroken text. But it also makes for more pages.

Some projects require more explanation, and therefore, they’re longer. Other projects don’t require as much, and therefore, they’re shorter.

Dave Seibert
President
The Seibert Group, Inc.
http://www.persuasionselling.com
dseibert@persuasionselling.com
513-598-4647