5 Ways to Demonstrate Value-For-Money in your Business Proposal

Your proposal says you offer Value for Money but how do you prove it?

You know your Business Proposal matches the client’s requirements exactly, right? You also know that your proposal is good Value For Money and resolves the pain points for the funding agency. But, you still need to show them why.

This is one of the most popular templates, especially for business consultancy proposals

Learn more about these Proposal Templates ]

5 Ways Business Proposals Can Demonstrate Value For Money

Here are five ways to demonstrate value for money (VFM) in your business proposals:

#1 Experience

Most bids are won (or lost) on the bidders experience or the cost.

If the project will be awarded to the bidder with the best solution – and not the lowest price – show what you’ve learned from similar projects and how this knowledge will be leveraged should you be awarded the contract.

#2 Project Management expertise

The next step is to outline your deep experience garnered from previous projects and how you addressed specific risks and issues are they arose.

This gives you an edge over others as it shows that you can – and will – handle unforeseen issues when they occur.

#3 Team Roles

Discuss the key roles for this project, such as Quality Manager, Configuration Manager, Team Lead, Training Manager, and Documentation Manager.

Don’t bundle the entire Development Team under one heading: breaking out each roles gives the company more depth.

You can build on this by bringing these key people to your presentation and giving them the opportunity to answer questions from the client.

#4 Client’s Role

Procurement is a two-way process.

When you’re gathering requirements, developing the use cases, testing the application, and defining the business rules, you need to work with the client, usually onsite.

To reduce the client’s anxiety about how this will work, outline which personnel you will need to work with during the project lifecycle and where it may impact their daily operations.

State how much time you will need to work with them. Failure to capture this may imply that we are working in isolation and do not understand their business setup.

#5 Global Experience

Finally, discuss where your company worked as a consortium and international projects.

This may interest funding agencies and government bodies who prefer to award contracts to a consortium, i.e. several companies working in unison, rather than one preferred supplier.

Conclusion

While your Business Proposal may be ideal for your client’s, you need to demonstrate how and where it provides Value For Money. Next week, we will look at how you can do this by focusing on areas where you help them save money or reduce costs.

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in May 2011 and has been updated for freshness, quality, and comprehensiveness.