Bid Proposal Templates: Crafting Concise Documents that Win

7 min read

Nikita R.

Media-savvy content creator, with a curiosity for all Salesforce experiences.

Updated: Jan 13th, 2025

By creating templates for bid proposals, businesses keep the format and style of their presentations exactly the same across teams. This means you only need to design a bid proposal once to match your brand and business requirements. Then, you can use templates to generate accurate bid proposals quickly to close deals.

Join us in this article to find out more about building branded proposal templates that eliminate manual workflow errors and secure your future plans.

What is a Bid Proposal?

A bid proposal form is a business tool for communicating with customers.

Bid proposals persuade customers to choose products or services offered by a business. For this reason, succinct bid proposals inform customers of all the details of a project. They also explain why its offerings are the best choice in the market.

Bid proposals from many businesses are often submitted to a single customer to consider, so it’s important these presentations are engaging and convincing.

Key Components of a Bid Proposal Template

As a bid proposal needs to contain accurate information, it’s best to eliminate creating them from scratch every time you need to submit one.

A popular way of removing proposal creation from workflows is to build a bid template that you can use over and over in the future.

You can streamline this document creation process even further by using Titan Docs. Our app builds and can automate proposals, contracts, quotes, and invoices directly from Salesforce in minutes.

Let’s take a look at what you need to add to a bid proposal template to make it a winner.

A Customer’s Contact Details

You want to add a placeholder for your customer’s contact details in the bid proposal template. Whenever you create a new proposal from a template, you can quickly update this section to your current client’s information.

Adding these details to the bid proposal is necessary to identify exactly who you will send the document to. Displaying the customer’s contact details on a bid proposal will reduce the chance of the document being delivered to the wrong person, which could result in you missing a deal.

The Contractor’s Contact Details

No matter how professional and successful a bid proposal is, you cannot know this result without giving customers a way to communicate with you.

These details also provide a chance for further communication with clients so they can ask questions regarding the bid proposal.

For these reasons, it’s important to add your contact details to a bid proposal. Usually, these details seldom change, so this type of information is a good candidate for templates.

Each time you generate a new bid proposal, you do not have to manually add your contact details. In this way, you speed up the document creation process and keep the data within them accurate.

A Project Title

When you add a project title to your bid proposal, it ensures that colleagues and clients can quickly identify the project. It also provides clarity to everyone who will be a part of the project and ensures directions are clear whenever interacting with stakeholders.

When you design your bid proposal template, the project title will be a pre-designed and formatted placeholder. So, when generating a new bid proposal, you can edit the project title to be specific to the customer and your project.

A Bid Proposal Cover Letter

The cover letter for a bid proposal is very important. It’s the first page customers will see in your presentation.

The purpose of the cover letter is to introduce your company to the customer. When you are presenting your business to a new client, this introduction is crucial to the success of your bid.

To make sure that your cover letter is free from errors and looks professional, we suggest that you make a cover letter template. It should match the custom brand of your business. Teams can then use it whenever they need to generate a bid proposal.

All your Products or Solutions Provided

You want to list all the products and solutions your business will provide a customer in the bid proposal. This simple list can avoid disputes in the future.

If your products and services are standard, you could add them to your bid proposal template so that you do not have to type them out every time you need a new bid proposal.

The Cost Details

If you want to be fully transparent with your customer, it’s a good idea to add all the project expenses to the bid proposal. It’s a fine way to let your client know where money is spent and you are open to discussing finances.

Adding the project’s financial figures in the bid proposal is one way that you can start building trust with the customer.

If your project tasks and expenses are constant, then you can easily add them to a template. This ensures you do not need to type them out each time you need a bid proposal.

Alternatively, if you need specific information for a project, you can use placeholders that pull data from a database.

Your Anticipated Project Duration

To make your document stand out against the competition, you can add the project’s timelines and milestones. The dates will give your customer an idea of how long the project will take to be completed, and it will give your team a plan to follow.

The timeframe found in your bid proposal will manage everyone’s expectations from the beginning to the end.

A simple method for adding the project duration details to your template is by designing a calendar or table. These elements can be edited with specific timelines when you generate a new bid proposal.

Manage Expectations with Timelines in Bid Proposals

Signature of Both Parties

It’s important to add signature fields to your template. Then, when you generate a new bid proposal, you and the customer can sign the document. These signatures confirm all the project information, terms, and conditions found in the proposal. It serves as evidence that all parties accept the bid.

Two Bid Proposal Examples

There are many types of bid proposals that can be used in any industry. Today, we are going to look at construction and contractor types as bid proposal examples.

A Construction Bid Proposal Template

You will find a construction bid proposal template, most commonly in the building sector. Contractors use these documents to submit bids for their projects to clients. Construction companies will use templates in their workflows to speed up the creation of bid proposals.

In the construction bid proposal, an example of a template would contain the project details and scope. The company will also add estimates of the project’s expenses. The customer now has all the information they need to make a quick decision, such as whether they want to work with the company.

Contractor Bid Proposal Template

Like the construction bid proposal template, the contractor bid proposal template is a tool used to speed up the creation of documents.

The difference here is that these templates are used by contractors. They state the work the contractors will perform. The contract bid proposal template will also explain the project’s details and the costs it will take to complete.

Streamline Your Bid Proposals with Titan Docs

If you are looking for ways to speed up the creation of your bid proposals with automated templates, it’s time to install bid proposal software.

We suggest that you check out Titan Docs. Our document generation software integrates bi-directionally with Salesforce so you can read any field from any object or report. You also get the option to display your data in any format.

With Titan Docs, you can add interactive functionality that writes data directly from your proposal template to any object in Salesforce. Now, you can work with standard or custom objects and any data structure.

Then, use our Salesforce document generation tools to instantly create proposals to share with clients.

Only the Best for Documents!

Thanks for reading our article on bid proposal templates. We hope we have given you tips on how to create accurate and professional bid proposals that persuade customers to choose your offerings.

If you want to speed up your proposal creation and generation processes, we suggest you check out Titan Docs. With our app, you can generate a Word document directly from Salesforce and create PDFs pre-filled with dynamic data from the world’s #1 CRM.

We also support merging and converting files into any format you want. We give you complete flexibility to work with PDFs, HTML, DOCX, and PNG files.

Our other advanced features give you dynamic content, QR codes, barcodes, and digital signatures to add to proposals. If you want to share your proposals with access permissions for safe collaboration, we’ve got you covered, too.

If you like what you hear and want to know more, contact us via our social media channels below.

Frequently Asked Questions

What should a winning bid proposal look like?

A successful bid proposal conveys that the bidder understands the project extremely well. On top of that, the bidder can also show how the project will solve a customer’s problems.

If the bid proposal can communicate the overall value the project will bring to the table, it will be a top candidate for securing deals.

How do I write a bid proposal for a freelancer?

You need to communicate directly with the freelancer to find out their requirements. Then, take a look at a guide like the one below to create a professional bid proposal.

1. The first page should be an introduction about yourself and a short message thanking the freelancer for reading your proposal.
2. Next, you want to explain the project in detail and describe how it meets the freelancer’s requirements.
3. Now, you can show how the project will solve problems.
4. Remember to state your skills and experience as evidence that you can successfully complete the project.
5. Add your project’s timeframe and any milestones so the freelancer knows when the project will be delivered.
6. You should also include all the expenses the project collects, like salaries or software licenses.
7. If there are any terms and conditions that you have, you should add them to the bid proposal. Common ones include payment terms and confidentiality agreements.
8. End the bid proposal with signature fields for you and the freelancer to sign.
9. Review and edit your bid proposal to remove any typos, errors, or ambiguous sentences.
10. Send the bid proposal to the freelancer and let them know you are available to answer any questions that may arise.

What is the difference between a bid proposal and proposal?

Although these documents have a similar purpose, their differences pop up in their format and the content that they hold.

For example, a proposal will provide a solution to a customer’s problem. A proposal is created to respond to an RFP (request for proposal) from a customer. Alternatively, they can also be generated for sales and marketing initiatives.

Bid proposals are aimed at obtaining business contracts. These documents are created by contractors, suppliers, or vendors, and are used to respond to ITBs (invitation to bid) or RFPs from customers.

We hope to see you soon!

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