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Writing a proposal gives you the perfect opportunity to showcase why you or your business is right for the job a potential client is interested in.
But without the right proposal template, knowing what your proposal needs to say and including the right proposal visuals, you might end up losing that client.
This is why we’ve put together a post full of stunning, professionally designed proposal templates — to help you know exactly what to include in your proposal and where it should go to really reel in new clientele.
Our proposal templates cover a wide range of industries and have pre-written content already included to help guide your own proposal. This way, you can easily get started creating your own stunning proposal design in minutes.
Before we dive in, here's a short selection of 8 easy-to-edit Proposal templates you can edit, share and download with Visme. View more below:
A proposal is a formal document outlining a plan, idea, or suggestion intended to gain approval or funding.
Proposals present specific objectives, actions, and benefits tailored to the audience’s needs. It begins with a title page and executive summary highlighting the problem, solution, and outcomes. The introduction outlines the issue, while goals and objectives clarify the proposal’s aims. The solution section details the approach, timeline, and steps to achieve objectives.
A budget section transparently outlines costs, and a timeline highlights key milestones. The document emphasizes the solution’s value, concluding with a compelling call to action. Optional appendices provide supplementary details, keeping the proposal concise. A professional layout, customized content, and thorough proofreading ensure engagement and effectiveness.
However, not all proposals are created equal. Depending on why they're used, they can look different.
For example, when I was freelancing, my proposals were packed with examples of past projects, aiming to prove my value. But when I moved into an in-house role, I realized the focus had to shift–it wasn’t just about my expertise; I had to show not just my team’s capabilities but also the potential return on investment and the long-term impact for the client.
Follow this step-by-step guide on how to write a proposal template
To truly connect, dig deep into who your prospects are and uncover their specific needs, preferences, and pain points.
Understanding your audience on this level lets you shape your proposal’s content, tone, structure, and design in ways that speak directly to them—skyrocketing your chances of winning their trust.
We asked Elisa Montanari, Head of Organic Growth at Wrike, about her approach to audience-tailored proposals - here's what she had to say.
Head of Organic Growth at Wrike
Mira Nathalea, CMO at SoftwareHow, knows this firsthand. In the tech space where features and systems can quickly overshadow clarity, she’s found that nothing beats direct communication with decision makers.
"In tech, there’s often a lot of noise—fancy features, complex systems. When I speak directly to the people who will decide, I know exactly what they need, and I can adjust the proposal to meet those specific needs. On the flip side, things can fall apart when I make too many assumptions about what the client wants without digging deeper. I've learned the hard way that ignoring client feedback leads to proposals that miss the mark." says Mira.
Imagine reading a proposal that feels like a maze: your clients will definitely feel frustrated and probably zone off.
Break up your proposal into logical sections that lead the reader smoothly through your ideas. Typical sections to include are an introduction, problem statement, objectives, methodology, timeline, deliverables, pricing, and terms.
Customize each section to fit your client’s needs and project scope. Need a jumpstart? Visme’s professionally designed proposal templates come with these essential sections ready to personalize, so you can focus on what matters most—building a winning proposal.
Your proposal’s content should start strong with an eye-catching title page and a summary that hooks them from the beginning. Then, guide the reader through:
All in all, your proposal should focus on the client's needs and why you're the right fit.
Yes, templates save time, but clients appreciate a personal touch. Take a moment to sprinkle in specific details and address their unique needs, and if possible, include case studies from similar industries to prove your credibility. This shows you’ve done your homework and that your proposal isn’t just a recycled template. It also shows the client you're invested in their success.
Before you hit ‘send,’ give your proposal a thorough review for grammar, spelling and clarity.
Make sure each section flows logically and edit as needed for a professional finish. Visme’s AI writer can even lend a hand with proofreading or text generation—just provide a prompt, and it’ll help polish your proposal in seconds. You can use the tool to generate text, create layouts and rewrite the text for your proposals.
Finding the perfect proposal template is one of the crucial first steps in designing an eye-catching proposal.
Here's how to choose one that helps you seal the deal:
Who are you sending this proposal to? Are they investors? Potential clients? Or maybe a non-profit organization? The tone, voice, design and every aspect of your proposal should match your audience's expectations.
For example, your audience would mostly want a detailed proposal if you are creating a research or academic proposal. On the other hand, if your audience is B2B clients, they might be busy, and you would need to explain everything concisely and effectively. Also, for both these cases, you will need templates with different images, colors, fonts and other design elements.
Think of your proposal as a guided tour—each element is there to lead the reader to your ultimate goal.
What do you want to achieve with this proposal? Are you trying to sell your products or services? Or are you looking to secure funding from a potential investor?
Whatever the purpose is, choose a template that aligns with your goals.
For example, if your goal is to secure funding for your business, your proposal will need to highlight your business plan, financial projections and potential for growth. In this case, you'd want a business proposal template with sections for market analysis, financial data and investor information.
But, if your purpose is to get approval for a new project, your project proposal should highlight the project's benefits to the company, its feasibility and your implementation plan.
Did you know you only have around 7 seconds to make a first impression? That’s just enough time for your reader to glance at your proposal and decide if it’s worth their attention.
So, choose a well-designed proposal template that is more likely to grab your audience's attention at first glance.
Here are some tips to make that first impression count:
Visme's template library includes a variety of templates with different design styles, so you can find one that matches your brand and requirements.
Imagine jumping into your proposal creation, excited to bring your ideas to life, only to find it clunky, hard to navigate or limited in terms of customization options. Frustrating right? You just want to focus on creating an amazing proposal—not just spend hours figuring out a complex tool or struggling to customize the template.
Brooke Webber, the Head of Marketing at Ninja Patches, has a keen eye for design when it comes to proposal templates. "I always go for something that looks professional but not boring." he shares.
"Our projects vary so much—from small businesses wanting a few patches to larger bulk orders—so I use templates that can easily be adjusted. A flexible layout lets me customize everything without starting from scratch each time, which saves me hours says Brooke."
Your template should not only be visually engaging but the tool for customizing it should be easy to use. Make sure every aspect of the template you choose is easily customizable, from the fonts and colors to design elements and images.
With Visme, you don't have to worry about it. You can fully customize every template in this article and any other template in Visme's library and save them for future use.
This business proposal example is perfect for a more corporate look and feel in your proposal.
With a professional design and an easy-to-follow table of contents at the beginning of your proposal, your potential clients will love this proposal setup.
Design Tip: Give each new section in your proposal a similar header, as seen in this template. This will create a cohesive design, while letting your reader immediately know that they’ve moved onto a new section within your proposal.
Who Is It For: Web developers, agencies and freelancers offering web design and development services.
If your brand colors focus on a single accent color, this is the perfect proposal template to customize. Here, we see a single accent purple used, while the rest of the information maintains a black and white look.
Even the data visualizations use a monochromatic scheme by incorporating other shades of purple.
Design Tip: Use a stock photo on your proposal cover with a transparent color overlay. This is a great way to create depth in your design, while still allowing your title and information to stand out.
Who Is It For: IT consultants, technology firms and businesses offering IT solutions and services.
If you're aiming to create a product proposal that aligns seamlessly with your eCommerce strategy, we've got you covered. Our comprehensive article on how to write a product proposal takes a deep dive into the essential elements for an effective product proposal.
This template for business proposal has a modern design, using a geometric layout throughout the document. These square sections help to break up large paragraphs of content in a visually appealing way.
You can also easily crop your images into various shapes to fit them into your geometric design.
Simply update the content in this business proposal sample, upload your own photos or use the options in the left-hand sidebar to add visuals to your proposal.
Design Tip: Try playing with geometric shapes in your design. Using squares to house various sections of content is a great way to separate your paragraphs and avoid crowding your design.
Who Is It For: Software testing companies, quality assurance professionals and development teams.
This proposal cover template allows you to easily add your company introduction, portfolio, testimonials and budget information for your potential clients and services.
Simplify the budgeting process with Visme's budget planner. You can create it from scratch as a standalone document to share with decision makers or use a budget template.
Visme also allows you to overlay website examples on top of a computer screen cutout to provide an even better website portfolio presentation for your clients.
Design Tip: Get creative with your table of contents. It doesn’t have to be a basic list of pages. Instead, take a page out of this template’s book and use a grid or other creative setup.
Who Is It For: Web designers, agencies and freelancers offering website design services.
This corporate proposal template is another great version to use for higher end, enterprise clients and projects.
Its professional look and feel will help ensure anyone you hand it to will know they’re in good hands with their project. Get started with this editable sales proposal design and you’ll be amazed by the result.
Design Tip: Use icons to help visualize your content. Visme’s icon library has over 10,000 different options, so you should be able to easily find icons relevant to your industry and the content written in your proposal.
Who Is It For: Web designers, agencies and freelancers offering website design services.
The bold, serif headings in this branding proposal example help you to create a contemporary design perfect for online businesses and modern branding companies.
Use this template for business proposals to provide the perfect project overview and timeline for your potential clients. Simply edit the template, input your information and download.
Design Tip: Using grayscale photos can help create a level of professionalism within your proposal that might not otherwise be there. With Visme’s editor, you can add filters to your photos to find the perfect tone.
Who Is It For: Branding agencies, marketing consultants and businesses offering branding and design services.
Putting together a proposal for social media marketing services? This proposal cover template offers the perfect layout for your information, pricing and service details.
With sans serif fonts through and a modern look and feel, this proposal template is perfect for digital age services, like social media marketing.
Design Tip: Use a bold sans serif font as your page or section headers to really grab attention and create a contemporary design feel throughout your proposal.
Who Is It For: Social media marketers, agencies and businesses offering social media management and marketing services.
To provide you with an all-in-one solution for your social media marketing needs, Visme comes with a social media scheduler. With this tool, you can design your posts and schedule them instantaneously without using any other software. Build a complete social media plan for your content, including the types of posts you’ll be posting and when they will be published.
Read our comprehensive article to learn how to create a social media calendar.
This business proposal brings in a few pops of color very strategically. Using a two-color scheme – magenta and grey – this template allows the colors to really run the show.
There are several well-designed sections within this template that can be customized to fit a variety of needs, so you can make this proposal template work for any type of business or service.
Design Tip: Add shapes and adjust the opacity to create glimpses into your background photo without distracting from the proposal content.
Want to create a proposal that pops? This eCommerce proposal template is the perfect way. By incorporating a bright red hue alongside images with black and white translucent overlays really helps important parts of this proposal template stand out.
Design Tip: Use a bright color as an accent hue within your proposal to really grab attention. Using this bright color to highlight the most important sections, like pricing, service options and things like that can be beneficial to your reader.
Who Is It For: SEO specialists, digital marketing agencies, and businesses offering search engine optimization services.
Showcasing your work within your photography proposal example is a fantastic idea to really sell your services. This proposal design inspiration for event photography makes it easy to include previous project information, but incorporating screenshots or testimonials can work just as well.
Try including portfolio information within your proposal, too, so your reader can get a full scope of your previous work and get a good idea of if your business will be the right fit.
Easily share your proposal with your team members to get feedback. Or push the final version to your clients right inside your Visme account.
Design Tip: Get creative with your project timelines within your proposals. Visme offers a wide selection of timeline and process diagrams that make putting together pieces of your proposal easy.
Who Is It For: eCommerce businesses, online retailers and agencies offering eCommerce solutions.
The warm color scheme in this company proposal template is perfect for business services. While orange is a focal color, the use of yellow and red in the icons and data visualizations fit right in.
Make your headings and most important tidbits of information stand out from the rest of your proposal by using a bold headline or highlighting them in bright shapes.
Design Tip: Using shapes, like ribbons and arrows, can add even more depth to your proposal, helping to call out specific information that you want your audience to read or understand.
Who Is It For: Marketing agencies, CRO specialists, and businesses offering conversion rate optimization services.
Depending on your audience, sometimes a more creative proposal template is the right look for the job. Other times, a more straightforward, minimalistic, professional design is the best choice.
Using popular fonts like Arial, Times New Roman and Verdana can also create a traditional look and feel for more corporate proposals.
Design Tip: Be sure to include a good bit of white space and margins in your proposal to ensure your content doesn't look too crowded and overwhelm your reader.
Who Is It For: Businesses and organizations looking to present a social media strategy or campaign plan.
Want a more muted proposal template? This beige monochromatic color scheme creates a really beautiful look and feel.
The muted imagery also fits in perfectly with the rest of this proposal design. All you have to do is switch out the template content and send this off to your prospective client.
Design Tip: Use varying shades of a single color to create a uniform spectrum that you can use for timelines, process charts, subscription tables and more.
Who Is It For: Web designers, agencies and freelancers.
Here’s a project proposal template you can customize for different project types.
Many of Visme's proposal templates also include a placeholder area for you to drop your logo right into the template. This helps to immediately brand your proposal and help your customer trust that it's coming from you.
Design Tip: Using your brand colors and fonts is essential in a proposal. You can easily add these into your Visme Brand Kit to access for any design, not just your proposals.
Who Is It For: Engineering firms, construction companies and project managers in various industries.
If you're looking for a unique and modern way to share your proposal information with your audience, this project proposal template is the perfect solution.
With a minimalistic look and feel and tons of white space, you can easily customize this to fit any information you might need to fit within your proposal. For example, you can turn it into a construction proposal template or even a bid proposal template.
Design Tip: Use abstract images to decorate your proposal pages. You can easily find the perfect photos in Visme's stock photo library. And if you don’t find any image that fits the bill, Visme’s AI image generator can ignite your creative spark. Simply type your prompt and the tool will generate professional-looking photos, paintings, pencil drawings, 3D graphics, icons, abstract art and more.
Who Is It For: Architects, architectural firms and design professionals.
This is another highly professional proposal template that your potential clients and customers will eat up. You can also use this template to create a partnership proposal.
The serif font in the headers presents a more traditional look and feel that is perfect for Enterprise businesses.
Design Tip: Use colorful image overlays to ensure images remain branded to the rest of your proposal. You can easily choose a color and select its opacity in Visme's photo editor.
Who Is It For: Marketing agencies, consultants and small business owners.
Additionally, Visme offers collaborative design features that help you collaborate with your team members to work on the proposals.
With these advanced collaboration tools, you can seamlessly invite team members via email and use functionalities like live editing, commenting, annotating, and version control to ensure a smoother collaborative experience.
Watch the video below to learn more about how collaborating right inside Visme
Here’s what Jaime Kelm, the Director of Business and Data Strategy at LAFC, expressed while talking about Visme:
Director of Business and Data Strategy at LAFC
This highlights how Visme's collaborative features can truly elevate not just your proposal creation process but all the other documents you create with Visme.
Want something more bold and unique? This modern proposal template utilizes a bright pink and purple color scheme that's perfect for a female audience.
The stock photos of female models throughout the proposal also help to resonate with their audience, and help potential customers to see themselves in the photos, creating a strong connection and making them want to work with you.
Design Tip: Create some kind of unifying factor on each page to keep your proposal design consistent. For example, in this proposal template, we see a solid line of pink on the left side. Find something that meshes well with your design and stick with it.
Who Is It For: Fashion designers, boutiques and businesses in the fashion industry.
Don't be afraid of color. Proposals don't always have to be a black and white, boring document. Instead, you can bring them to life by strategically incorporating an accent color throughout your proposal pages.
This contemporary design creates a nice mixture of photos, geometric shapes, icons and text so that no single element is too overwhelming, and the messaging is easy to digest and understand.
Keep the pages of your business proposal design and other projects on brand using Dynamic Fields in Visme. You can insert your personal and business information, personalize the fields and assign any value to them.
Design Tip: Try incorporating small squares to house your outline icons, like you see in this proposal template. Icons are great for adding a visual element while still being able to control the color scheme.
Who Is It For: Fashion designers, boutiques and businesses in the fashion industry.
And just because your proposal design doesn't have to be all black and white doesn't mean you can't make this style work for you.
This proposal template uses a minimal amount of a secondary color, instead focusing on creating a stunning greyscale design that still feels modern and visually appealing. Feel free to tweak this template for your next brand collaboration proposal.
Design Tip: Don't clutter too much information on a single page. The less text and information, the better. Dedicate a single page (or more if necessary) to each section, like you see one page housing sponsorship plans with no other info. Learn more about how to write a proposal.
Who Is It For: Organizations seeking sponsorships, event planners and non-profit organizations.
While we tend to recommend using only serif and sans serif fonts to ensure a readable and professional proposal, there are still instances where a script font can work. This event proposal template is one of them.
Because the branding is lighter and more feminine, a script font is the perfect accent font for callouts and headers throughout this proposal.
Design Tip: If you do choose to incorporate a script font, ensure it's only used for quick tidbits of text or large font sections like your header. Using a script font for paragraphs of body copy will be too hard to read and you'll likely lose out on sales.
Who Is It For: Catering companies, event planners and any business in the catering industry.
Need to create a flowchart to showcase business processes within your sales proposal design? It's never been easier to make a flowchart than with Visme's shape and line tools.
You can also include other types of data visualizations like charts, graphs, tables, maps and more in your business proposal.
Design Tip: When creating a flowchart with Visme, you can customize your line design, shape, color and more. Make sure to match your flowchart to the rest of your proposal so it doesn't look out of place.
Who Is It For: Any business or organization looking to create a general business proposal.
This standard proposal template includes another example of using a bold, sans serif font as the header throughout each page and main section to really grab attention and create a modern design.
With a variety of different pages and text boxes, your brand will easily be able to customize this two-tone proposal template and make it your own.
Design Tip: Use colored sections as a backdrop to your text. Colors don't only have to be used in accent elements, they can be a feature of the proposal, highlighting text boxes and adding more depth to your pages.
Who Is It For: Digital marketing agencies, consultants and businesses offering online marketing services.
If you're looking to create a sleek proposal to impress your audience and sell your service, this is the perfect proposal template for you. The serif font creates a classic look within your proposal that your prospective clients will appreciate.
Design Tip: You can easily use the same font to create different effects, like how you see some headings in all caps and others in title case. You can also try bold versus light, italicized versus normal and more.
Who Is It For: Editors, proofreaders and freelance writers.
Check out one of the best proposal templates you’ll find anywhere. This proposal template makes it easy to input a map to showcase your business's various locations, your team, your workflow and more. Simply plug in your information, find relevant photos, change the fonts and colors, and complete your proposal design.
Design Tip: Play with columns or rows in your proposal. You don't have to use a full page. Instead, try working with a two-column look in your proposal.
Who Is It For: Technical writers, documentation specialists and businesses offering technical writing services.
Utilize stock photos strategically to provide accents and visual details within your proposal. This proposal template places navy blue color overlays on top of most stock photos, which you can easily customize with your own brand colors.
Design Tip: Use relevant icons to kick off each section. Visme's icon library is full of thousands of color-changeable vector icons and illustrations that will set your proposal apart from the rest.
Who Is It For: Email marketers and marketing agencies.
Showcasing testimonials is an important part of your proposal, so you want to take advantage of a proposal template that already has a page set out for these. Testimonials are a great way to show potential clients that you have previous client success stories.
Peter O'Callaghan, Head of Marketing at ScrapingBee, emphasizes the need to include testimonials in proposals.
"When we can drop in a quote from a happy client or show how quickly we can deliver results, it brings our proposal to life says Peter."
Design Tip: Place a stock photo across your entire page and use translucent or opaque sections to place text and other informational elements on top.
Who Is It For: Copywriters, content writers and marketing agencies.
This standard proposal template is perfect for international companies who want to showcase the vast variety of services offered by their business. Include a map, flags, icons, text and more to give prospective clients the full scope of what you can offer them.
Design Tips: Using white and light grey to create two-tone pages can create a new depth for your proposal.
Who Is It For: Translation agencies, freelance translators and businesses offering language services.
There's a plethora of information you might want to include within your proposal, but our proposal templates include pre-written copy to help guide your proposals.
You can easily customize our proposal designs to make them work for your business or industry and to perfectly sell or promote your product or service to your prospective client or customer. Use Visme’s analytics tool to see who has clicked on or viewed your proposal.
Design Tip: You don't have to take up a full page with your content. Take a page out of this proposal template's book and create a ton of white space and minimal content by using a full page for a small piece of content.
Who Is It For: Transcriptionists, language service providers and businesses offering transcription services.
Showcase a lot of color on your proposal designs with a template like this one. With this stunning bright blue utilized throughout the pages, your content will really stand out to your audience.
You can take advantage of this beautiful blue, or update the accent color to your brand color. Use this color in a variety of page designs to grab your reader's attention.
Design Tip: Use cutouts of your digital products within your proposal template. You can create mockups or use cutouts provided in Visme's stock photo library to create this effect.
Who Is It For: SEO specialists, SEO agencies and digital marketing agencies.
Visme offers a wide range of proposal templates that allow you to find the perfect fit for your next proposal. You can also streamline your proposal-making process with Visme's AI Proposal Generator; enter your prompt, and the AI chat assistant generates a proposal that fits your needs, industry and style within minutes.
Utilize one of these proposal templates to start customizing your own proposal and generate sales and conversions today.
Sign up for your Visme account and start creating your proposal, wowing your audience and showcasing your product or services.
The purpose of a proposal is to effectively communicate a well-structured plan, address a problem or opportunity, and persuade the audience to accept the proposed solution or take the desired course of action. Proposals also help communicate value, build trust and credibility and guide decision-making for stakeholders.
Here are some of the benefits of using a proposal template:
A well-crafted business proposal should include the following key elements:
A business plan serves as a comprehensive document that outlines the overall strategy, objectives, and operational details of a business. It provides a roadmap for internal stakeholders and potential investors to understand the company’s goals, operations, and financial projections.
On the other hand, a business proposal is a focused document that presents a specific solution or project to a potential client or business partner. The goal of a business proposal is to persuade the recipient to accept the proposal, enter into a partnership, or engage in a business transaction.
The best proposal template format can vary depending on the specific requirements of your industry, organization, or the type of proposal you’re creating. However, the format below communicates your ideas effectively and is applicable to a wide range of use cases.
There are generally four types of proposals: external, internal, unsolicited and solicited.
When a proposal is written by and for the stakeholders or members of the same company or organization, it’s called an internal proposal.
Businesses primarily use these types of proposals to offer solutions to internal problems, suggest new projects, request funding or propose changes to company policies.
An external proposal is written for some individuals or organizations outside the writer’s organization. They are mostly written in a formal tone and are used for purposes like winning a new customer, securing funding from investors, selling products or services and more.
A solicited proposal is mostly the one you submit to respond to a request for proposal. When an organization or individual needs a solution to a problem, they ask for proposals to address it. Then, they choose the most convincing proposal from several options to decide which service they will use.
An unsolicited business proposal is one you send to offer your products, services or solutions to a business or organization without being asked. This proposal aims to introduce a new product, service, or idea and persuade the potential customer to work with you. Unsolicited proposals are generally broader than solicited ones because you haven’t discussed the prospect’s needs beforehand.
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