Monday, March 1, 2021

How to Make Business Proposal Presentations in PowerPoint (+ Video)

How to Make Business Proposal Presentations in PowerPoint (+ Video)

Do you need to impress a client to close a deal? Winning a potential client is a challenge — you need to be able to present your solution in a compelling manner. A business proposal presentation can help.

Project Proposal PowerPoint Template

Everything begins with a good business proposal presentation. Whether you’re trying to sell your products or services to a prospective client or proposing a new venture internally, knowing how to make a business proposal that stands out will help your leg up on the competition.

In this guide, we’ve outlined some valuable tips that'll help you effectively express your business proposal presentation to impress your potential clients. We’ve also lined up some creative business proposal PowerPoint templates to make you feel inspired and get you started. Finally, you'll learn how to make a proposal presentation with PowerPoint.

Why Make a Business Proposal Presentation?

A business proposal is any business offer document sent to a prospective client. Its main goal is to persuade an organization to purchase your product or service over your competitors. This is why a business proposal can make or break a deal.

Usually, a proposal can be solicited or unsolicited. A solicited business proposal is sent when prospective clients actively seeking for offers that'll meet their specific needs. On the other hand, an unsolicited proposal is when you offer your solution to potential clients without them requesting a proposal.

Here’s a sample business proposal PowerPoint presentation with a clean and modern design that’s both informative and visually appealing at the same time.

Business Proposal Presentation

While it may take into any form, a business proposal PowerPoint presentation is highly recommended because of its visual narrative. Although, it doesn’t mean you don’t need to create a formal business proposal document. In fact, making a business proposal PPT presentation is complementary to that. It'll help you convince potential clients even more.

Hundreds of Business Proposal PowerPoint Templates on Envato Elements

business proposal powerpoint templates
Business proposal templates on Envato Elements

If you're creating business proposals quite often you should consider Envato Elements. It's a one stop shop for all your creative needs. Access hundreds of business proposal PPT templates, images, graphics and all sorts of design assets for a low monthly fee. Sign up for Envato Elements and get instant access to a library of over million digital assets, including modern business proposals.

Envato Elements is a great choice if you need design assets on a regular basis. But, if you prefer to buy your digital assets one at a time, check out our ever growing collection of professional business proposal templates on GraphicRiver.

How to Quickly Make Business Proposal Presentations in PowerPoint With Templates

Are you interested in learning how to use PowerPoint to make business proposals? Watch this quick screencast to learn all about creating proposals with PowerPoint:

Or, study the complete written tutorial below.

How to Create a Winning Business Proposal

A poorly designed business proposal PowerPoint presentation will surely kill your chances of closing a deal.

If you want to know how to make a business proposal presentation that captivates your audience from start to finish, here’s a guide full of tips and inspiration to achieve that:

1. Study the Clients and State Their Needs

Before doing any business proposal, it’s crucial to do your homework first by knowing who your potential client is. Without a complete picture of who they are, how they operate, and what their needs are, you won't understand how to engage them properly with your business proposal presentation.

The first step is to conduct client research to develop a more detailed idea of their needs and how your services or products will satisfy them. Here are some tips to study your clients:

  • Visit their website.
  • Look at their social media accounts.
  • Know their history, core values, etc.
  • Understand their target market.
  • Identify their problems.
  • Check out their competitors.

You can now use that deeper knowledge and understanding of your potential clients into your business proposal PowerPoint presentation. The tone of your contents and design elements should adapt according to your clients. Once they see your business proposal presentation, they’ll immediately recognize that you’ve made the effort to understand them first.

SWOT Analysis
An environmental scanning such as SWOT analysis of your potential client is a good way to include in your business proposal presentation.

2. Demonstrate How You Can Solve the Problem

What are you bringing to the table? How do you plan to solve their problems? Why should they choose your solutions over others?

Take what you’ve researched about your prospective clients and put them into how you craft your answers to the above questions. The best way to demonstrate how you can solve their problem is by telling them exactly what they're in for through the first two slides.

Summarize your solution in a brief and concise manner from the very beginning. Let them know what certain aspects of your solution will help them achieve their business goals. This will keep your clients engaged with the rest of your business proposal presentation.

Summarize Your Solution
When summarizing your solutions, make sure to avoid lengthy contents. If you can, break your solutions into easy-to-digest steps with visual aids.

3. Follow a Seamless Structure

A business proposal structure will sketch how your presentation will run. Having a robust and seamless structure will help you navigate your presentation much easier. This will also prevent you from missing some important messages and so that your thoughts won’t get easily rambled.

There’s no right or wrong structure. It actually depends on how you want to tell your message across your potential clients. Here are some common elements requested in a business proposal:

  • title/cover page
  • executive summary
  • statement of problem, issue, or job at hand
  • strategy or approach to solving the problem
  • company services and qualifications
  • cost, payment, and any legal matters
BizPro PowerPoint Proposal Template
The BizPro business proposal PowerPoint template from Elements has a complete business proposal structure that'll help you navigate the whole presentation effectively.

4. Use Compelling Visuals

Instead of writing a lengthy paragraph or text-loaded slides, break down your ideas into simple words or phrases. Then, accompany your slides with impactful images. Photography is a powerful tool to enhance any dull slides and deliver more striking messages.

As much as possible, just keep one photo for each slide or for each point you want to relay. Too many images can also be distracting. Remember, images are just supporting materials to your main content. They act as attention-grabbing elements and will keep your contents more memorable.

Use Compelling Visuals
The Business Proposal Template uses photography to add more zest to the business proposal PowerPoint presentation.

5. Adopt a Consistent Color Palette

Color immediately tells you about your brand and distinguishes you from competitors. It's ideal to use your branding colors. If in case, you only have one color to use, create a color palette of at least three colors to work with. It should be complementary to your brand and must be consistent throughout the presentation.

If you’re unsure which color palette to use, Coolors can help you explore and generate the right color combinations. Although, most business proposal PowerPoint templates already have a built-in color palette that you can use. The key is to align it to your brand’s main color.

Proposal PowerPoint Template
The Proposal PowerPoint Template only has one main color but with different shades of red to give variety and depth to the presentation.

6. Be Mindful of Contrasts

Contrast is a crucial design element when learning how to make a business proposal PowerPoint presentation. It plays a vital role in text legibility. There are certain colors that don’t contrast well like pink on the background and yellow for the text. Ensure that you've got enough contrast between the background color and the opposing text color.

Text legibility is also a priority when using an image as a background. A pro tip is to add a black overlay on your text with 50% transparency. This will cast a shadow on your text, becoming much easier to read.

Be Mindful of Contrasts
For example, black and yellow colors have a high contrasting effect.

7. Allow White Space

It’s fun to include different design elements into your business proposal presentation to make it more attractive and compelling. However, you also need to give some room for your business proposal PPT to breath.

Designs are effective when they're used at a minimum. Overdoing it will just make your business proposal PPT to get cluttered and harder to digest. Adding some white spaces or negative spaces into your presentation is a good aesthetic composition.

Line breaks add more white space, which gives readers’ eyes a break before going to important messages. This allows them to absorb the information better. To add more white spaces, use numbered lists and bullet points to your slides.

Allow White Space
The BizPro template effectively uses white space to give some breather to the business proposal presentation. 

8. Prepare Proper Typography

How you visually deliver your content will also matter. This is where typography becomes a crucial element on how to make a business proposal. You should establish a typographic hierarchy that'll help you organize your content better. For example, you should have various font size and font family rules for headings, subheadings, body copy, etc.

This will help you differentiate certain ideas and body of thoughts easily. If all of your contents have the same font family and size, this will easily ramble the messages that you want to relay. With hierarchy, your contents are quicker to scan and read.

Prepare Proper Typography
Effective typography ensures that font size, font family, and capitalization are carefully thought out to distinguish different contents or ideas.

9. Apply Varied Slide Layouts

Variety of slide layouts is also important on a business proposal PowerPoint. Having just one slide layout across your presentation will make it dull and boring. Make sure to excite your audience by using varied slide layouts for different ideas or sections.

Noah Business PowerPoint Template
Noah Business PowerPoint template has varied slide layouts to differentiate and transition sections of the business proposal presentation.

10. Overcome Text Overload With Iconography

Because a business proposal PPT is mainly for visuals, you've got to significantly reduce the number of texts compared to the main business proposal document. The business proposal PowerPoint is designed as your guide when presenting and not as a full quotation document.

The use of iconography will help you lessen the number of texts in your PowerPoint. This will also help you relay your ideas much faster. Remember to align the icons to your brand and they should all be uniform in style.

Font Awesome Icons
The business proposal templates on Envato Elements already contain a huge library of cool icons.

11. End With a Winning Call to Action

Lastly, close your business proposal presentation with a compelling call to action. You’re proposing because you want your audience to take specific actions at the end of the presentation. 

With this, make sure that your audience knows what to do next. As much as possible, keep your call to action direct to the point and clear enough to comprehend. Don’t forget to set timelines and expectations for follow-ups.

5 Top Business Proposal PowerPoint PPT Presentation Templates

Designing a beautiful and compelling business proposal PowerPoint can be touch, especially if designs aren't your forte. Luckily, there are already highly customizable business proposal presentation templates to help you with this pressure.

Here are five top business proposal PPT templates that you can use or draw inspiration from:

1. Proposal PowerPoint

Proposal PowerPoint

Proposal PowerPoint is a clean and scalable business proposal PowerPoint template with striking colors and graphics.

Suitable for: eCommerce, product promotions, enterprise accounts.

2. Minimal Proposal

Minimal Proposal

Minimal Proposal is a creative and multipurpose template with a minimalistic feature and professional finish.

Suitable for: Banking, finance, and IT industries.

3. Project Proposal PowerPoint Template

Project Proposal PowerPoint Template

Project Proposal PowerPoint Template is intended to make a highly data-driven presentation a much visually appealing one.

Suitable for: In-house special projects, small and medium businesses.

4. Business Proposal PowerPoint Template

Business Proposal PowerPoint Template

Business Proposal PowerPoint Template has grand and bold designs to help your proposals stand out.

Suitable for: All types of industries, small or large enterprises.

5. Pro Business Proposal Template - (PPT)

Pro Business Proposal Template - PPT

Pro Business Proposal Template - (PPT) is intended for traditional style seekers. It's got a good balance of professional and modern designs.

Suitable for: Companies with traditional style but also want to amp up their game.

More Awesome PowerPoint Templates 

The above is just a small selection of awesome and modern PowerPoint templates. To see even more great PowerPoint templates, check out these posts:

5 Quick Business Proposal PowerPoint Slide Design Trends for 2020

To make sure your presentation looks modern and professional, it pays to know the current PowerPoint slide design trends. Here are five quick business proposal slide design trends to make use of in 2020:

1. Create an Impactful Cover

Your proposal cover is a great way to pique the interest of your audience and give them a quick taste of your brand. Make an impactful proposal cover by including a photo of your business or your team. Or choose another eye-catching image.

Wynter Business PowerPoint Template
Wynter Business PowerPoint Template

2. Experiment With Color

Add a touch of creativity to your proposal by experimenting with color. Use colored shapes as background or use colored overlays on your photos to make them stand out.

3. Infographics and Charts Are Best for Presenting Data

Use plenty of infographics, charts, and other visual elements to present the data in your proposal. This will make it easier for your audience to visualize abstract ideas and make them more engaged with the proposal.

BizPro Business PowerPoint Presentation Template
BizPro Business PowerPoint Presentation Template

4. Go Vertical

Consider using a vertical layout for your business proposal. Since most proposals are in horizontal format, this is a good way for yours to stand out. There's no shortage of vertical PowerPoint templates on Envato Elements. 

5. White Space Is Still Relevant

White space simply refers to empty or negative space around various elements on your slide. Make use of this slide design trend and make sure there’s plenty of space on each of your slides so the entire design can breathe.

Project Proposal PowerPoint Template
Project Proposal PowerPoint Template

Learn More About Making Great PowerPoint Presentations

PowerPoint is a powerful program that allows you to create any type of presentation. There’s a lot to learn about making great PowerPoint presentations and we've got plenty of tutorials to help you:

Get Started on Your Next PowerPoint Business Proposal Presentation Now

Any good business proposal is accompanied by a powerful business proposal PowerPoint. If you want your message to be more impactful, ensure that you've got followed our above guide on how to make a business proposal presentation.

There’s a wide range of business proposal PowerPoint templates from Envato Elements that you can get inspired with or get you already started. If you want to explore more, there are also some good selections on GraphicRiver.

But, above all, it won’t be as effective without understanding who your prospective client is. Knowing what their needs are and how your solution could help them are the two foundations of a compelling business proposal presentation.

Editorial Note: This post was originally published in June of 2019. It's been revised to make it current, accurate, and up to date by our staff—with special assistance from Brenda Barron. Video added by Andrew Childress


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