A business proposal template your client opens on their phone.

What is in the template

The structure comes from proposals that got signed, not from a design gallery. Each section answers a question the client is already asking.

• Where you are. What you took from the call, in the client's own terms. It ends with "tell me if I have got anything wrong", which is the sentence that gets a reply.
• The one thing to get right first. One paragraph. Most proposals bury it under scope.
• The shape. Before, during, after: what happens before the start date, what the engagement looks like while it runs, and what it becomes when it ends.
• Month by month. Or phase by phase. Three to five bullets each, written as outcomes rather than tasks.
• How we will know. The two or three numbers you will both watch, and where they will be read from.
• The fee, stated once, early. A fee on the third line is a sign of confidence. A fee on the last page is a sign of a document written to avoid the conversation.
• Next steps. What happens if the answer is yes, and by when.

How to use it

1. Publish it. Press Use this template. It lands in your account as a private page with an unguessable link, nothing public, nothing indexed.
2. Fill it in. Three ways. Edit the HTML and publish it back to the same link. Or open your editor with the page and ask Claude Code or Cursor to fill the sections from your notes. Or give the template and your discovery call transcript to Claude, Claude Design, or Cowork and ask for a first draft in this exact structure.
3. Check the ten percent. With a model draft the errors are always in the same places: the fee, the dates, and the paragraph where the model filled a gap the call left. Read those three before anything else.
4. Send the link. Passcode it, or limit it to the client's company email. Send it in the same email you would have attached the file to.
5. Change it after the call. Publish the revised file to the same link. The client's bookmark now shows the revision, and nothing has been sent twice.

Turn a discovery call into a proposal with Claude Design

If you write proposals every week, this is the loop that pays for itself. It takes an afternoon to set up once.

1. Point Claude Design at your website and ask it for a design system from your branding: fonts, colours, spacing.
2. Give it this template and a proposal you have actually sent, and ask it to make the template yours: your voice, your sections, your design system.
3. After each discovery call, drop the transcript in and ask it to fill the template from the call, using your design system.
4. Read the fee, the dates, and any sentence that sounds more certain than the call was. Fix those.
5. Publish it here. Passcode, link, read receipt. The client never sees a file.

The design pass on this site does the last part of step two for a page that arrived plain: it rebuilds the page to a consistent standard before the client sees it, and shows you the result before anything changes.

Why a page rather than a PDF

A PDF is finished the moment it leaves. A page is finished when the client says yes. Between those two moments the fee changes, a date moves, a section is added because the client asked a question on the call, and a PDF means sending version three with a subject line that says version three. A page keeps one link and one version, the current one.

A page also tells you what happened next. You see when it was opened and by how many people, which is the difference between "they have gone quiet" and "the CFO opened it on Tuesday". If you switch on the question box, you see what they asked, which is the list of things the next proposal should say up front.

Proposal, project proposal, or statement of work?

Use this one to win the work: it argues. Use the project proposal when the client already wants you and needs the plan: scope, timeline, investment. Use the statement of work when the plan is agreed and needs signing off: what is in, what is out, milestones, change control. Many engagements use all three, in that order, and all three can live at the same client address.