The Agency Proposal Workflow: From Client Brief to Signed Deal

Most agencies don't have a proposal process. They have a panic process. A prospect drops a vague email about their needs. Your account manager scrambles to find the right strategist. Your designer gets pulled away from current work. Someone writes something in Google Docs at 10 PM. You hit send on Friday. Then you wait.

That's not a workflow. That's chaos with a PDF attachment.

When I ran my agency, we lost deals because we were slow — not because our work was bad. We were slow because we didn't have clarity on who did what, when it had to happen, and what tools we'd use to get it done. After building structure around the process, we cut proposal turnaround from ten days to two. Our win rate went up 34%. Here's exactly how we did it.

Step 1: The Discovery Call

Everything starts here. You can't write a good proposal without understanding what the client actually needs. This is where most agencies fail—they treat discovery as a box to check, not a conversation to win.

Schedule 60 minutes. Your account manager should always be on the call, plus someone with decision-making authority—usually your lead strategist or project lead. If they can't make it, reschedule. Don't send a junior coordinator to handle this one solo.

Have your strategist listening for three things:

• Current state:What's broken? What aren't they happy with right now?
• Success metrics:What does winning look like? Leads, revenue, brand awareness?
• Constraints:Budget, timeline, existing systems, team limitations.

Take real notes. Not the "everything they say matters" kind of notes. The "these three details will influence our proposal" kind. After the call, have your strategist spend 15 minutes documenting what you heard. This becomes your source of truth for the proposal.

This whole step should take 90 minutes of your time (60 minutes on the call, 30 minutes of notes). If it takes longer, you're overthinking it.

Step 2: Internal Strategy Session

Now's when your team gets together and decides what you're actually going to propose. This is different from the discovery call—you're not listening anymore. You're planning.

Block 90 minutes on the calendar. Get your account manager, lead strategist, and whoever will be leading the actual work once the contract is signed. For a content project, that might be your senior copywriter. For a design build, your technical lead.

Your agenda is simple:

1. 1Can we do this? Do you have capacity and expertise? Or are you overpromising?
2. 2What's the scope? Be specific. Not "SEO strategy." "Technical audit, 15-keyword research report, monthly strategy calls."
3. 3What's the timeline? How long will this actually take? Pad by 20% for client delays and revisions.
4. 4What's the price? Don't leave this ambiguous. Know your number before you write the proposal.

Document this in a shared space—Notion, Asana, or Google Docs. Whatever your team uses. This becomes the brief for whoever's writing the proposal.

Step 3: Writing the Proposal

This is where most agencies waste time. They start from scratch every time. Custom cover page. Custom design. Custom everything. By the time the proposal is done, two weeks have passed and the client's enthusiasm has cooled.

Use a template. A really good template. If you don't have one, build it now. Your proposal should have:

• Executive summary:3-4 sentences. What they're getting and why it matters.
• The situation:Mirror back what you heard in the discovery call. Show you were listening.
• Our approach:Your methodology. How you'll get them from point A to point B.
• Deliverables:Specific, numbered, clear. Not ambiguous.
• Timeline:Month by month. When they'll see work. When they need to make decisions.
• Investment:Price, payment terms, what's included and what's not.
• Team bios:Who they'll be working with. Keep it short—one paragraph per person.

Your strategist writes the bulk of this. Your account manager adds the client-specific personalization. Your designer tweaks it. The whole thing should take 4-8 hours max, not three days.

And yes, use tools designed for this. We moved from Google Docs to a proposal software after losing too many hours to formatting issues. Tools like Propovo integrate your proposal with the contract and signature process, so you're not manually recreating the same information three times.

Step 4: Internal Review and Approval

Don't send a proposal that hasn't been reviewed. Ever. This is where typos slip through, numbers don't match, and you accidentally promise the impossible.

Create a checklist. Before a proposal leaves your doors, someone needs to verify:

• All numbers are consistent (scope, timeline, price)
• There are no typos or grammar errors
• The team member bios are up to date
• The timeline is realistic given current workload
• Client name is spelled correctly (sounds silly, it happens)
• All file names are professional

This review should take 30 minutes. Not two hours. If it takes longer, your proposal is probably too complex.

Pro tip: Have someone who wasn't involved in the proposal review it. They'll catch things your team is too close to see. We use Slack for this—strategist posts the draft, account manager and a peer reviewer add comments, changes get made, and then it's ready to send.

Step 5: Sending and Presentation

Timing matters. Send proposals on Tuesday or Wednesday. Not Friday—they'll sit until Monday and lose momentum. Not Monday—they're overwhelmed.

Send it in the morning, 9-10 AM your time. Give them a few hours to digest it before you follow up that afternoon.

The email matters too. Don't just attach a PDF and say "Here's our proposal." That's lazy. Your account manager should write something like:

Hi [Name],

I've attached our proposal for the [Project Name] work. As we discussed, we're planning a [brief description of approach] delivered over [timeline].

I'm available for a 20-minute call this week to walk through any questions. What day works best for you?

Talk soon.

If it's a larger deal, do a presentation call. Not to pitch—they already know what you do. To walk them through the approach and make sure they have no questions. Your strategist should lead this, not your account manager.

Keep the call to 30 minutes max. Make it conversational. Ask them questions. Don't read the proposal back to them—they already read it.

Step 6: Follow-up Strategy

The proposal sits in their inbox. Three days go by. No response. Your account manager wonders if they should send a follow-up. Don't wonder. Have a system.

After sending the proposal:

• Day 0: Send proposal in the morning. Follow-up email that afternoon if no response.
• Day 3: If you haven't heard back, send a follow-up. Not "Did you get it?" but "I had a thought about your content strategy and wanted to share it before our call."
• Day 7: One more follow-up. Now it's "I'm going to assume you're busy. Let me know if you have any questions or if now isn't the right timing."
• Day 14: If nothing, move on. Reach back out in a few weeks with a different angle.

Most deals close in the first week or they don't close at all. Use your follow-ups to figure out which is which, not to be annoying.

Step 7: Negotiation and Close

They came back with questions. Good. Questions mean they're interested.

But they almost always want one of three things: more scope for the same price, the same scope for less money, or a longer timeline than you proposed. This is where having that internal strategy session earlier really pays off. You already know what you can flex.

Do not let your account manager negotiate scope and price alone. Get your strategist on the call. Most negotiations aren't about the number—they're about timeline or deliverables. Your strategist can make trade-off decisions that your account manager can't.

Example negotiation moves:

• They want more scope:"We can add a competitive analysis, but that pushes the deliverables to month two instead of month one. Does that work?"
• They want a lower price:"I can bring that down to [X] if we reduce the monthly strategy calls from four to two. Would that work for your team?"
• They want a longer timeline:"That's fine. We'd recommend starting in [month], so we can deliver the first phase by [date]."

Once you agree on terms, get it in writing immediately. Use a contract template that's already reviewed by your lawyer. Don't send a new contract from scratch. That adds another week to the process.

And here's where Propovo saves you hours: send the proposal and contract together, digitally signed. No more back-and-forth with scan-to-PDF horror shows. No more "Can you email it to accounting?" It all happens in one place.

Frequently Asked Questions