proposal presentation script

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Blog Business How To Create A Winning Business Proposal Presentation

How To Create A Winning Business Proposal Presentation

Written by: Krystle Wong Jun 28, 2023

In the corporate landscape, a good business proposal presentation can be a game-changer to seal the deal with your prospective client or investors.  

Think of your business proposal presentations as your chance to showcase your groundbreaking ideas, products or services to potential clients, investors and stakeholders. Whether you’re convincing investors to fund your dreams or clients to choose your services, creating a compelling presentation can make them go, “You know what? I’m sold!”

A good presentation simplifies the complex. It breaks down complicated concepts into bite-sized pieces that even those who are not in the industry can understand. I know I know, it’s no easy work and you’ve got enough on your plate — so let our selection of pitch deck templates take the load off the design work. 

Customizing a compelling business proposal presentation takes only minutes thanks to Venngage’s user-friendly drag-and-drop editor. Just so you know, some of our presentation templates are free to use and some require a small monthly fee. Sign-up is always free, as is access to Venngage’s online drag-and-drop editor.

Now that you’ve got one less thing to worry about, let’s get back to business on how to create and deliver a winning proposal presentation. 

Click to jump ahead:

What makes a good business proposal , 10 tips to create an effective business proposal presentation, 8 steps to deliver a winning business proposal presentation, create a business proposal presentation that will win over your clients with venngage.

If you’ve read our guide on how to write winning business proposals , you’ll know that a successful business proposal is one that answers the following questions: 

• Who you are and what your company does
• The problem your buyer is facing
• The solution your company offers to alleviate the problem
• How your company will implement this solution effectively
• An estimate of resources (time, money, etc) required to implement the solution

Well, picture this: you’ve spent countless hours crafting a comprehensive business proposal that has the potential to revolutionize your industry. But here’s the catch – you need to condense all that information into a presentation that grabs attention, engages your audience and leaves a lasting impression. 

It’s not easy, but it’s also not impossible. If you have an important proposal presentation coming up, I highly recommend you check out this guide on how to summarize information for presentations . 

A good presentation gets things moving! Check out the top qualities of awesome presentations and learn all about how to make a good presentation to help you nail that captivating delivery.

Now, before we dive deep into the tips and tricks of creating and delivering a successful business proposal presentation, here are some business pitch examples to help you get inspired and win over new clients and investors. Alright, let’s get started!

Still working on your business proposal? Check out our selection of business proposal templates designed by our professional team.

In this competitive business environment, a good presentation gives you an edge over your competitors. It allows you to showcase your unique selling points, competitive advantages and differentiates you from others in the industry.  

Whether it is securing a new client, securing funding or obtaining a favorable business agreement, a successful presentation can ultimately bring significant opportunities and long-term business growth. 

Tip number one: always start with a solid presentation layout . Your presentation should emphasize the most important aspects of your business proposal, ensuring that they stand out and resonate with your audience. To do that, here are 10 tips along with some professionally crafted business proposal presentation templates to help you ace your next business proposal presentation. 

1. Crafting a compelling storyline

A strong narrative structure is the backbone of any successful proposal presentation. Start with a captivating opening that grabs attention and clearly articulates the problem or opportunity at hand. Present your solution with confidence, providing solid evidence and data to support your claims. Finally, conclude with a powerful call to action that leaves your audience inspired and ready to take the next steps.

A timeline graph can help you organize your ideas as you create a compelling storyline for your presentation and make your content more engaging.  Determine the important events or milestones that are relevant to your presentation topic. This will provide a sense of direction and structure for your storyline.

2. Focusing on the problem and solution

One of the keys to an effective business proposal presentation is highlighting the problem or challenge your audience is facing. Clearly communicate how your proposal provides a viable solution in bullet points, emphasizing the benefits and advantages it offers. Show your audience that you understand their pain points and present your proposal as the ideal answer to their needs.

This example of proposal presentation talked about the challenges that beginners face when going to the gym and how they provide the solution for it.

3. Using a consistent and professional template

To create a polished and cohesive visual experience, choose a clean and professional slide template that aligns with your brand colors. Consistency in design throughout the presentation not only enhances the overall look but also reinforces your professionalism and attention to detail.

Last-minute presentations are the worst, but don’t panic! Customize one of our professionally designed business presentation templates to save time and hassle.

4. engaging with visuals.

A picture is worth a thousand words and in the case of your proposal presentation, visuals can be your secret weapon. Visuals play a crucial role in capturing your audience’s attention and making complex information more digestible. Utilize charts, graphs, images and diagrams strategically to support your key points and reinforce your message. 

As a business owner, a well-thought-out finance pitch deck provides a platform to outline the business’s strategic direction and growth plans. It allows you to highlight your unique value proposition, competitive positioning, marketing strategies and expansion plans. Here’s a template I figured you could use:

No idea what goes into your financial pitch deck? This guide on how to make successful pitch decks for start ups might help. 

5. addressing potential objections.

Many business proposal presentations fail to anticipate potential objections or concerns audiences might have. Showing that you’ve considered challenges and providing persuasive counterarguments or solutions boosts your preparedness and increases the credibility of your proposal. Addressing objections head-on demonstrates your ability to handle potential hurdles and builds trust with your audience.

6. Using multimedia elements in your slides

To add depth and variety to your presentation, consider incorporating multimedia elements such as videos, audio clips, interactive charts or animations. These elements help illustrate concepts, showcase product demonstrations or provide real-life examples, making your proposal more engaging and memorable.

7. Incorporating interactive elements

Depending on the platform or setting of your presentation, incorporating interactive elements can enhance engagement. Live polls, Q&A sessions or group exercises encourage active participation, clarification and a deeper understanding of your proposal. Creating opportunities for interaction keeps your audience engaged and invested in the presentation.

8. Testing the readability and accessibility of your slides

Ensure that your slides are easily readable on different devices and screen sizes. Test for color blindness accessibility by using tools or viewing your presentation in grayscale. Consider incorporating alt text for images to make your presentation accessible to visually impaired individuals. Ensuring readability and accessibility demonstrates your commitment to inclusivity and professionalism.

Sometimes, using a simple presentation template makes all the difference as they promote effective communication, minimizes confusion and ensures that the audience can grasp the main points effortlessly. Try it out for your next presentation!

9. practice, practice and practice again.

Even the most well-prepared presentation can fall flat if you stumble through it. So, practice, practice and practice some more. Rehearse your presentation until you feel comfortable and confident. Pay attention to your tone, pace and body language. Incorporate pauses for emphasis, maintain eye contact and engage with your audience. I promise — the more you practice, the more comfortable and effective you’ll become as a presenter.

10. Ending with a memorable closing statement

Leave a lasting impression by crafting a memorable closing statement. Summarize the key benefits of your proposal, reinforce its importance or leave your audience with a thought-provoking quote. End your presentation with a call to action that inspires action and demonstrates the urgency of taking the next steps.

Ready to get started? Pick from these engaging presentation templates that can get your audience hooked on your presentation till the end.

Your business proposal presentation can be the key to securing new clients, partnerships or investment opportunities. That said, delivering a winning presentation requires careful planning, effective communication and a deep understanding of your audience’s needs. 

Follow these 8 essential steps to deliver a persuasive and impactful business proposal presentation:

Step 1: Understand the requirements

Before diving into your business proposal presentation, take the time to clearly understand the requirements. Familiarize yourself with the format, time limit, submission date and any specific guidelines provided by the audience or client. This ensures that you meet their expectations and deliver a presentation that aligns with their needs.

Step 2: Research your audience

To make a lasting impact, conduct thorough research on your audience. Gain insights into their industry, needs, challenges and goals. This information allows you to tailor your presentation to their specific interests, speak their language and demonstrate the relevance of your proposal. It will also help you show that you understand their pain points and present your solution as the perfect fit for their requirements.

For example, this business proposal presentation targets food entrepreneurs and manufacturers who are passionate about the plant-based lifestyle to attract franchisees for their local green ingredients franchise. 

Step 3: Plan your content

A well-organized presentation keeps your audience engaged and makes your proposal more compelling. Develop a clear and logical structure to help strengthen your message and deliver a winning business proposal presentation. Define the key points you want to convey and outline the flow of information and make sure your content effectively addresses the audience’s pain points and emphasizes the benefits of your proposal. 

The opening moments of your presentation hold immense power – check out these 15 ways to start a presentation to set the stage and captivate your audience.

Step 4: Create compelling slides

Design visually appealing slides that support your content and enhance its impact. Use a consistent template that aligns with your branding and maintains a professional look. Incorporate high-quality visuals such as relevant images, charts or graphs to convey information effectively. 

Creativity is important but keep the design clean, uncluttered and focused on conveying your message clearly. Remember, visually engaging slides capture attention and reinforce your professionalism.

Don’t know where to start? Here are 5 ways how you can design winner presentation slides . Or you could browse our library of creative presentation templates that’ll easily set your presentation apart from competitors.

Step 5: engage your audience.

Active audience engagement is key to a successful business proposal presentation. Encourage interaction throughout your presentation by asking thought-provoking questions, seeking input or incorporating interactive elements like polls or group exercises. Show genuine interest in your audience’s feedback and questions as this builds rapport and demonstrates that you value their perspective. Engaging your audience creates a dynamic and memorable experience.

Giving an online presentation? Here are some tips on how to adapt your in-person presentation into a virtual presentation that will leave a lasting impression. 

Step 6: communicate with clarity.

Focus on the key messages and benefits of your proposal. Clear communication is vital to conveying your ideas effectively, so be sure to use language that is easily understandable and free from jargon. Support your points with concrete examples or stories that resonate with your audience. By communicating with clarity, you ensure that your message is easily comprehensible and memorable.

Step 7: Adapt and respond

Flexibility is crucial when delivering a business proposal presentation. Pay close attention to your audience’s reactions, questions and feedback. Be prepared to adapt your presentation on the fly to address their specific needs and concerns. 

The trick is to listen attentively and respond thoughtfully, demonstrating your ability to cater to their requirements. This flexibility and responsiveness build trust and show that you genuinely care about meeting their expectations.

Step 8: Follow up

After concluding your presentation, don’t let the momentum fade away. Follow up with your audience to address any remaining questions, provide additional information or clarify any points. 

Following up with your audience helps maintain the relationship and keeps the conversation going. By staying in touch, you demonstrate your commitment to their success and increase the chances of moving forward with your proposal.

Have another round of presentations coming up? Give it your best with these tips on how to improve your presentation skills . 

A business proposal presentation is not just a chance to present your business idea; it’s a prime opportunity to showcase the unique value, potential and profitability of your business concept 

By following the tips and tricks in this article, I’m confident that business professionals like you can easily win over potential investors and prospective clients.

Venngage offers a wide range of pre-designed templates specifically tailored for business proposals. With the help of Venngage’s presentation maker , creating visually appealing and professional business proposal presentations becomes easier than ever.

Step 1: Sign up for a Venngage account (P.S. It’s free!). 

Step 2:  Browse through Venngage’s template library and choose a business presentation template that suits your needs (they’re all created by our expert in-house designers).

Step 3: Replace the placeholder text in the template with content from your business proposals.

Step 4: Customize your business presentation in just a few clicks with our user-friendly drag-and-drop editor tool. Modify various elements such as text, colors, fonts, backgrounds and layout. Enhance your presentation with visual aids such as images, icons, charts and graphs.

Step 5: Share your presentation publicly or upgrade to a business account to export the presentation to PowerPoint or PDF. You can also choose to present straight from Venngage’s presentation software.

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How to Present a Business Proposal: The Complete Guide

Benjamin reimann, business proposal | business proposal presentation | how-to | sales tips | winning business, october 7, 2021.

It’s been three long months. You’ve done your research, toiled over every sentence, spent sleepless nights formulating the perfect business proposal. Surely, that should be enough, right?

Wrong. There is one more thing you need to do. And if you get it wrong, it could mean the last three months were for nothing — you need to do a business proposal presentation.

The one thing between your business and the finish line is a compelling presentation where you communicate the key points of your proposed solution. With so much riding on this, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. But don’t worry: by the end of this 8-minute guide, you’ll be an expert on how to present a business proposal.

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• What Is A Business Proposal?
• What Is the Purpose of A Business Proposal Presentation?

Open with the problem or need

Offer a solution and elaborate, finish with a call-to-action, discuss benefits over features., practice incessantly and get lots of feedback., anticipate and incorporate answers to the questions you’ll receive., ask questions throughout to involve the audience., use stories throughout your presentation., provide written copies on the day of the presentation., don’t lean on your slides as a crutch..

• Building a Slide Deck Your Clients Will Remember
• Get Your Business Off The Ground Today With Pure Proposals

How do I write a business proposal?

What is in a business proposal, how long should a business proposal presentation be.

A business proposal is a document you present to a potential client or customers that details a solution to their problem. Typically, business proposals are written documents containing information about deliverables, performance metrics, budgeting projections, expected outcomes, and more.

You’re most likely to see business proposals in a business-to-business (B2B) setting, generally to win over business clients, suppliers, and partners. A proposal can be:

• Formally Solicited: Here, you’re given a list of requirements that you must follow to a tee.
• Informally Solicited: If the client isn’t entirely sure of what the problem or pain point is, they may put out an official request for your research and solutions.
• Unsolicited: These kinds of proposals are uncommon, but they have their place in sales and marketing funnels.

Often, the business proposal process is a laborious one. An in-person presentation tends to be the final barrier to overcome when trying to close a deal with a client.

Typically, after sending a business proposal document, you’ll be called in to deliver a presentation about the proposal. The presentation is where potential clients can finally see the human element of all the documents and spreadsheets they’ve been scanning thus far.

If you can’t communicate the contents of your business proposal clearly through a presentation, then there’s a good chance the days, weeks, or months you’ve spent preparing the proposal could go to waste. A well-delivered proposal presentation will inspire your audience to act then and there to accept your proposition.

• How To Structure Your Business Proposal Presentation

The last thing you want is for your presentation to feel too robotic and formulaic. That said, there are a few essential points you should always hit on:

Let’s dive deeper into each one.

A common mistake is to start with a 30-second spiel about you and your company. The problem? Your audience (aka potential clients) probably doesn’t care about you as much as they care about their own company’s issues. Fortunately, there’s an easy way to get past this: start by detailing their problems.

By opening with the customer’s needs vs. a self-introduction, you achieve three things:

• You demonstrate a vested interest in your clients’ success.
• You’re grabbing your audience’s attention by centering them in the presentation.
• You’ve set off a narrative structure by introducing the conflict. (More on this later).

Make sure to use facts, figures, and statistics here to drive your points home.

This will be the most comprehensive section of your presentation. Draw on the data from your written business proposal to flesh out this area, including information about project details, deliverables, performance metrics, budgets, talent, and more. It’s acceptable to follow the structure of your written proposal, but try to incorporate the details into a narrative format.

You should be going into this meeting with an ask in mind — signing a contract, purchasing a bundle, scheduling the next appointment. Ideally, your presentation leads towards this CTA, so you should make it easy for your audience to follow up: include your contact information on the slide, have printed copies of the contract on hand, etc.

Now that you have a basic idea of the structure of a business proposal presentation, let’s go over some tips to elevate your presentation from good to great.

• 7 Tips on How to Present a Business Proposal Presentation

Have you ever watched an Apple keynote delivered by Steve Jobs? Controversial as the man may have been, one thing is incontestable: he knew how to give a presentation. One of Jobs’ best tricks was to highlight benefits over features. Instead of telling you about the iPod’s internal architecture for data storage, he told you how many songs it could help you fit in your pocket. In your presentation, focus less on the technical specifications of your solution and more on the benefits it will give your client.

Anyone who’s ever winged a presentation with zero preparation knows how frustrating it can be — you know you could do better if only you had more time. Avoid those feelings by practicing as much as you can: in the mirror, in the car, and ideally in front of people who will give you honest and constructive feedback. That leads nicely into the following tip:

There’s a good chance you’ll offer your audience a Q&A period at the end of your business proposal presentation.To avoid getting caught off-guard, get questions from a practice audience in advance. If you can seamlessly mold the answers into your presentation, incorporate them. If not, it doesn’t hurt to have an appendix section at the end of your PowerPoint that you can use to address your potential client’s concerns. Speaking of questions…

Every effective presentation starts with a hook: a startling statistic, the start of a story, an exciting discovery, or a question for the audience. A common mistake is to stop there. You want your audience engaged throughout your business proposal presentation, after all. Include questions and tone shifts at various points in your PowerPoint to give your audience a chance to participate and engage.

Another powerful tool to keep your audience engaged is storytelling. Remember that narrative structure we mentioned earlier? Our brains are wired to process and recall information better if it’s framed in a story. The structure up above is a straightforward iteration of that: problem, solution, epilogue. You can also use smaller stories to add credibility during your presentation: customer testimonials, past achievements, and beyond.

It would be wrong to assume that every single person you’re presenting to has read the extended business proposal. That’s why it’s an excellent idea to have printed copies of the proposal ready and available when you give your presentation. It shows preparation and consideration for your client — a winning combination.

Technology is incredible. Unfortunately, it is also unreliable. You’ve probably been in a situation where technical difficulties have sullied, even ruined, a presentation or pitch. If you grow dependent on your slides to deliver the business proposal presentation, you’ll be in trouble if (and when) you run into computer issues. Construct your presentation so that it works without any slides — it’ll keep you prepared for the worst-case scenario.

So we’ve established that over-reliance on your PowerPoint presentation is a bad idea — but that doesn’t mean you ignore it entirely. Here are five tips for selecting, designing, and building an unforgettable slide deck:

Use consistent typography. Your slide aesthetics are a crucial part of conveying professionalism and thoughtfulness to your audience. Use a legible font (Sans Serif and some Serif fonts will do the trick) with enough contrast that viewers can read if they want to.

Follow a visually appealing color palette. A well-designed slide deck will flow seamlessly with your spoken presentation, but an ugly one will distract from your speech entirely. Keep it simple and stick to three to five colors that complement each other and your brand (or even your clients’).

Vary your slide layouts. Do your best to keep your PowerPoint visually interesting. Following the same format for every slide looks boring and comes across as lazy. Try slides with lots of whitespace and a central statistic, or one that’s entirely an image. On the subject of images…

Add distinctive images over generic ones. Your viewers will remember 65% of the details you provide when an image accompanies them. Unfortunately, that effect loses power when you use grainy, low-quality, and generic photos. Choose diagrams wisely — they should complement or clarify what you’re talking about, not just show it visually.

Don’t overload with text. When most people see a slide deck filled with text, they automatically start reading it. The result? They’re no longer paying attention to you. Don’t add a word-for-word transcript to your slide — instead, summarize the key points and expand upon them verbally.

You’ve got what you need to deliver a presentation that will amaze your client — all that’s left to do is present it! Show up early, speak with confidence, and have faith: you’re going to do great!.

By now, you’ve probably realized that the business proposal process is hard work. In all honesty, you probably just want to get back to the thing you love: your company.

That’s where we come in; here at Pure Proposals, our mission is to help your business thrive using PandaDoc to boost your sales, improve customer experience, and make proposals easier.

Curious to learn more? Chat with us today !

• Frequently Asked Questions

Your first step is to determine what the company requires from you — is it a formally solicited proposal? If not, follow traditional conventions: a title page, table of contents, executive summary, statement of need, proposed solution, explanation of capacity, projected billing and budget, and final terms and conditions. Check out our dedicated post on “How to Write a Business Proposal” .

A business proposal contains information regarding a client’s issues or pain points and a proposed solution on how to solve them. Business proposals tend to be data-driven and well-researched, so they may contain diagrams, graphs, and spreadsheets too.

Depending on the situation, varying proposal lengths are appropriate. For a more casual context, a one-pager that covers the basics is all you need. A longer document (around ten pages) is a better fit in more formal settings, such as with prospective customers.

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Make a Winning Business Proposal Presentation in 11 Steps

Learn how to create business proposal presentations that stand out and win deals. Apply battle-tested best practices and actionable tips from sales pros.

9 minute read

helped business professionals at:

Short answer

What makes a good business proposal presentation?

An outstanding business proposal presentation combines clarity, conciseness, and compelling storytelling.

It should be visually engaging, tailored to the audience's interests, and demonstrate a deep understanding of their needs, setting the stage for successful collaboration.

Your business proposal is your last chance to impress

Making a business proposal presentation is your money time at the end of a long, exhausting sales process with a prospective client. Losing your sale at this stage would be most painful.

It can be overwhelming when you realize how much is riding on this one proposal.

Sending out an ill-made business proposal puts you at risk of losing your client’s buy-in at the very last moment.

This situation is stressful for most people, but it doesn’t have to be. To make this process as stress-free as can be, I put together a guide on how to make a proposal presentation that will give you a leg up over your competitors.

Let's get started!

What does a business proposal presentation look like?

A business proposal presentation today goes beyond traditional slides filled with bullet points. It's a deck that blends text, compelling visuals, and even interactive elements like charts, graphs, and short videos.

This modern approach reflects how we engage with content in our digital age – visually and interactively.

Here's what a modern business proposal presentation looks like:

11 steps for making a winning business proposal presentation

Whether you’re selling products or services to prospective clients or pitching new ventures, business presentations are an everyday part of modern business.

Still, most business professionals don’t know how to do it right.

The reason why so many business proposal presentations fail is that not all elements of a successful business proposal presentation are in place. You can ensure your presentation impresses prospects every time by following the following best practices.

1) Do your research about the prospect

Before you set out to craft your business proposal presentation, you must conduct thorough research about the company you’re going to be pitching to.

Often, the difference between a knockout business presentation and a poor one is the level of confidence during the delivery. Carrying out a great deal of detailed research beforehand will give you the confidence needed to ace the presentation. Here's an example of how you can present your findings in a concise way:

The key pieces of information you need to get are:

What is the company size and sector?

What do their internal processes look like?

Who are the main decision-makers in the company?

Who are they selling their products and services to? Is it a B2B or B2C company?

What is your prospect’s most pressing problem?

What are they hoping to achieve?

What is your role in helping them reach these goals?

What is their allocated budget?

Have they ever used other industry solutions?

Finding the answers to these questions will ensure that your lead is qualified and allow you to bring up relevant insights during your presentation.

It will also make your prospect feel understood , which will capture their attention and boost your closing rate.

How to get information about your prospect

Making a discovery call

Visiting their website

Observing their social media accounts

Analyzing their competitors

B2B databases, such as G2 or Capterra

Data prospecting tools like ZoomInfo or Lusha

2) Personalize your proposal presentation

If you do your homework right and know who your potential client is, you will be able to deliver a tailor-made business proposal presentation.

Our research shows that by personalizing your proposal, you’re increasing the number of people who will read your deck in full by 68% as compared to generic presentations.

If you think about it, it makes perfect sense. Every single email that starts with “Dear Owner” or “Dear User” immediately goes to live in my Bin folder.

By including a personal note tailored to your recipient, you’re skyrocketing the chances of it living rent-free in their head instead.

4 main ways to personalize your business proposal presentation:

I) Add company-specific insights

This can be anything you learned while doing your research on the prospect or something they mentioned during a discovery call.

II) Include your client’s name and logo in every business proposal presentation

If you’re using a PowerPoint this means going in and manually adding the identifying info into the deck.

If you’re using Storydoc, then this can easily be streamlined for scale using dynamic variables that change specific info for specific recipients.

This feature swaps out your client’s details while the rest of your deck stays intact, and with a 10-second setup, you’re good to go.

Here's how it works:

III) Include your prospect’s branding

If you’re using PowerPoint, then you’ll have to go in and change the design and visuals in your deck to fit your prospect’s branding. Alternatively, you can use a DIY tool like Snappa’s SVG editor or Logo.com’s logo generator .

With Storydoc, you can automatically apply branding pulled from any given website just by providing the website address—including the brand’s colors and fonts.

This will make an impact on your prospect while requiring minimal effort on your part, let alone involving a designer.

IV) Keep your proposal relevant at all times

When choosing client stories to share in your business proposal, stick to companies from a similar field.

Show a deep understanding of your prospect’s industry, key pain points, and competitors. This will make it easier for them to visualize what your solution can do for them.

3) Use a battle-tested presentation structure

It doesn’t matter if you’re in the last stage of your sales pipeline or still moving prospects down the funnel.

There are some common elements each business proposal presentation needs to have in order to perform exceptionally.

In our usage data we see presentations with similar business proposal structures outperform the rest time and time again.

What to include in a business proposal presentation

8 essential slides of a business proposal presentation:

1. Title page: This should include essential information such as your company's name, the client's name, and logo, along with the submission date.

2. Assessment or project overview: Here, clearly define the client's problem or need and outline your proposed solution. This section establishes the context and purpose of your proposal.

3. Executive summary: Offer a concise summary of your proposal, highlighting your unique value proposition. For tips on how to write one, read our 101 guide .

4. Methodology: The how to your what and why . In this part, you should explain the methods you’ll use to deliver on your promises and include a list of deliverables with a projected timetable.

5. Pricing: Provide a clear, transparent breakdown of costs for your services or products. Offering multiple pricing options can cater to different client needs or budgets.

6. Proof of qualifications: Showcase your credibility with evidence of past successes. Include case studies, testimonials, relevant certifications, and any industry awards you've received.

7. Team: Introduce the key team members who will be involved in the project. Highlight their skills and roles to build trust and confidence in your team's capabilities.

8. Next step: Conclude with a call-to-action detailing the next step a prospect is supposed to take after viewing your business proposal presentation.

4) Maximize your impact with a compact presentation

You may feel that the more information you include in your business proposal presentation, the higher your chances of sealing the deal are. But it’s the exact opposite.

The busier people get the narrower their attention spans. I can assure you that when faced with a bulky document, your prospects will either skim through it or not bother reading at all.

It’s more constructive to keep your presentation short and concise by including only the information most relevant to your prospect and with the biggest needed to finalize their decision to buy.

5) Avoid complex information and jargon

Complexity adds to cognitive load and any additional bit of information makes it harder to decide.

The best strategy for your business proposal would be to bring up only the most important aspects of your product or service that came up during the sales process.

You don’t have the time or attention to tell them everything. So tell them what really makes a difference.

Don’t get too technical

No matter how great the technology behind your solution is, I can assure you that most of your clients don’t care about the details. They care about the outcome your solution brings them, and what it’s going to cost them in time and money.

Sounds harsh? Sorry, but that’s the reality.

We don’t buy the latest iPhone because it has a pro 12MP camera system or a lens with a ƒ/1.8 aperture and 120° field of view. We buy it because we can take holiday photos for Instagram that will make Debra from HR green with envy.

Your customers are no different. They don’t need to have the same level of knowledge about your solution that you do. You will only confuse them by bombarding them with technical details.

Write in simple words and sentences

The extent of the attention your proposal will likely get is similar to that of an 8th grader. If you know your solution inside and out, you should be able to explain it simply.

Practice answering these questions as if asked by an 8th grader:

What does your company do and what makes you best qualified for the job?

What are your customers’ main pain points?

What is your proposed solution and how are you going to tackle the prospect’s problems?

What is the project timeline?

How much will it cost the prospect?

What are the gains for a prospect by choosing to work with you?

Who are the main team members that are going to work on this project?

What relevant experience do you have?

Refine your unique value proposition

Always remember that your ability to stand out is limited to your ability to deliver a simple and crisp value proposition. Simple is easy to understand and most importantly makes it easier to choose.

But there’s more! No matter what your business does, your biggest competitor is the status quo , where buyers choose to do nothing at all.

Seth Godin said in his seminal book This is Marketing that sales or marketing professionals are agents of change. But change takes time and effort. It’s easy for buyers to stick to what they have, even if it no longer serves them.

When talking about your product or service, don't just explain the benefits. Also show your clients what they might lose if they don't choose you, and explain the opportunity cost of doing nothing.

Here's a great video explaining how to write a UVP statement:

6) Provide social proof

At this point in the buyer’s journey, your lead should already trust you. If they didn’t, they would not proceed beyond the demo or even book a demo.

So why add social proof again at this late stage?

Well, big expenses make most people’s knees shake. Even if the money is not their own, they will be judged by their procurement (your solution) and the business impact it generates.

You need to have past clients vouch for you, to prove that it’s not your first rodeo and that your buyers can count on you to deliver.

Here are different types of social proof our clients used in their decks.

First up, a classic client testimonial:

Then, client logos with the Capterra rating:

And a mention in a reputable industry publication:

7) Include case studies

Case studies are the dark horse of the business race. They’re the least used asset in B2B because of how work-intensive their production is. But, at the same time, case studies are the most effective type of marketing asset .

By not including a case study in your business proposal, you’re running the risk of potential clients finding out about your solution from other sources. Worst case scenario, those other sources are your competitors. If you feature a case study, you’re in control of the narrative. You can basically have your clients sell for you by covering the main value propositions in their own words.

Here's a case study example from our client:

8) Position yourself as a consultant rather than a seller

It’s mostly true that people hate being sold to, but they love to buy.

Most buyers prefer to avoid meeting with salespeople and follow the self-serve route because they fear that salespeople will pressure or manipulate them into buying the wrong thing.

Sales are already losing big to self-service. A McKinsey survey from 2020 suggests that 70% of B2B buyers now look kindly on making self-serve buying decisions, even when considering solutions costing $500K and more.

But there is a way sales can always stay one step ahead of self-serve, and 10 steps ahead of the competition—shifting from being salesy to being consultative.

This means knowing the concerns and needs of your buyer and delivering the information they need to make an informed decision, even if it means (hope you're sitting down) not buying your product or solution because it’s not a good fit.

This approach was pioneered by Anthony Iannarino , and you can read more about How to be truly consultative on his website The Sales Blog.

9) Add videos to your business proposal

In this day and age, purely static content just won’t cut it anymore . If your slide contains walls of text, most people will skip it and move straight to the next part, or the next proposal.

Out of all visual aid types, videos are the most compelling. People get distracted very easily, so having a video that conveys the same message really helps keep them engaged.

Presentation statistics based on our extensive user data support the claim that video brings a positive impact —if you include a video in your cover slide, 32% more people will interact with your presentation.

The findings are even greater for other presentation sections.

By embedding *any* video in your presentation, you can increase the average reading time by 37% and increase the CTA click-through rate by 17% .

This proposal is a great example of effective video use:

10) Make the next step clear to your buyer

Including a clear call to action at the end of your business proposal presentation is crucial. As obvious as this must sound to some, many businesses fail to do this effectively.

If a prospective client reads the entire business proposal, they’re clearly interested in your value proposition. They may be ready to seal the deal.

The worst thing that can happen at this stage is if they don’t know how to proceed. It’s like building a supermarket without a checkout counter.

Here's an example of a smart CTA:

What's not an effective call to action?

A text that tells your buyer to give you a call

An email link for requesting the documents needed for signing

Or a phone number they need to dial.

An effective call to action can be:

Embedding a calendar to let prospects book the next meeting

The option to download key documents (e.g. an NDA or a contract)

Sending prospects to explore more details about your solution (e.g. try out your tool or look at examples from your portfolio)

Embedding a digital signature for buyers to sign directly in your deck

An embedded payment module for buyers to pay directly from your deck

Here's another great example of a deck with an effective CTA:

11) Move from legacy design to modern design

Most guides teach you how to make a business proposal using PowerPoint presentations. But, b y sending your business proposal presentation in PPT format, you’re giving leads something they’ve seen 1000 times over.

With sales closing rates declining for the past 5 years in a row, it’s a major risk to cling to the old ways.

When we analyzed over 100,000 sales and marketing presentations , we discovered that giving prospects presentations that can only be read majorly kills engagement.

If you want to succeed and grow your win rate you’ll have to move up to dynamic interactive proposal decks.

By giving readers interactive elements to “play around” with, you’re increasing the chances of your deck being read in full by 41% and the average reading time by 146% .

This is what static vs interactive looks like:

How to create a business proposal presentation faster than ever with AI

Tell the AI assistant what kind of proposal you'd like to create.

Provide an overview of your company and your product or service.

Choose your preferred template .

Adjust the design to reflect your or your prospect’s branding in just a few clicks.

Add videos and dynamic storytelling content.

Personalize your business proposals for the specific buyer.

Integrate your sales tools into the deck, like Calendly or DocuSign .

Send the deck and see the data stream in.

Analyze your usage data to get deep insights into your sales process.

Optimize your decks based on what works and what doesn’t work for your prospects.

Interactive business proposal templates

We all know that putting together a proposal can be tough. It's like the final lap in a race where you've got to give it your all.

Interactive business proposal templates are like a roadmap, guiding you on how to structure your proposal so it looks professional and hits all the right notes.

The best part is that they're built to engage. Instead of sending over a standard document, you're bringing your proposal to life with dynamic animations, informative videos, and interactive elements.

Grab a template and see how it can transform your deck.

Hi, I'm Dominika, Content Specialist at Storydoc. As a creative professional with experience in fashion, I'm here to show you how to amplify your brand message through the power of storytelling and eye-catching visuals.

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A beginner's guide to presenting a proposal, pitch, or quote

Presenting a proposal in the business world can be as tough to do as it is important, whether it’s a business proposal, sales pitch, or a client quote. These proposals often involve face-to-face interactions with potential clients, or at minimum a video or phone call. That means it’s important to put your best face forward – quite literally.

Striking the right tone in your proposal can be tricky because you’ll often need to strike a careful balance between confidence, approachability, and honesty that persuades your audience while also putting them at ease. That’s no short order.

For many, there’s nothing more stressful than the thought of public speaking or presenting. If you want to get your proposal right, having a guide to help you along the way is invaluable. That’s why we put together a step-by-step guide to giving a proposal , from prep to presentation to follow-up.

A step-by-step guide to presenting a proposal

Most proposals, whether given in-person or virtually, can be broken down into three main stages: preparation , presentation , and follow-up . Let’s tackle each stage in turn:

Stage 1: Preparation

Preparation is vital. Having the right data to hand before you start writing is essential if you want to present a clear and compelling presentation.

Research your audience

As always, start with research . You need to understand who you’re talking to and leverage what you know about your audience from previous conversations. After all, if you’re presenting this shouldn’t be your first contact with them. You should be very familiar with their problems and challenges and ready to speak about how you can provide a solution or address them.

Do you already have an ideal customer profile you can reference? What about detailed notes from your previous discussions? You can also look to your marketing department for inspiration when it comes to the best, succinct ways to talk about your business.

Craft a clear agenda

Even if you’re only reviewing a simple client quote , setting an agenda is an important step. It can help you manage your time and give your audience clear expectations on what to expect from your meeting. They’ll typically be less likely to jump ahead asking unrelated questions if they know upfront you’re covering that topic later on. This is why you should also aim to send out your meeting agenda before your actual meeting.

A simple sample template might go something like this:

• Overall summary of the meeting (main goal, introductions, etc.)
• A brief review of background info (i.e., a short recap of previous convos or how the inspiration for the project)
• Specifics such as budget and timeline
• Next steps (i.e., clearly lay out what you’ll be doing and what the client/audience needs to do)
• Open time for questions

This will vary depending on your presentation, but it’s a good jumping-off point if you aren’t sure where to start.

Select an appropriate presentation format

Once you’ve researched and laid out what you’ll need to cover, it’s time to choose the best way to present that information . Many people will rely on a slide show, deck, or PowerPoint because it’s a great, straightforward way to walk an audience through your talking points.

You should also choose a clear, attractive template for your slides that fits within your brand guidelines. Consider supplemental materials such as photos and videos, but be thoughtful about whether their inclusion will enhance your presentation or distract from it.

Looking for a digital way to present your case to clients or audiences you can’t meet with in person? What about a way for them to take the presentation with them afterward? In these cases, a custom microsite could be a great choice.

Put together your presentation

Piecing your presentation together is the final step of your preparation phase. When plugging in your information, remember that a deck is a visual medium, so keep the copy light and the images engaging . Use charts and graphs where appropriate and spend time making sure they’re easy to read and comprehend.

You should also keep the copy short, snappy, and in a font size that’s easy to read on screen. Don’t cram it full of copy just because you can. This is your opportunity to highlight your main points and drill home your most important stats. The final product should be polished, professional, and beautiful.

Stage 2: Presentation

Armed with your research, your PowerPoint, and your agenda, you’re finally ready to present!

Open by naming a challenge

Because you’ll have already researched your audience, you can open your presentation by naming the challenge that speaks to your prospect’s needs . This shows them not only that you’re interested in their problems, but that you understand them. It also gives your audience a hook that can grab their attention.

This step aims to set up an important pivot in order to progress to the next step: selling a solution.

Sell a solution, not a product

Next, pivot from naming a challenge to talking about the solution – namely: you, your product or service, or your proposal. By choosing to frame what you have to offer as a solution to a problem , you give your audience more reason to care about what you have to say and a stronger reason to buy in.

This is also the stage during which you should be carefully laying out the benefits. If you were to list the benefits without this context, your offering would be less likely to hit home with your audience. People are inherently selfish when they’re being sold to , whether it’s an idea or a product. They want to know how what’s being offered can help them , not just why it’s great.

Lay out the next steps

After you’ve made your case, walk your audience through what comes next. Is there a decision-making process they need to follow? A timeline for implementing your proposal? A shipping date to expect? Whatever it is, now is the time to make sure they understand what’s next. You should also lay out a roadmap outlining when you’ll next contact them to follow up.

Stage 3: Follow up

The presentation doesn’t end just because you’ve reached the end of the slides – the follow up is crucial to sealing the deal.

Follow up promptly

Following up is important, but doing so promptly is even more important. You want to give your presentation time to marinate with your audience, but not enough time for them to forget about it or lose interest. Aim to follow up with your audience immediately afterward if it’s a sales pitch, within 24 hours for a client quote , and 3–5 days later for a business proposal.

At the end of your presentation, suggest a specific date and/or time to follow up. The more specific you can be, the better.

Reflect on the presentation proposal process

Now that the hard work is done, take some time to reflect on how your presentation went so you can take notes for next time. Think about strategies that seemed to work well, as well as parts that may have not gone as hoped. Taking time to reflect will help give you a plan of improvement for your next presentation.

Present via a compelling digital experience with custom microsites from Zoomforth

Zoomforth makes it even easier to share your most compelling info with audiences with powerful microsites. The full media library makes it simple to include whatever assets you need, and everything is fully mobile compatible so you know it’ll look great however your audience is viewing it.

Want to find out if a microsite is a right fit for your campaign? Try a free demo of Zoomforth today !

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Top 10 Presentation Proposal Templates with Samples and Examples

"The success of your presentation will be judged not by the knowledge you send but by what the listener receives."

- Lilly Walters, designer

A presentation proposal establishes the groundwork for a successful presentation. It defines the objectives, identifies the target audience and outlines key topics covered. The proposal revolves around the presenter’s vision and background of the company, laying the foundation for a successful engagement.

Presenting Possibilities, Seizing Opportunities

A well-crafted presentation proposal instills confidence and secures a buy-in for new businesses. Creating a proposal from scratch is  time-consuming and prone to errors. Using SlideTeam’s PowerPoint Templates designed for presentation proposals streamlines the task. It provides an engaging platform to present complex information in a simple format.  Our templates convey professionalism and attention to detail, leaving a lasting impression on potential investors and stakeholders. These templates provide predefined sections for key information, allowing you to focus on the content rather than the formatting. Our selection of ready-made PowerPoint slides are 100% customizable and editable, providing you with a valuable head start.

Let us go through the templates now!

Template 1: Business Presentations Styling Proposal PowerPoint Bundle

This PowerPoint Template, a complete deck in 35 slides starts with an introduction slide on a business presentation styling proposal. A slide on cover letter, is followed by table of contents, project contexts and objectives, the process flow, time frame and additional services offering. The investment that stakeholder requires e  and the services for the business presentation styling services are also mentioned in this bundle. Lastly, there is a separate slide on company overview which includes the vision and mission statement of the company along with the details regarding the team, past experience and client testimonials. Leave a lasting impression on your stakeholders with this informative template deck. Download now!

Download Now!

Template 2: Presentation Design Service Proposal

This PowerPoint Template is a complete deck in 24 slides on presentation design service proposal.  The introduction slide  includes the proposal name, client name and date of submission. Up next is a slide on cover letter followed by table of contents, project context and services that  the company offers. This slide is followed by packages on offer , investment to be made by the stakeholder, project schedule and its timeline. Company details like establishment year, its background, its  vision and mission statement and case studies add to appeal of the proposal. . Along with all the major slides there are additional slides like timeline, Gantt chart, roadmap and 30/60/90 days plan. Download now!

Template 3: Project Context and Objectives for Business Presentation Styling Services

This PowerPoint Slide illustrates the context and objectives of the business presentation styling services. By presenting a clear context, it establishes a logical foundation, persuading stakeholders about the project's importance. It serves as a persuasive proposal, encapsulating the essence of the business presentation styling services. It communicates the project's rationale, creating a compelling case for initiation.Download now!

Template 4: Process Flow for Business Presentation Styling Services

This PowerPoint Template illustrates the process flow of the service. Initiated  with the project kick-off,  the template  depicts all the stages such as concept development, template creation, content reconstruction, and custom graphics. The structured flow culminates in a thorough review, ensuring precision and alignment with client expectations. It enhances the  clarity and professionalism of business presentations for clients. Get this template design now!

Template 5: Your Investment for Business Presentation Styling Services

This PPT Template showcases the financial aspects of a proposed engineering project. It presents a breakdown of project costs , such as fees for the project kickoff, concept development, template creation and graphics, and more. This template makes it easier to understand the investment required and the conditions associated with the pricing. Download Now!

Template 6: About us for Business Presentation Styling Services 

This PowerPoint Template is intended to present information about the presentation firm.  It contains information such as the company's establishment year, vision, and mission statements. It also introduces the firm and provides background information. This slide presents the client with information such as the company's history and core principles. It adds to a stronger link between the client and the company. Get this Slide Bundle now!

Template 7: Our Service Offerings for Presentation Design Service Proposal

This PowerPoint Slide showcases the services  that the presentation design company offers. The services may include cover designing, brochure designing, wall sticker designing, outdoor hoarding designing, flier designing and more. This slide assists the client in being sure of what they are investing into. Download now!

Template 8: Our Packages for Presentation Design Service Proposal

For presentation design services the company may provide packages for the client to choose from. This PowerPoint Slide showcases  packages like hourly pricing model, full time equivalent and fixed pricing model along with their prices. The hourly pricing model is best for on and off projects and has a fixed price for every hour. The full-time equivalent is a cost effective expansion strategy and is customizable. Lastly, the fixed pricing model is also customizable and is best for projects with clear and defined objectives. Download now!

Template 9: Project Schedule for Presentation Design Service Proposal

This PowerPoint Design showcases project schedule for presentation design services. It includes five phases. The first phase is creative discovery followed by competition analysis as the second phase and concept rough sketch and presentation as the third phase. The fourth phase is revision of the plan and  the fifth phase is finalizing the project. Download now!

Template 10: Client Testimonial

This PowerPoint Slide highlights the reliability and positive impact of the suggested presentation service project. This template features quotes from former clients who have experienced the benefits of the project, and it also includes their names and positions. These testimonies act as social proof and instills trust in potential clients with the emphasis on real-world success stories and validating the value. Get it now!

From Ideas into Action

The art of crafting a professional presentation proposal is a skill every businessman must master. SlideTeam’s PowerPoint Template for presentation proposal is important for consistency and professionalism in presentations. It ensures that all proposal-related information is visually cohesive, making it easier to understand and follow. These Templates also save time by providing pre-designed layouts and graphics.

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8 Best Tips for Business Proposal Presentations [+Examples]

Updated: May 24, 2022

Published: February 16, 2022

Business proposal presentations are the culmination of a long sales process between you and your clients. If you don’t structure it correctly or take the time to craft one with care, you risk losing the client’s buy-in for your solution. So getting it right is essential.

In this article, we’ll look at several ways to improve your business proposal presentation (and pitch) and increase the odds that you’ll walk away with a new customer.

Business Proposal Presentation

A business proposal presentation is a document that outlines a business solution for a customer after a lengthy consultation process. It is presented to the customer in either PDF or PowerPoint format, and can be paired with a contract for immediate signing.

Other formats that may be accepted include Google Docs or Google Slides, but PowerPoint is the industry standard. The presentation is then delivered in person or through a video conferencing tool such as Zoom.

Rarely, if ever, is a business proposal presentation sent to the customer for asynchronous perusal. Rather, it’s presented live in a customer meeting . That will give you the opportunity to sell them even more on the solutions you offer and persuade them to make a decision within a reasonable time frame.

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If you let the customer review the presentation on their own, it’s likely that they’ll lengthen the sales process and even put off making a decision.

When crafting your proposal presentation, there are a few quick best practices to keep in mind.

• Personalize the presentation . While it’s totally fine to reuse a PowerPoint presentation template , you don’t want to accidentally include another business’ name on the deck. So be sure to go through every slide and personalize it for the customer’s goals and pain points.
• Send a pre-meeting email with an agenda. To prepare your customer for the presentation, it’d be wise to send a pre-meeting email with a quick, scannable sales agenda detailing how the meeting will go. That way, you can set the right expectations and keep you both on track.
• Plan your in-person customer visit. If you’re meeting the customer in person, there will be a few more elements at play, such as an office tour and even a colleague introduction. That can quickly lead to lost time, so use this guide to plan a customer visit that stays on track and helps you effectively sell your solution.
• Pay attention to the design of the deck . Your clothes and demeanor may be in tip-top shape, but if your deck is messy and poorly designed, then the effectiveness of your points will be diminished. Use a PowerPoint template and check out a few sales presentation examples to inspire you.
• Keep the presentation short and precise. Keep your presentation as short as possible, about 15 to 20 minutes. The longer you speak to your clients, the less they’ll remember.

Now, it’s time for your presentation. Let’s go over how you can execute it flawlessly.

How to Present a Business Proposal

• Optimize your meeting time from the start.
• Have a clear agenda.
• Open up with the customer’s problems and challenges.
• Pause and ask questions.
• Lead with stories, not data.
• Don’t read off of your PowerPoint slides.
• Present your solution — and sell them a vision.
• Establish a clear follow-up timeline at the end of the meeting.

1. Optimize your meeting time from the start.

When presenting a proposal, it’s important to remember that your clients are busy. They have other meetings to attend, phone calls and emails to return, and problems to solve. Time is their most precious asset. Here are a few tips to optimize the time you spend with your customers:

• Arrive early . This is a no-brainer, but arrive to the meeting with at least ten minutes to spare, especially if it’s in person. Use this buffer to use the bathroom, rehearse your introduction, and even set up the meeting space.
• Rehearse setting up the projector or sharing your screen before the meeting . If you’re carrying out a meeting in person, you don’t want to waste ten minutes figuring out how to project your laptop’s screen. Carry several adapters with you and have a fail-safe plan, such as bringing a tablet with a copy of the presentation. If the meeting is over Zoom, practice sharing your screen so that your notes aren’t visible.
• Keep your introduction short. Leave space for banter and rapport, but keep your personal introduction short. Small talk should be reduced as much as possible — you shouldn’t spend twenty minutes talking about the weather, unless you sell a weather-related solution.

2. Have a clear agenda.

Your presentation must have a clear and compelling agenda, which you can share right at the start (in addition to having shared it over email before the meeting).

The meeting should begin with compelling reasons to consider your proposal and culminate with a specific request for the business. Here’s an agenda template you can use to structure your meeting:

• Challenge/Opportunity. Begin your presentation by illustrating the opportunity or challenge that your client is overlooking. Make sure it’s compelling enough to motivate your client to listen to the rest of your presentation.
• Benefits . Discuss the benefits that your client will achieve by adopting your solution. Use a customer case study or testimonial to support your point.
• Plan . Present your plan or options to resolve the client’s challenge/opportunity.
• Company . Briefly share your company’s background, including who your company helps with these issues.
• Recommend . Before closing your presentation, be sure to ask for the client’s business. You might close by asking the client, “Do you believe that the solution that I’ve presented will effectively help you overcome your challenges and achieve your goals?”

In the presentation, include a few bullet points that outline these parts of the meeting, so that the client knows what to expect.

3. Open up with the customer’s problems and challenges.

As mentioned, you’ll begin the meeting with a challenge or opportunity. Don’t walk into the meeting and immediately start talking about yourself or your company or your products. If you do this, your client will immediately focus on cost and product features, often ending the meeting before you’ve had a chance to finish.

Instead, focus on re-emphasizing the customer’s challenges and pain points. Your clients want to know how they can beat their competitors, reach new customers, retain existing customers, and increase profit margins. But before you can sell them your product, you have to emphasize the graveness of the issue they’re facing and illustrate how their challenges will prevent them from achieving these goals.

For instance, if 30% of their customers are churning, and you sell a business solution that can help reduce churn, you might open up your presentation with how their revenue will continue to be impacted by this loss. This will emphasize the urgency of the problem and help you create a stronger pitch later.

4. Pause and ask questions.

After you’ve spoken for a few minutes, stop and ask your client a question. This is a great way to stay in control of the meeting while allowing your client to interact with the sales presentation.

Here are some questions that you might ask:

• Have I summarized your challenges correctly?
• Is there anything I’ve missed that you’d like to add?
• Am I right in saying that you want to solve this problem in the next quarter?

5. Lead with stories, not data.

While clients value data, they are also realistic about what data can — and cannot — tell them. They’ve seen many projects fail despite the glowing research results, and they’ve seen projects succeed despite the lack of any data to back it up.

So, introduce stories first, then the data to back it up. Come to the presentation armed with customer experiences and competitor moves. Your clients are far more interested in what other businesses like them have experienced and what their competitors are doing. They’re not all that interested in the latest research study, but you can use a study to support your points and lend credence to an anecdote.

6. Don’t read off of your PowerPoint slides.

Let the deck complement your points. If you read directly off the slides, you’ll quickly bore your customer, and the impact of what you’re saying won’t land.

Keep your slides simple, too, so that you’re not tempted to read off of them. Most slides are far too complex — too much text, distracting designs, and unrelated images.

You should only put one picture and one line of text on a slide. No more. Your clients can only absorb so much at once, and if they’re too busy trying to sort out paragraphs upon paragraphs on the screen, most of what you’ll say will be missed.

7. Present your solution — and sell them a vision.

After you’ve re-established the business challenge and spoken to the customer’s pain points, it’s time to present your product or service as a solution. But it’s important to not stop here — you have to also sell them a vision of what their business will look like after they take care of the problem.

Will they experience increased sales? Streamlined processes? Better customer retention? And what will that look like a few years from now? Don’t exaggerate, but don’t be afraid to show them how your product can create a much positive future for their business.

8. Establish a clear follow-up timeline at the end of the meeting.

This is maybe the most important part of your business proposal presentation. Tell your customer what will happen after the presentation, so that there’s no ambiguity regarding next steps.

We highly recommend establishing a clear follow-up date. Don’t say, “I’ll follow up in about a week.” Instead, try, “Is it okay if I call you on Friday, May 10th?”

We also recommend creating a timeline after the follow-up call. For instance, you might say you’ll call on a certain date, and then you’ll send the contract over using a tool such as PandaDoc , Qwilr , or Proposify . Your contract will be in your customer’s hand for a week, and then on the following Wednesday, you’ll follow-up once again to see if the customer has any questions.

Adjust this timeline depending on your customer, sales cycle length , and industry. Such a short timeline might not suit a product that costs thousands of dollars and requires a yearly commitment. However, it might suit a product that only costs a few hundred dollars a year.

Feeling stumped? No worries. Below, we share some business proposal examples you can glean inspiration from.

Business Proposal Presentation Examples

1. moving malta forward.

This compelling presentation proposes a metro system for the city of Malta. It opens with a “Case for Change” and uses graphics and visuals to argue for the creation of a metro in the city. While it is text heavy, it includes plenty of information for Malta’s government to make a decision. That’s why it’s important to know your audience. If you’re proposing to a gubernatorial entity, then being comprehensive is important.

2. The Big Picture

This is another presentation that argues for the urban development of a district. Its most notable feature is its “At a glance” spread, which shows an overview of the plan from top to bottom, down to the impact the proposed changes will have on the city. In the same way, you can include at an at-a-glance slide in your presentation.

3. AMW Tech

This deck presents a business as opposed to a product, but it does everything right: It opens with an agenda and closes with a call-to-action (“Keep in touch with us”). Even something as simple as providing your contact information can be enough to prompt your customer to continue the conversation.

4. Microsoft Advertising

This deck by Microsoft Advertising takes a slightly different approach: It starts with a quote from the Microsoft CEO, and then provides details about how the brand helps its customers. This works for a major brand like this one because the client may be interested in Microsoft as a whole as opposed to just one service. It’s important to know your audience in this respect, as well.

Creating a Compelling Business Proposal Presentation

Being able to effectively present proposals is key to your success. To be effective, get to the point and focus on vision and stories. Use PowerPoint or Keynote as supporting material and be sure to keep it short. Finally, your presentation should begin with compelling reasons to consider your proposal and culminate with a specific request for the business.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in July 2014 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

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15 Tips for a Great Business Proposal Presentation

Written by: Kevin Payne

Getting invited to do a live business proposal presentation may seem to be the end of a long and arduous journey to closing a deal with a new client.

Yet, the reality is that many of these slip away after a business presentation.

Why do so many business proposal presentations fail?

It all boils down to the confidence level of the sales reps.

An overconfident sales rep comes with many presumptions. When something unexpected happens, they either freeze or become defensive.

On the other hand, a sales rep who doubts their ability unconsciously makes this apparent to their audience. Either way, the results aren't pretty.

Before we dive into more details, here's a short selection of 8 easy-to-edit business proposal presentation templates you can edit, share and download with Visme. View more templates below:

3 ingredients of a successful proposal presentation.

There are three critical components of a great business proposal presentation:

• Content. This is what you’ll be sharing to those listening so that they can make a well-informed decision after your presentation.
• Visual Design. This includes slides, images, and other visual materials you’ll be using during your presentation to support the content of your presentation.
• Delivery . This refers to the actual process of how you conduct the entire business proposal presentation.

These three components work like table legs.

Image Source

The table can stand if it’s missing one leg, but it won’t be as sturdy.

In the same manner, you can come up with a business presentation even if you lack one of these ingredients. However, it won't be as effective.

Here are 15 tips to ensure all the three "legs" of your business proposal presentation are in place so that you can successfully close more deals.

Do your research.

Over half (51%) of consumers expect that companies should be able to personalize products and services based on what they need by 2020.

If you want to close more deals, you need to dig deeper by researching as much as you can about the client or company that you're presenting to.

Aside from learning the key decision-makers’ demographics, ask yourself these questions to guide your research :

• What is the company's most pressing problem?
• How do they prefer to receive the information?
• What do they want to achieve?

2 Provide the attendees with a written proposal.

Companies appoint an average of five people to make key decisions.

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So it's possible that at least one wouldn’t have received the business proposal you’ve sent.

Providing a copy of the business proposal on the day of your presentation makes sure that they have something to refer to when they meet to make their decision. It also shows you're well-prepared for the presentation, giving them an excellent first impression about you and the company you're representing.

Also, since 70% of sales reps would come to a sales meeting or presentation ill-prepared, paying attention to this tiny detail shows that you mean business. These key decision-makers will appreciate the effort and will reward you with their attention.

3 Plot your presentation with an audience journey map.

An audience journey map helps you structure your business proposal presentation.

It works very much like creating your buyer’s journey in that it takes your prospects—in this case, your audience —down your marketing funnel.

Each of the four types of audience journey maps commonly used by sales reps helps you deliver your business presentation so that your audience can easily relate to what you're saying.

That way, you're able to connect with them and get them to convert into your clients. Use our infographic template below to effectively visualize your audience journey map.

4 Inject stories in your presentation.

Storytelling helps make it easy for your audience to understand your presentation because our brains were trained to process information shared in a story.

Long ago, people would share news and try to explain natural phenomena like lightning, rain, and even the seasons. We’re still following suit centuries after. Whether you're sharing the latest news to a close friend or telling your boss how the presentation went, you're likely going to be telling a story.

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Injecting stories also helps your presentation become 22x more memorable to your audience. This is crucial because key decision-makers will only consider those pitches that left a lasting impression on them.

When telling stories during your presentation, always make it a point to put the spotlight on your audience. By making your audience the “hero” of the stories you share during your presentation, you’re able to connect with their emotions, which is the biggest motivator that drives people to buy and even make repeat purchases.

5 Focus on the benefits, not the specs.

Even though the key decision-makers come from different departments within the company and have specific needs, they share one question: "why should we get this product?"

Bombarding them with the nitty-gritty about the specs and features of your product isn't the way to answer this. Instead, focus on the benefits they'll get.

The best example of this excerpt of Steve Jobs introducing the very first iPhone back in 2007.

Even though Steve Jobs mentioned some of the technical aspects of the iPhone, he didn't focus on that. Instead, he focused on the benefits you’ll only get from the iPhone.

The result?

Jobs’ presentation made people want to get the iPhone that it sold 1 million units in just 74 days.

Plus, Steve Jobs’ presentation style is so effective that it’s now being taught in top universities like Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business.

6 Opt to use presentation templates.

Standard PowerPoint templates have now become quite cliché and can dilute the overall impact of your presentation. If you want to look professional, you need to go beyond PowerPoint.

Visme offers a comprehensive library of business presentation templates that you can quickly customize to match your brand and use for your business proposal presentation.

Business Proposal Presentation Templates

Ecommerce Webinar Presentation

Buyer Presentation

PixelGo Marketing Plan Presentation

Technology Presentation

Communication Skills - Keynote Presentation

Company Ethics Presentation

Work+Biz Pitch Deck - Presentation

Product Training Interactive Presentation

Create your template View more templates

7 Use slides to highlight and support your presentation.

Presentation slides serve two purposes: highlight the most critical points that you want your audience to remember, and support these points by providing your audience with visuals.

Overloading your slides with lots of bullet points and text makes them look cluttered. They can also overwhelm your audience, causing many of them to space out.

When preparing for your business presentation pitch, make it a point to use large font sizes. Not only will this make your text eye-catching, but it’ll also force you to use as little words as possible.

8 Use images in moderation.

Studies show that your audience remembers 65% of the information you share when you include an image. However, this number drops the moment you use clichéd or poor-quality visuals.

Use images only when necessary and make sure that they're essential to your point.

For example, if you’re doing a business proposal presentation for a local SEO tool, you can include logos of the different local SEO tools available when you lay the foundation on what makes yours better than your competitors.

Visme gives you access to millions of free presentation images!

• Edit, resize and rotate your images
• Access gorgeous photo filters
• Add text, graphics and more to your designs

9 Show videos during your presentation.

Videos are a great addition to any business proposal presentation. They keep your audience entertained and interested to learn more.

People consume content differently . Injecting videos in different parts of your business presentation ensures that you feed your audience with important information in a format they can quickly digest.

Videos also work great if you're planning to give your audience a walkthrough of your product's features, like this one from Spark CMS. It minimizes the risk of running into technical problems.

10 Provide social proof.

72% of customers are more willing to trust and do business with a company when they’re shown testimonials of satisfied customers.

On top of that, adding testimonials also allows you to develop a sense of FOMO among your audience, especially when they see one of their competitors are using your product. This can help you push the key decision-makers off the fence, and give them even more reason to get your product.

Check out how the sales proposal presentation below highlights testimonials  of satisfied clients.

11 Practice, practice, practice.

Speaking in front of an audience is a nerve-racking experience, even for seasoned sales reps.

And while practicing won't cause your stage fright to disappear completely, it can help you feel more confident about what to say during your presentation and how to say it.

A great—but challenging—way to practice for your upcoming presentation is to do this in front of children.

That's because kids have a shorter attention span and a limited vocabulary range. So if you can keep their attention throughout the course of your presentation and they remember some of the things you said, you'll be able to handle those key decision-makers.

12 Arrive early.

Ideally, you should be at the venue at least 30 minutes before your schedule. This will give you enough time to test your presentation and the equipment you’ll use to make sure that they’re working.

It will also give you time to compose yourself and calm your mind, allowing you to think more clearly when you start your presentation.

Arriving early will also show those attending your presentation that you value and respect their time.

13 Provide your attendees with next steps.

Don't assume that your attendees would know what they should do next once the presentation is over. Tell them!

For example, if you mentioned that you’re offering them an introductory discount, explain to them the steps they need to take to avail it.

You can also tell them how long will this offer last. This helps you create a sense of urgency so that you don’t have to wait a long time before they give you their response.

14 Bring a copy of the contract.

Even though only 2% of your closed deals will happen at the end of your business proposal presentation, that shouldn’t stop you from bringing a contract for them to sign.

After all, nothing’s more frustrating than to hear the words “when can we get started” or “where do we sign” and not have a contract on hand for you to close the deal.

Contract Templates

Conference Sponsorship Contract

Influencer Sponsorship Contract

Engineering New Hire Contract

Marketing Company Contract

Youtube Sponsorship Contract

Training Consultancy Contract

Sleek Marketing Agency Contract

Financial Consulting Contract Consulting

15 don’t forget to follow up..

This is perhaps the most crucial step to closing more business proposal presentation deals because 80% of sales happen after the fifth follow-up call onwards .

Balance is the key. Follow-up calls should be frequent enough that the people you’ve presented to remember you. At the same time, it should be spread far apart so you don’t come across as pushy or annoying.

Close more deals with these business proposal presentation tips.

An excellent business proposal presentation includes content that combines data and stories in a structure that’ll take your audience through your marketing funnel.

Make sure it also has high-quality and original images, videos, and slides that are informative and eye-catching. How you deliver your presentation also makes a huge difference.

Most of all, engage with your audience throughout the presentation. Make them feel that you're there to provide a solution to solve their problem, and not just to hit your sales quota.

Start creating your next business proposal presentation with Visme's pre-designed templates . You can customize anything and everything, add animations and interactivity, and end up with a killer proposal presentation that's worth every minute of your clients' time.

With Dynamic Fields , you're sure your personal, company and other critical information will be accurate and updated throughout your presentation in real-time.

Sign up for a free Visme account today and get started.

Did you find this article helpful? What do you struggle with the most when it comes to business proposal presentations? Drop us your feedback, questions and comments below.

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About the Author

Kevin Payne is a content marketing consultant who helps software companies build marketing funnels and implement content marketing campaigns to increase their inbound leads.

• 2018/03/18/Making-a-presentation-from-your-research-proposal

Making a presentation from your research proposal

In theory, it couldn’t be easier to take your written research proposal and turn it into a presentation. Many people find presenting ideas easier than writing about them as writing is inherently difficult. On the other hand, standing up in front of a room of strangers, or worse those you know, is also a bewildering task. Essentially, you have a story to tell, but does not mean you are story telling. It means that your presentation will require you to talk continuously for your alloted period of time, and that the sentences must follow on from each other in a logical narative; i.e. a story.  

So where do you start?

Here are some simple rules to help guide you to build your presentation:

• One slide per minute: However many minutes you have to present, that’s your total number of slides. Don’t be tempted to slip in more.
• Keep the format clear: There are lots of templates available to use, but you’d do best to keep your presentation very clean and simple.
• Be careful with animations: You can build your slide with animations (by adding images, words or graphics). But do not flash, bounce, rotate or roll. No animated little clipart characters. No goofy cartoons – they’ll be too small for the audience to read. No sounds (unless you are talking about sounds). Your audience has seen it all before, and that’s not what they’ve come for. They have come to hear about your research proposal.
• Don’t be a comedian: Everyone appreciates that occasional light-hearted comment, but it is not stand-up. If you feel that you must make a joke, make only one and be ready to push on when no-one reacts. Sarcasm simply won’t be understood by the majority of your audience, so don’t bother: unless you’re a witless Brit who can’t string three or more sentences together without.

Keep to your written proposal formula

• You need a title slide (with your name, that of your advisor & institution)
• that put your study into the big picture
• explain variables in the context of existing literature
• explain the relevance of your study organisms
• give the context of your own study
• Your aims & hypotheses
• Images of apparatus or diagrams of how apparatus are supposed to work. If you can’t find anything, draw it simply yourself.
• Your methods can be abbreviated. For example, you can tell the audience that you will measure your organism, but you don’t need to provide a slide of the callipers or balance (unless these are the major measurements you need).
• Analyses are important. Make sure that you understand how they work, otherwise you won’t be able to present them to others. Importantly, explain where each of the variables that you introduced, and explained how to measure, fit into the analyses. There shouldn’t be anything new or unexpected that pops up here.
• I like to see what the results might look like, even if you have to draw graphs with your own lines on it. Use arrows to show predictions under different assumptions.

Slide layout

• Your aim is to have your audience listen to you, and only look at the slides when you indicate their relevance. 
• You’d be better off having a presentation without words, then your audience will listen instead of trying to read. As long as they are reading, they aren't listening. Really try to limit the words you have on any single slide (<30). Don’t have full sentences, but write just enough to remind you of what to say and so that your audience can follow when you are moving from point to point.
• Use bullet pointed lists if you have several points to make (Font 28 pt)
• If you only have words on a slide, then add a picture that will help illustrate your point. This is especially useful to illustrate your organism. At the same time, don’t have anything on a slide that has no meaning or relevance. Make sure that any illustration is large enough for your audience to see and understand what it is that you are trying to show.
• Everything on your slide must be mentioned in your presentation, so remove anything that becomes irrelevant to your story when you practice.
• Tables: you are unlikely to have large complex tables in a presentation, but presenting raw data or small words in a table is a way to lose your audience. Make your point in another way.
• Use citations (these can go in smaller font 20 pt). I like to cut out the title & authors of the paper from the pdf and show it on the slide.
• If you can, have some banner that states where you are in your presentation (e.g. Methods, or 5 of 13). It helps members of the audience who might have been daydreaming.

Practice, practice, practice

• It can’t be said enough that you must practice your presentation. Do it in front of a mirror in your bathroom. In front of your friends. It's the best way of making sure you'll do a good job.
• If you can't remember what you need to say, write flash cards with prompts. Include the text on your slide and expand. When you learn what’s on the cards, relate it to what’s on the slide so that you can look at the slides and get enough hints on what to say. Don’t bring flashcards with you to your talk. Instead be confident enough that you know them front to back and back to front.
• Practice with a pointer and slide advancer (or whatever you will use in the presentation). You should be pointing out to your audience what you have on your slides; use the pointer to do this.
• Avoid taking anything with you that you might fiddle with.

Maybe I've got it all wrong?

There are some things that I still need to learn about presentations. Have a look at the following video and see what you think. There are some really good points made here, and I think I should update my example slides to reflect these ideas. I especially like the use of contrast to focus attention. 

• EXPLORE Random Article
• Happiness Hub

How to Present a Proposal

Last Updated: February 22, 2024 Approved

This article was co-authored by Michael McCutcheon, PhD . Dr. Michael McCutcheon is a career coach, psychologist, and award-winning public speaker who specializes in procrastination elimination, goal achievement, and increasing life satisfaction. With a background as a counseling psychologist, he guides clients toward becoming more aware of their desires and anxieties to break old patterns, create new habits, and achieve life-changing results. He also helps clients improve organization skills, embark on a new career, get promoted, get admitted into graduate schools, and transition from school to the working world. He is a published author and lecturer in graduate psychology courses at New York University (NYU), a position he has twice won the Teaching Award (2014 & 2019). His work has appeared in the press as a lifestyle and career expert for The Washington Post/The Associated Press, The New York Post, Scholastic, Lifehacker, and The Coca-Cola Company. He has served as a contributing writer for Out Magazine and featured panelist on National Public Radio (NPR). There are 7 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. wikiHow marks an article as reader-approved once it receives enough positive feedback. In this case, 100% of readers who voted found the article helpful, earning it our reader-approved status. This article has been viewed 56,720 times.

Presenting a business proposal requires more than simply reading a transcript of the proposal text. Gaining the confidence of your audience requires tact, research, and a whole lot of preparation. If done correctly, your presentation can inspire your listeners to adopt your proposal.

Preparing the Proposal

• If possible, talk to someone who has already seen the proposal, and gauge their interest.
• Check recent news stories which indicate the current financial state of the company or individual you're targeting.
• Think about the audience's values, goals, and ideals. Your proposal should address not just their economic needs but their corporate mission, too.

• Your written proposal should not be identical to your oral presentation. Simply reading the proposal word for word will bore your audience. Your oral presentation should use the proposal text as a foundation but should also expand on your main points without lingering on every detail.

• An improper or incomplete proposal submission may jeopardize your chances of not only having your proposal approved but also receiving future RFPs. Use care when crafting your submission.

Making the Pitch

• This is especially important when conducting an RFP presentation.

• Slide shows can help listeners retain information and better understand the main points of your proposal.
• You can use the slide show to supplement or replace your own notes. They can keep you on track and keep your audience engaged.

• Before you begin, try breathing in and out slowly for a while.
• Assume your audience is receptive, not hostile, to your proposal.

• Avoid interjecting filler words like "uh" or "um" into your presentation.

Sealing the Deal

• If you get an off-topic or difficult question, address it honestly, but artfully try to redirect the question back to why your proposal is a good one. [11] X Trustworthy Source Harvard Business Review Online and print journal covering topics related to business management practices Go to source

Expert Q&A

• Don't feel defeated if your proposal is not accepted. Think of it as a learning experience, and try to identify points which could be stronger next time. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0
• Pay attention to the details. This applies to both the written proposal and your oral presentation. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0
• Dress professionally for your presentation. First impressions are important. A sloppy appearance could hurt your proposal's chances of success no matter how good your presentation is. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0
• Do not take beta-blocker drugs in an attempt to relax before your presentation. You run the risk of becoming a little too relaxed and doing or saying something you'll later regret. Thanks Helpful 1 Not Helpful 0

You Might Also Like

• ↑ Michael McCutcheon, PhD. Career Coach & Psychologist. Expert Interview. 14 October 2020.
• ↑ https://www.entrepreneur.com/starting-a-business/7-steps-to-a-winning-business-proposal/299681
• ↑ http://www.fripp.com/selling-your-way-to-success-how-to-present-your-proposal-at-an-executive-meeting/
• ↑ Paul R. Timm, How to Make Winning Presentations, https://books.google.com/books?id=qqScv8LU9noC&lpg=PP1&dq=winning%20presentations&pg=PT60#v=onepage&q=winning%20presentations&f=false
• ↑ Thomas Leech, How to Prepare, Stage, and Deliver Winning Presentations, https://books.google.com/books?id=GEJn-UPf1cEC&lpg=PP1&dq=winning%20presentations&pg=PA80#v=onepage&q=proposal&f=false
• ↑ https://hbr.org/2010/11/how-to-get-their-approval.html
• ↑ https://hbr.org/2010/11/defend-your-research-people-often-trust-eloquence-more-than-honesty/ar/1

About this article

To present a business proposal, make sure to speak in a clear, audible voice to command your audience’s attention, and avoid using distracting filler words like “uh” and “um.” Additionally, emphasize the main points rather than reading your proposal word for word, since your audience will have the text before them. You should also use visuals, like PowerPoint slide shows, to help the audience have a better understanding of your main points. Then, end your proposal by reiterating your main points in a simple, straightforward way. For more advice, like how to write your proposal with inspiring, optimistic language, keep reading! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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Business Proposal Presentation

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Use this free business proposal presentation template to create a strong deck that impresses your potential clients.

e-Sign with PandaDoc

Prepared by: ​ [Sender.FirstName] ​ [Sender.LastName] [Sender.Company] [Sender.Email] ​

Business proposal presentation

Table of Contents

1. Cover Letter 2. Executive Summary 3. About Us 4. Services 5. Scope of Work 6. Challenges and Solutions 7. Objectives 8. Deliverables 9. Timeline 11. Why Us 12. Testimonials 13. Case Study 14. Contacts 15. Thank You

I am writing on behalf of [Sender.Company] . We are a company known for (describe services)…

We have been in this business for XX years and have worked with (client examples and reviews)…

It would be a pleasure to work with you on (describe project). Please do not hesitate to reach out anytime if you have any questions.

Thank you for your time and consideration!

DEAR MR/MS. [Client.LastName] ​,

​ [Sender.FirstName] ​ [Sender.LastName] ​ [Sender.Title] ​ [Sender.Company] ​

Cover Letter

Executive Summary

State the main purpose of this proposal e.g. to explain how your company's services are the right solution for the prospective client's objective.

Tell your prospective client about your company summed up in a short elevator pitch.

Founded in XXXX

XXX employees

Located in CITY, STATE

(list awards received)

X star average customer reviews

Outline the key services your company provides, especially as they relate to the proposed project, e.g. content writing, paid advertising, email marketing, etc.

Scope of Work

Explain the actions to be performed in the scope of work, including a brief description and the hours involved.

Description

Challenges and Solution

Poorly structured website for SEO purposes.

SOLUTION

Perform on-page SEO restructuring

State the key objectives that the client hopes to accomplish through this process e.g. generate leads, increase sales, improve search engine rankings, etc.

GENERATE LEADS

INCREASE SALES

IMPROVE SEARCH ENGINE RANKINGS

Deliverables

Summarize what you'll be delivering to the client through the process e.g. # of content pieces, a marketing campaign, graphics, etc

Nubmer of content pieces

Marketing campaign

Lay out an overall timeline for the project's completion and identify certain milestones along the way e.g. delivery of raw video footage for review, finished product, etc.

Briefly describe all the actions on this stage

Share available pricing options or explain how projects are priced e.g. custom per individual project.

PACKAGE 1 $X,XXX

PACKAGE 2 $X,XXX

PACKAGE 3 $X,XXX

Includes…

Sell your company in as few words as possible while highlighting some of the major reasons clients typically choose you.

Best reviewed provider in AREA

XX% cheaper on average than our competitors

Awards and certifications

Testimonials

Share some of the best testimonials you've received from other clients.

"I wouldn't go anywhere else to find a solution for my financial needs. (Company) was professional, a great value, and took the time to understand my situation."

Name, Company

Rank a website for a group of targeted keywords

Increased rankings for XX keywords by an average of XX.

Give an example of a real project that was similar to your prospective client's and how you were able to get a successful outcome.

List some of the key contacts your client can follow up with about this proposal including their title and contact information.

Phone number

Email address

Post address

“Don’t sit down and wait for the opportunities to come. Get up and make them.”

Madam C.J. Walker, the first female self-made millionaire

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Your rating will help others.

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Expert Tips on Presenting a Project Proposal [Project Proposal Templates]

At some time in their careers, managers and executives must prepare and present proposals for projects or initiatives. It can be daunting, but not if you get the right guidance. This article will help you with tips and tricks on writing and presenting a project proposal to an audience. It is important to convey the right message to engage and persuade your audience.

Table of contents

What is a project proposal, project proposal powerpoint templates, when do you need to write a business project proposal, benefits of a project proposal, 1: defining the purpose, 2: talk about the solution, 3: detail the outcomes and norms for success, 4: plan resources, 5: lay out your schedule, 6: executive summary, tips for writing an effective project proposal, slide 1: cover slide, slide 2: contents table, slide 3: the problem, slide 4: the solution, slide 5: goals and benefits, slide 6: deliverables and success criteria, slide 7: project management strategy, slide 8: budget, slide 9: project requirements, slide 10: project proposal timeline, slide 11: conclusion, slide 12: thank you slide.

A project proposal is prepared when a new project or initiative is being planned to communicate what the project entails and what is required to bring it to fruition.  

Fundamentally, it contains start and ending dates, goals, purpose, the chief outcome desired at completion, and a title.

Project proposals have clear segments that can effectively communicate the idea behind the project. You need to provide context about the problem to which you are providing a resolution through this initiative, the action plan to implement the project, and what resources you require to implement it. 

A project proposal differs from a project plan; the latter is an in-depth project implementation plan. Both documents do contain many similar details, yet, vary in nature. Several details may change from the time of the project proposal presentation till the final project plan is approved.

Before we move on, check out some templates for project proposals that you can use with PowerPoint:

Initiatives are conceived of when forecasts are prepared, and plans are made for the coming financial year or near future – to plan for growth. Big or small, every organization has to make several plans because every business aims to grow and expand. A project is planned to make this growth happen or resolve some pain points hampering growth and stagnating the business. But such projects have to be evaluated dispassionately, and the main decision-makers have to be convinced about the need for the project and that it will produce the required outcome. This is why presenting a proposal becomes necessary. Remember, your proposal has to be informative and persuasive.

When drafted properly, a project proposal offers several benefits:

• Fosters innovation  – when you provide in-depth information about a project and correctly communicate what the project will achieve, stakeholders will be more confident about investing in it. Innovative projects raise the reputation of the company in the public domain.
• Predict and detect problems early  – as you present your plan to an audience that wasn’t part of drafting it, they are more likely to be able to identify potential challenges that you could not. Discussing them allows you to brainstorm ways to resolve them so they don’t blow up later.
• Allows focus  – when the implementation is in progress, you can use the proposal document as a point of reference and stay focused and on track. This helps in delivering what was promised and is expected.
• Helps planning  – a well-written project proposal helps business owners and other stakeholders plan finances, resources, and time for future allocation and make accurate predictions about the project’s impact on their business in the short and long term.

Writing a Project Proposal

Each proposal is unique, and a lot depends on the nature of the business and its size, hierarchy, management structure, and so on. However, we can provide a rough guide to writing a formal project proposal. You may have to tweak this outline to make it a better fit for your industry or department.

It is important to be able to prove that this initiative has a purpose and that it is going to solve an actual situation or problem. Most business decisions are made to address pains faced either by the organization itself or its customers. This step is essential so that the stakeholders understand the importance and need for your project and the negative consequences of not allowing it to happen. When doing this, be sure not to get overly dramatic with the problem or the consequences of not implementing the project; however, be persuasive about the problem. Keep business cases, facts, and figures ready to back your claims.

After getting your audience’s attention to the problem, it’s time to introduce your solution. First, you must get your audience to understand the benefits your solution will provide. The main talking points for you to focus on are how the solution will resolve the issue and how your company will benefit from it. The benefits could be improved customer service, innovative products, cost cutting, higher profitability, greater brand visibility, gaining a competitive edge, etc. Try to convey the impact your project will likely create, and think of the comprehensive outcomes; that will impress your audience.

What are the projects’ deliverables– tangible and otherwise? Mention in detail what each outcome will achieve, how it will function, and the benefit it will provide. You can include details like the essential tasks to ensure each outcome and their due dates or deadlines. You also have to specify what characterizes success. How to determine if an outcome has been produced as desired? The best criteria to assess the achievement is by applying the SMART approach – specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound – goals. Use a roadmap to recreate the deliverables and their due dates visually.

Any project requires several resources for execution. Financial estimation of resources is the first step. Each resource required has to be mentioned in budgetary terms, and you have to compute a specific figure that will need to be invested. You then provide details of every resource, like equipment, technology, manpower, facilities, services (consultancy, marketing), etc.

Now it’s time to integrate resources and desired outcomes to create a complex roadmap, highlighting the project’s beginning and closing, due dates, resource usage times, and so on. This helps in materializing the project proposal in high-level tasks.

When you finish the in-depth version of your project proposal, you need to craft an executive summary containing a high-level register of all the critical components of your project proposal. You need to create a summary of your entire project proposal on a single page, but it has to be clear enough to understand the general scope easily.

What we told you above were the steps involved in writing a project proposal; now let’s see how we can write all of that effectively to create maximum impact on your audience:

• Remember who your audience is, and use the language they can relate to and identify with. You can look up the company website and social media handles to understand how to write for your audience clearly.
• The proposal aims to convince your audience to take a specific action or decision – ergo, you must be persuasive. Use case studies, historical data, market forecasts, results of surveys, testimonials, and so on to spur them on in the right direction. You can also showcase your qualifications and experience and boost your confidence.
• If the project does not matter to your audience, they may refuse approval even if they think it sounds good. You must stress the link between the project and the goals or needs of the audience and improve your success possibilities.
• Stay moderate with jargon and complex terms. Please keep it simple, and use a user-friendly format to clarify your proposal. Follow conventions with regard to the structure of your presentation to make sure everything is clear.
• Go over your proposal and ensure there are no grammatical or spelling mistakes; this makes it easy for the audience to understand and shows professionalism. You can also get help from a colleague or professional editor to do it for you.

Presenting a Project Proposal to Stakeholders

You have written, edited, and fine-tuned your proposal document. Now it’s time to present the proposal in front of the stakeholders. Here are some guidelines for a successful presentation:

The first slide should ideally have the name of the project and the presenter – you; this must be done before you delve into the presentation properly. Think of an attention-grabbing name for your project, something that will stay with your audience.

Letting your audience know what is coming in the presentation is good. Therefore, your next slide should be a table of contents – similar to the meeting agenda. It prepares the audience for the structure of details or information presented; it’s a best practice in presentations to provide this information and prepare your audience.

You have written about the problem in detail in the proposal document; however, you must be brief and bold when presenting the same to the stakeholders. Be explicit about what the problem is and the why and how of it. Also, mention the impact of the problem and its consequences. Finally, let the message sink in regarding the real pain that has to be solved.

Now you must communicate to your audience what you plan to do to resolve the problem. Be simple. Keep it to a couple of sentences. Reveal just enough to arouse their interest and curiosity among the audience members. Start being persuasive now – it is the right time to do it.

Here you have to talk about the initiative’s chief aims, what the project will achieve, and the main benefits your company will get from implementing this project. Again, don’t talk at length here – your audience can read details in the document – but mention a couple of the points in your document. Be sure to talk about the most important and impressive benefits. Group and categorize the goals and benefits – you need to mention a few more details than what is seen on the slides. PowerPoint slides are meant to carry minimal information, after all. 

Run through the outcomes, timelines, and criteria for considering successful outcomes without delving very deep into them.

Lay out the strategy you will follow while executing the project, and make sure you describe and explain it briefly. Only some audience members will likely understand a specific project management strategy. For example, if you plan to use Kanban boards, briefly explain what it entails.

Budget is a very important yet simple slide. Here you talk about the total budget you predict the project will require and the breakdown into the important categories or resources. Then, to help the audience understand it, mention what percentage of each resource’s budget will be needed.

Talk about the other requirements for the budget apart from finances. This includes manpower, technology, equipment, location, space, etc. Again, you can run through this, as the details are available in the main document.

While it may not be possible to depict the complete timeline in your project proposal presentation, you can still present an outline. For example, include the chief stages, outcomes, and their due dates. You can even use a proper calendar to mark the timeline of stages and deliverables. This will provide a visual context to your audience in terms of weeks, months, etc., and will give a better understanding of how much time it will take.

Conclude your proposal with a summary – like a recap, so that your audience can remember the chief reason for the presentation. But, again, reinforcing the problem and benefits of the solution will help gloss over the financial and other requirements of the project.

It’s always a good practice to thank your audience for their patient hearing to conclude your presentation. In addition, providing your contact information is a good idea so they can contact you should they need to clarify any matter later.

Here we have seen how to define your project proposal and write a proposal successfully, and tips for a successful presentation. This will help you the next time you have to propose an initiative you have planned. Let us know in the comments if you have anything more to add.

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Princeton Correspondents on Undergraduate Research

How to Make a Successful Research Presentation

Turning a research paper into a visual presentation is difficult; there are pitfalls, and navigating the path to a brief, informative presentation takes time and practice. As a TA for  GEO/WRI 201: Methods in Data Analysis & Scientific Writing this past fall, I saw how this process works from an instructor’s standpoint. I’ve presented my own research before, but helping others present theirs taught me a bit more about the process. Here are some tips I learned that may help you with your next research presentation:

More is more

In general, your presentation will always benefit from more practice, more feedback, and more revision. By practicing in front of friends, you can get comfortable with presenting your work while receiving feedback. It is hard to know how to revise your presentation if you never practice. If you are presenting to a general audience, getting feedback from someone outside of your discipline is crucial. Terms and ideas that seem intuitive to you may be completely foreign to someone else, and your well-crafted presentation could fall flat.

Less is more

Limit the scope of your presentation, the number of slides, and the text on each slide. In my experience, text works well for organizing slides, orienting the audience to key terms, and annotating important figures–not for explaining complex ideas. Having fewer slides is usually better as well. In general, about one slide per minute of presentation is an appropriate budget. Too many slides is usually a sign that your topic is too broad.

Limit the scope of your presentation

Don’t present your paper. Presentations are usually around 10 min long. You will not have time to explain all of the research you did in a semester (or a year!) in such a short span of time. Instead, focus on the highlight(s). Identify a single compelling research question which your work addressed, and craft a succinct but complete narrative around it.

You will not have time to explain all of the research you did. Instead, focus on the highlights. Identify a single compelling research question which your work addressed, and craft a succinct but complete narrative around it.

Craft a compelling research narrative

After identifying the focused research question, walk your audience through your research as if it were a story. Presentations with strong narrative arcs are clear, captivating, and compelling.

• Introduction (exposition — rising action)

Orient the audience and draw them in by demonstrating the relevance and importance of your research story with strong global motive. Provide them with the necessary vocabulary and background knowledge to understand the plot of your story. Introduce the key studies (characters) relevant in your story and build tension and conflict with scholarly and data motive. By the end of your introduction, your audience should clearly understand your research question and be dying to know how you resolve the tension built through motive.

• Methods (rising action)

The methods section should transition smoothly and logically from the introduction. Beware of presenting your methods in a boring, arc-killing, ‘this is what I did.’ Focus on the details that set your story apart from the stories other people have already told. Keep the audience interested by clearly motivating your decisions based on your original research question or the tension built in your introduction.

• Results (climax)

Less is usually more here. Only present results which are clearly related to the focused research question you are presenting. Make sure you explain the results clearly so that your audience understands what your research found. This is the peak of tension in your narrative arc, so don’t undercut it by quickly clicking through to your discussion.

• Discussion (falling action)

By now your audience should be dying for a satisfying resolution. Here is where you contextualize your results and begin resolving the tension between past research. Be thorough. If you have too many conflicts left unresolved, or you don’t have enough time to present all of the resolutions, you probably need to further narrow the scope of your presentation.

• Conclusion (denouement)

Return back to your initial research question and motive, resolving any final conflicts and tying up loose ends. Leave the audience with a clear resolution of your focus research question, and use unresolved tension to set up potential sequels (i.e. further research).

Use your medium to enhance the narrative

Visual presentations should be dominated by clear, intentional graphics. Subtle animation in key moments (usually during the results or discussion) can add drama to the narrative arc and make conflict resolutions more satisfying. You are narrating a story written in images, videos, cartoons, and graphs. While your paper is mostly text, with graphics to highlight crucial points, your slides should be the opposite. Adapting to the new medium may require you to create or acquire far more graphics than you included in your paper, but it is necessary to create an engaging presentation.

The most important thing you can do for your presentation is to practice and revise. Bother your friends, your roommates, TAs–anybody who will sit down and listen to your work. Beyond that, think about presentations you have found compelling and try to incorporate some of those elements into your own. Remember you want your work to be comprehensible; you aren’t creating experts in 10 minutes. Above all, try to stay passionate about what you did and why. You put the time in, so show your audience that it’s worth it.

For more insight into research presentations, check out these past PCUR posts written by Emma and Ellie .

— Alec Getraer, Natural Sciences Correspondent

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Professional Project Proposal PowerPoint Presentation

Number of slides: 10

Before the million-dollar contract, there is the project proposal. Project managers, consultants, and agencies know how powerful a convincing proposal can be. It is an essential tool to get new clients, sponsors, and even more funds, if needed. Use the Project Implementation Slide, Project Data Chart, and the Project Key Ideas Slide to create a persuasive project proposal presentation and show decision makers how your project can be beneficial to the company.

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Project life cycle slide.

One of the most important things you need to talk about from the first encounter is your work style. This is essential to avoid misunderstandings in the future. Use the project life cycle slide to showcase what people should expect from you in every project phase. Actually, there are four clear phases in a project life cycle: initiation, planning, implementation, and closure. However, you can customize the cycle to match the way you work. 

Project Data Chart

You can’t build a convincing project proposal without numbers. And this is where charts come in. You will find a Project Column Chart to back up your proposal with data. For example, display positive results of similar projects you led in the past so your potential clients can see how effective your work is. Another take is to make calculations and show estimated results for the proposed project. 

Project Key Ideas Slide

This is the section where you highlight key ideas that you want attendees to take from your project proposal session. Usually you want people to remember the problem your project would resolve, how it would do it, and the final results. In short, the before and after of your idea execution. Use the Project Key Ideas Slide to close your presentation.

Executive Summary

The Project Key Ideas Slide -which consists of a numbered list from one to five- also works perfectly as an executive summary at the beginning of your Professional Project Proposal Presentation.

Problem statement

We give you a creative slide to showcase the problem as a quote. How would the final customer or user phrase the problem? Use this slide wisely.

A project proposal is not a contract

It is important to note that while project proposals can get approval, it is not a formal contract. And you should treat both as separate documents.

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How to Start and Give a Great Thesis Defense Presentation

To complete a graduate degree, you'll likely need to create a thesis defense presentation. You must complete a thesis to finish many graduate degree programs. 

A thesis is a paper where you explore a topic in depth that's related to what you’ve studied. After completing your thesis paper, you will be asked to defend it through a presentation.

You give this thesis defense in a meeting with a panel of two or more professors in your program. The panel could include other professionals related to your field.

In your thesis defense presentation, you will be asked questions about your topic. The purpose of the questions is to get you to think deeply about your work, so the questions could be open-ended.

To create a thesis defense presentation, you need to know how to make a thesis presentation and how to start your thesis defense. Keep reading to find out more about thesis defense presentations.

How to Structure Your PPT for Thesis Defense

Thesis defense presentations can vary in length. They can be 20 minutes long or two hours long. It depends on how much time is allowed for your presentation and questions.

Talk to your professor to find out how much time is set aside for your presentation. Your thesis defense presentation will be unique to your thesis. But a good presentation includes the following structure:

• Title . You need a title just as your research paper needed a title. The title slide will include the information that you’d include on your paper title. This information can include the title, your name, your school, and course name.
• Introduction . Just like most presentations, your thesis defense presentation should include an introduction slide. This slide should have the topic of your thesis and the question that your presentation answers. It should also include any objections to your research and the answer you’ll be defending in your thesis presentation.
• Literature Review . Next, create two or more slides with a review of the literature used in your research. It doesn’t need to be a complete bibliography. Although you do need to cite your sources, these slides should include your most relevant sources.
• Methodology . These slides in your thesis presentation are where you describe what method you used and an explanation of why you chose that method. If you've got some original research, include the details of that research and how you analyzed the data that you got from that research.
• Results . Some of the most important slides of your PPT for thesis defense contain the results of your research. This should include a description of the data you collected by researching and the results of your data analysis. You also should highlight what your most noteworthy finding was.
• Discussion . These slides of your PPT for thesis defense need to include your research results. Also, show how the results support your argument and how it relates to your original question.
• Conclusion . The conclusion thesis presentation slides should restate your original research questions, show the results of your research, and suggest future research and any final recommendations.
• Ending Slide . The ending slides of your thesis defense presentation are where you add an interesting fact, quote, gif, or hypothetical question. The point is to get your audience to continue to think about your topic while also grabbing their attention. You want your presentation to be memorable.

How to Make a Thesis Presentation

After you’ve seen what the structure of a thesis defense presentation is, there are some more tips that you can follow. Here are tips on how to create a thesis defense presentation:

1. Define Your Concept

After choosing which template to use, the next step is to choose the concept of your thesis defense presentation. Your concept should be relevant to your thesis. To have a fully rounded concept, try to make your presentation templates design relevant to your thesis topic.

Before working on your defense, think about the message you want to convey. This will help you choose elements such as font images and a theme that'll be cohesive.

2. Know Your Audience

Most people give their thesis defense presentation to an academic panel. This panel will look to see if you've developed a thorough understanding of your topic and thesis. They’ll also be looking to see if you've got a solid foundation for your argument.

This is why your presentation is important. You don’t want a sloppy presentation because it can give the impression of laziness and that you don’t care about your presentation. So, choose all aspects of your presentation carefully.

3. Keep Your Slides Focused   

Part of giving a good thesis presentation is to have focused slides. This means that you don’t want to have too much information on a slide. It’s best to follow the rule of one point per slide. If you've got too much on a single slide, it can be hard for the audience to follow you.

4. Structure Your Presentation

After you’ve chosen your concept, it's time to structure the content of your thesis. When structuring your information, you want to show that you understand the subject matter and that you're organized.

5. Less Is More

Each slide should have enough information that you can make your point. It’s important that your audience listens more than they read. By speaking, you show your audience that you know the topic you’re presenting on. So, when creating your slides, remember that less is more.

6. Consider Your Typography

After choosing your thesis presentation subject, consider what typography to use. Your typography should create an impact without distracting from your topic.

When considering your typography, consider your text's colors. Your text's colors should contrast with your slide's background. If the text doesn’t contrast well, it can distract the audience, causing them not to pay attention as you speak.

7. Stick to Important Data

Include data that'll strengthen your argument. Your data should also show that you’ve researched your thesis. If you can, add visuals that are relevant to your data. Visuals stimulate your brain and can increase how fast you process information. So, including relevant visuals can make your data easier to process and remember.

8. Consistency Is Key

When thinking about how to make a thesis presentation, think about consistency. For an impressive presentation, your presentation should flow well. It’s easier to have consistency when using a template because it’s already designed by a professional.

Check your finished presentation for consistency. This means making sure all your titles on slides are the same font and font size. Also, make sure that your body text is consistent throughout.

9. Explain Your Thesis

The next step in how to make a thesis presentation is to explain your thesis in great detail. The first part of this is your methodology slide . This is where you explain what method you used for your research, why you chose the topic, and how you conducted your research.

For this part of your thesis, chart and tables in your presentation are helpful in explaining data. In this section, keep your text minimal to let the chart, graphs, and data stand out. 

Next, tell the audience what the data means. Infographics are a great option to use in this section. Infographics and icons can quickly and simply show your message.

10. End Your Thesis

The last section of your thesis presentation is where you end it. Make your ending memorable to keep your audience thinking.

In your conclusion, overview your thesis topic and remind the audience of the answer that your research proved. Next, cover the important research points you want your audience to remember. A slide with icons is a great way to do this. Also, address your shortcomings in your research and how there can be improvements in future research.

Finally, use some more presentation tips by reading this helpful article:

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Every template is designed by a professional to look stylish and impressive. This means that your presentation will stand out among all the made-from-scratch presentations.

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Now that you’ve been given tips on how to start a thesis presentation and what it should contain, put this information to use when creating your thesis presentation. Save time from having to create a presentation from scratch by downloading a premium template today!

Sample Presentation Script

This section provides a sample script for delivering a half-day to full-day presentation covering all of the topics listed in the outline. Tailor the script to your chosen program length, content and audience.

Presentation Outline

Introduction

• Success stories
• Legal issues
• Definitions and statistics

General Library Access

• Building and physical environment

Adaptive Technology

• Hearing and speech impairments
• Specific learning disabilities
• Mobility impairments
• Health impairments
• Beginning the process of planning for adaptive technology
• Getting started: a list of adaptive technology devices

Electronic Resources

• Universal design principles
• General page design
• Graphical features
• Special features
• Web pages test

Distribute handouts .

• Making Library Resources Accessible to People with Disabilities
• Working Together: People with Disabilities and Computer Technology
• Meet the Speakers in the Videotape: Working Together: People with Disabilities and Computer Technology
• World Wide Access: Accessible Web Design
• Meet the Speakers in the Videotape: World Wide Access

Put up overhead transparency.

Universal Access: Electronic Information in Libraries

I'm here today to share with you information and issues related to people with disabilities, electronic resources, and libraries.

Put up overhead transparency .

Recent advances in adaptive computer technology, greater reliance on computers, and increased availability and networking of electronic information resources have resulted in life-changing opportunities for many people with disabilities. In combination, these technologies provide many people with disabilities better access to education, careers, and other life experiences.

Libraries play an important role in ensuring equitable access to information for all members of our society. In addition, federal legislation mandates that public institutions, including libraries, provide accommodations for people with disabilities so that they can utilize the same services and resources as other people.

What are some of the electronic resources currently in your library?

Presenter Note: Solicit audience input to list items such as CD-ROM encyclopedias and indexes, online catalogs, WWW pages, and full-text databases.

The information covered in this presentation will provide you with tools and insights that will help ensure that these electronic resources are accessible to the broadest audience. As an extra benefit, you will find that being sensitive to the needs of people with disabilities can often make access easier for everyone.

Program Outline

• Legal issues statistics
• General library access
• Adaptive technology
• Electronic resources

Our program today will cover these five topics. To begin I will share some success stories or examples of the impact that adaptive technology for computers and electronic resources has had for people with disabilities. Then we will consider the most important legislative directives on the issue and look at some statistics about people with disabilities. We will then consider the bigger picture of access to libraries and library services for people with disabilities. With that background, a videotape presentation and discussion of adaptive technology for computers will bring our focus to electronic resources in libraries. The last segment of the program will include the second videotape presentation and a discussion of universal design of electronic resources applied to the development of World Wide Web pages.

Today's presentation will help you understand the impact of these technologies for people with disabilities while giving you the tools to begin implementing them in your library. Your packet of handouts is one of the tools that will help you apply the ideas presented. Let's walk through it.

The following handouts are in your packet.

Much of the information presented today is provided in these handouts. I will let you know which handout covers the information we are focusing on as we go through the presentation. Keep the handouts handy to save from taking duplicative notes.

Success Stories

I'm going to start out today by sharing with you a few stories of people with disabilities who are able to access information resources thanks to the availability of adaptive technology and accessible electronic resources. You'll meet them in the videotape we'll view shortly.

• Ben cannot use his hands, but muscular dystrophy doesn't interfere with his use of the Internet; he uses a voice input program that allows him to talk his way through the Net - six hours a day!
• Sarah uses her library's online catalog and the Internet to research and write papers for school. Her learning disability makes it difficult for her to read so she uses a speech output system to read the screen.
• Anna is blind. She uses a screen reader and speech output system to access her library's full-text databases and CD-ROMs. Her system works well until she runs into programs not designed according to universal design principles.
• Shane surfs the Net with a small tube in his mouth. The computer obeys his every command as he inputs Morse code - sip for a dot, puff for a dash. His cerebral palsy is only a minor inconvenience as he researches information on his special interest, naval communication.
• Sherri is legally blind, but has enough sight to use enlarged screen images as she uses governmental resources on the World Wide Web in pursuing her master's degree in public administration.
• Katie is hearing impaired. She often uses a sign language interpreter. On the Internet, however, Katie communicates with the reference librarian quickly and easily through electronic mail.

These stories provide examples of people with disabilities who are successfully pursuing avocations, education, and careers thanks to adaptive technology and electronic resources. During our presentation today, we will be learning how to ensure that there will be many more success stories like these for people with disabilities.

Legal Issues

According to Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (504) and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA), "no otherwise qualified individual with a disability shall, solely by reason of his/her disability, be excluded from the participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity of a public entity." Footnote 1

The ADA and the regulations promulgated to implement it have stressed that people with disabilities should be provided the same services as others, unless this would be less effective. The Department of Justice has stated that "Integration is fundamental to the purpose of the American with Disabilities Act." If accommodation, or an adjustment is needed to make a resource, program or facility accessible to a person with a disability, the individual's preference of accommodation must be given primary consideration. Footnote 2

In short, libraries must assure that people with disabilities can participate in library programs and utilize library resources as independently as possible. And this includes electronic information resources. As legal questions about the implications of the ADA for access to electronic information resources are tested, libraries are being required to provide access to these services.

According to decisions in recent cases on access to electronic resources, libraries in academic institutions must proactively and deliberately plan for accessibility. A recent letter from the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights noted:

Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act requires a public college to take appropriate steps to ensure that communications with persons with disabilities "are as effective as communications with others" [28 C.F.R. ss 35.160(a)]. OCR has repeatedly held that the term "communication" in this context means the transfer of information, including (but not limited to) the verbal presentation of a lecture, the printed text of a book, and the resources of the Internet.

The letter continues:

"Title II further states that, in determining what type of auxiliary aid and service is necessary, a public college shall give primary consideration to requests of the individual with a disability" [28 C.F.R. ss 35.106(b)(2)]. Footnote 3

In providing guidance on expectations for libraries in providing access to electronic resources, the letter states:

Modern adaptive technology has radically affected the degree to which it is economically feasible to make printed materials and computer based information systems accessible to blind patrons. The larger and more financially endowed the library, the higher the expectation that a greater volume of information will be made available within a shorter amount of time, particularly when reasonably priced adaptive technology is available to replace tasks that previously required personnel. An important indicator regarding the extent to which a public library is obligated to utilize adaptive technology is the degree to which it is relying on technology to serve its non-disabled patrons. The more technology that has been purchased by a public library to serve non-disabled patrons, the more reasonable the expectation that it will employ technology such as scanners to serve its patrons with disabilities. Footnote 4

As libraries increasingly provide electronic resources, they are legally obligated to ensure accessibility for people with disabilities.

Definitions and Statistics

So, what exactly does "person with a disability" mean?

"Person with a disability" means "any person who has a physical or mental impairment which substantially limits one or more major life activities including walking, seeing, hearing, speaking, breathing, learning, and working; has a record of such an impairment; or is regarded as having such an impairment."

Examples of qualifying disabilities covered by legislation may include, but are not limited to, spinal cord injuries, loss of limbs, multiple sclerosis, muscular dystrophy, cerebral palsy, hearing impairments, visual impairments, speech impairments, specific learning disabilities, head injuries, psychiatric disorders, diabetes, cancer, and AIDS.

The examples listed here are conditions which limit people's abilities to perform specific tasks. Some of these conditions are readily apparent; some are invisible. Some require that we provide special accommodations in the library; some do not. Additionally, some people who have conditions with the same label may have very different abilities when it comes to performing specific tasks. For example, one student who has cerebral palsy may have difficulty walking. For another student, cerebral palsy may result in no functional use of her/his hands or voice.

Now that we discussed the definition of disability according to the ADA, let's consider some statistics to gain a better understanding of this service population.

According to surveys conducted in 1991-1992, 9.6% or 1 in 10 Americans has a severe disability that substantially limits at least one major life activity. 19.4 % or 1 in 5 Americans has a disability. Footnote 5

In addition, we can expect the number of library patrons with disabilities to increase. Some reasons for this increase include:

Advances in medical technology and techniques result in greater numbers of people who survive traumatic accidents and problematic births.

Improvements in technology make it possible for more people with disabilities to live independently and have productive lives for which they will want and need library resources.

Increased awareness of people with disabilities' rights to accommodations and equal opportunities in education and employment, guaranteed by 504 and the ADA, has, and will continue to encourage more people to pursue these activities and request accommodations.

The creation of federal and state mandated K-12 and higher education academic support programs helps more students with disabilities complete high school and enter college and careers. The number of students with disabilities enrolled in universities and colleges has already increased. In 1994, 9.2% of all full-time, first-time entering freshman reported a disability, up from 2.6% in 1978.6 This trend will create a greater demand for accessible information resources in academic libraries.

The aging of the baby boomer generation will cause a significant demographic shift in our society, increasing the number of people with low vision, hearing impairments, and other disabilities related to the aging process.

Among people aged 18-44, 5% have a severe disability; among people aged 65-74, 25% have a severe disability; and among people aged 75-84, 42% have a severe disability. Footnote 7

All of these factors are leading to increased numbers of people with disabilities who are and will be requesting services at libraries.

The purpose of this introduction is to help you understand why libraries need to be prepared to serve people with disabilities. The legal imperatives of the ADA and other laws and the expected increase of people with disabilities in our constituencies and argue strongly for immediate action. Libraries will be best prepared to serve patrons with disabilities if they strive to include them in regularly provided services. This is best achieved by using universal design principles when designing facilities, equipment, services and resources; by providing a base level of adaptive technology; and by developing a policy and procedures for handling requests for accommodation. By taking these steps the library will be better able to respond quickly to more specialized requests for accommodation.

The rest of today's presentation will help you develop an understanding of adaptive technology and of universal design principles so that you can help develop accessible services and resources for your library.

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Overview.md

Latest commit, file metadata and controls, gc extension, introduction.

Note: Basic support for simple reference types , for typed function references proposal , and for type imports have been carved out into separate proposals which should become the future basis for this proposal.

See MVP for a concrete v1 proposal and Post-MVP for possible future features.

WARNING: Some contents of this document may have gotten out of sync with the MVP design, which is more up-to-date.

Efficient support for high-level languages

• faster execution
• smaller modules
• the vast majority of modern languages need it

Provide access to industrial-strength GCs

• at least on the web, VMs already have high performance GCs

Non-goal: seamless interoperability between multiple languages

Requirements

• Allocation of data structures that are garbage collected
• Allocation of byte arrays that are garbage collected
• Allow heap values from the embedder (e.g. JavaScript objects) that are garbage collected
• Unboxing of small scalar values
• Down casts as an escape hatch for the low-level type system
• Explicit low-level control over all runtime behaviour (no implicit allocation, no implicit runtime types)
• Modular (no need for shared type definitions etc.)
• Fast but type-safe
• Lean but sufficiently universal
• Language-independent
• Trade-off triangle between simplicity, expressiveness and performance
• Interaction with threads
• Independent from linear memory
• Low-level data representation types , not high-level language types or object model
• Basic but general structure: tuples (structs), arrays, unboxed scalars
• Accept minimal amount of dynamic overhead (checked casts) as price for simplicity/universality
• Pay as you go; in particular, no effect on code not using GC, no runtime type information unless requested
• Don't introduce dependencies on GC for other features (e.g., using resources through tables)
• Make runtime type information explicit
• Extend the design iteratively, ship a minimal set of functionality fast

The sole purpose of the Wasm type system is to describe low-level data layout, in order to aid the engine compiling its access efficiently. It is not designed or intended to catch errors in a producer or reflect richer semantic behaviours of a source language's type system, such as distinguishing the types of data structures that have the same layout but are intended to be distinguished in the source language (e.g., different classes).

This is true for the types in this proposal as well. The introduction of managed data adds new forms of types that describe the layout of memory blocks on the heap, so that the engine knows, for example, the type of a struct being accessed, avoiding any runtime check or dispatch. Likewise, it knows the result type of this access, such that consecutive uses of the result are equally check-free. For that purpose, the type system does little more than describing the shape of such data.

Potential Extensions

• Safe interaction with threads (sharing, atomic access)
• Forming unions of different types, as value types?
• Direct support for strings?
• Defining, allocating, and indexing structures as extensions to imported types?

Efficiency Considerations

GC support should maintain Wasm's efficiency properties as much as possible, namely:

• all operations are reliably cheap, ideally constant time
• structures are contiguous, dense chunks of memory
• field accesses are single-indirection loads and stores
• allocation is fast
• no implicit allocation on the heap (e.g. boxing)
• primitive values should not need to be boxed to be stored in managed data structures
• unboxed scalars are interchangeable with references
• allows ahead-of-time compilation and code caching

Example languages from three categories should be successfully implemented:

• an object-oriented language with nominal subtyping (e.g., a subset of Java, with classes, inheritance, interfaces)
• a typed functional language (e.g., a subset of ML, with closures, polymorphism, variant types)
• an untyped language (e.g., a subset of Scheme or Python or something else)

Structs and Arrays

• Want to represent first-class tuples/records/structs with static indexing
• Want to represent arrays with dynamic indexing
• Possibly want to create arrays with either fixed or dynamic length

Examples (fictional language):

• user-defined structures and arrays as heap objects
• references to those as first-class values
• locals of these types

The above could map to

These functions $f and $g code introduces locals which cannot be null, so they must be set before their first get (see the typed function references proposal ). In the case of $b the local is declared as nullable, however, mapping to an optional reference. The respective access via struct.get may hence trap.

Objects and Method Tables

• Want to represent objects as structures, whose first field is the method table
• Want to represent method tables themselves as structures, whose fields are function pointers
• Subtyping is relevant, both on instance types and method table types

Example (Java-ish):

(Note: the use of extend in this example and others is assumed to be simple syntactic sugar for expanding the referenced structure type in place; there may be no extend construct in the abstract syntax or binary format; subtyping is meant to defined structurally .)

• (structural) subtyping
• immutable fields (for sound subtyping)
• universal type of references
• dynamic linking might add a whole new dimension

To emulate the covariance of the this parameter, one down cast on this is needed in the compilation of each method that overrides a method from a base class. For example, D.g :

The addition of type fields may later avoid this cast.

• Want to associate a code pointer and its environment in a GC-managed object
• Want to allow compiler of source language to choose appropriate environment representation
• function pointers
• (mutually) recursive function types

The down cast for the closure environment is necessary to go from the abstract closure type to the concrete. Statically type checking this would require (first-class) type fields , a.k.a. existential types.

Note that this example shows just one way to represent closures (with flattened closure environment). The proposal provides all necessary primitives allowing high-level language compilers to choose other representations.

An alternative is to provide primitive support for closures, e.g. a partial application operator.

Parametric Polymorphism

• Dynamic languages or static languages with sufficiently expressive parametric polymorphism (generics) often require a uniform representation , where all its data types are represented in a single word.
• Typically, pointer tagging is used to unbox small scalars.
• Want to be able to represent this with type anyref .

Contrived example (fictional language):

Here, make_pair as well as fst and snd need to be able to operate on any type of pair. Furthermore, fst and snd cannot simply be type-specialised at compile time, because that would be insufficient to compile g , which takes a polymorphic function as an argument and instantiates it with multiple different types. Such first-class polymorphism is not expressible with compile time techniques such as C++ templates, but common-place in many languages (including OO ones like Java or C#, where it can be emulated via generic methods). Untyped languages like JavaScript or Scheme trivially allow such programs as well.

The problem is that the compilation of fst and snd must not depend on the type they are instantiated with because with first-class polymorphism it is not generally possible to tell, at compile time, the set of all such types (static analysis can do that in many cases but not all). Unless willing to implement runtime code specialisation (like C# / .NET) a type-agnostic compilation scheme is necessary.

The usual implementation technique is a uniform representation, potentially refined with local unboxing and type specialisation optimisations.

The MVP proposal does not directly support parametric polymorphism (see the discussion of type parameters ). However, compilation with a uniform representation can still be achieved in this proposal by consistently using the type anyref , which is the super type of all references, and then down-cast from there:

Note how type i31ref avoids Boolean values to be heap-allocated. Also note how a down cast is necessary to recover the original type after a value has been passed through (the compiled form of) a polymorphic function like g -- the compiler knows the type but Wasm does not.

(Future versions of Wasm should support type parameters to make such use cases more efficient and avoid the excessive use of runtime types to compile source language polymorphism, but for the GC MVP this provides the necessary expressiveness.)

Basic Functionality: Simple Aggregates

• Extend the Wasm type section with type constructors to express aggregate types
• Extend the value types with new constructors for references (split out into reference types and typed function references proposal proposals)

Structure types define aggregates with heterogeneous fields that are statically indexed :

Such types can be used by forming typed reference types , which are a new form of value type. Fields are accessed with generic load/store instructions that take a reference to a structure. For example:

All accesses are type-checked at validation time. The structure operand of struct.get/set may either be a ref or a ref null for a structure type In the latter case, the access involves a runtime null check that will trap upon failure.

Structures are allocated with the struct.new instruction that accepts initialization values for each field. The operator yields a reference to the respective type:

Structures are managed -- i.e., garbage-collected -- so manual deallocation is neither required nor possible.

Array types define aggregates with homogeneous elements that are dynamically indexed :

Array types are used by forming reference types. For now, we assume that all array types have a ( flexible ) length dynamically computed at allocation time.

Elements are accessed with generic load/store instructions that take a reference to an array:

The element type of every access is checked at validation time. The array operand of array.get/set may either be a ref or a ref null for an array type In the latter case, the access involves a runtime null check that will trap upon failure. The index is checked against the array's length at execution time. A trap occurs if the index is out of bounds.

Arrays are allocated with the array.new instruction that takes an initialization value and a length as operands, yielding a reference:

The length of an array, i.e., the number of elements, can be inquired via the array.len instruction:

Like structures, arrays are garbage-collected.

Packed Fields

Structure and array fields can have a packed storage type i8 or i16 :

Loads of packed fields require a sign extension mode:

Fields can either be immutable or mutable :

Store operators are only valid when targeting a mutable field or element. Immutable fields can only be stored to as part of an allocation.

Immutability needs to be distinguished in order to enable safe and efficient subtyping , especially as needed for the objects use case.

Reference Equality

References can be compared for identity:

The ref.eq instruction expects two operands of type eqref , which is a subtype of anyref and the supertype of all reference types that support equality checks. That includes structure and array references as well as tagged integers , but not function references.

Nullability & Defaultability

These notions are already introduced by typed function references and carry over to the new forms of reference types in this proposal.

Plain references cannot be null, avoiding any runtime overhead for null checks when accessing a struct or array. Nullable references are available as separate types called ref null , as per the typed function references proposal .

Most value types, including all numeric types and nullable references are defaultable , which means that they have 0 or null as a default value. Other reference types are not defaultable.

Allocations of aggregates with non-defaultable fields or elements must have initializers.

Objects whose members all have mutable and defaultable type may be allocated without initializers:

TODO (post-MVP): How to create interesting immutable arrays?

Other Reference Types

Universal type.

This type is already introduced by the reference types proposal .

The type anyref can hold references of any reference type. It can be formed via up casts , and the original type can be recovered via down casts .

Imported Types

These are available through the type imports proposal .

Types can be exported from and imported into a module:

Imported types are essentially parameters to the module. If no further constraints are given, they are entirely abstract, as far as compile-time validation is concerned. The only operations possible with them are those that do not require knowledge of their actual definition or size: primarily, passing and storing references to such types.

Type imports can also specify constraints that (partially) reveal their definition, such that operations are enables, e.g., field accesses to a struct type.

Imported types can participate as the source in casts if associated RTTs are imported that enable revealing a subtype.

Imported types are not per se abstract at runtime. They can participate in casts if associated RTTs are constructed or imported (including implicitly, as in call_indirect ).

These are enabled by the type imports proposal .

The embedder may define its own set of types (such as DOM objects) or allow the user to create their own types using the embedder API (including a subtype relation between them). Such host types can be imported into a module, where they are treated as opaque data types.

There are no operations to manipulate such types, but a WebAssembly program can receive references to them as parameters or results of imported/exported Wasm functions. Such "foreign" references may point to objects on the embedder 's heap. Yet, they can safely be stored in or round-trip through Wasm code.

Function References

Function references are already introduced by the typed function references proposal .

References can also be formed to function types, thereby introducing the notion of typed function pointer .

Function references can be called through call_ref instruction:

Unlike call_indirect , this instruction is statically typed and does not involve any runtime check.

Values of function reference type are formed with the ref.func operator:

Unboxed Scalars

Efficient implementations of untyped languages or languages with polymorphism often rely on a uniform representation , meaning that all values are represented in a single machine word -- usually a pointer. At the same time, they want to avoid the cost of boxing as much as possible, by passing around small scalar values (such as bools, enums, characters, small integer types) unboxed and using a tagging scheme to distinguish them from pointers in the GC.

To implement any such language efficiently, Wasm needs to provide such a mechanism. This proposal therefor introduces a built-in reference type i31ref that can be implemented in an engine via tagged integers. Producers may use this type to request unboxing for scalars. With this type a producer can convey to an engine that the value range is sufficiently limited that it only needs to handle unboxed values, and no hidden branches or allocations need to be generated to handle overflow into a boxed representation, as would potentially be necessary for larger value ranges.

There are only three instructions for converting from and to this reference type:

The first is essentially a "tag" instruction, while the other two are two variants of the inverse "untag" operation, either with or without sign extension to 32 bits.

Being reference types, unboxed scalars can be cast into anyref , and can participate in runtime type checks and dispatch with ref.cast or br_on_cast .

To avoid portability hazards, the value range of i31ref has to be restricted to at most 31 bits, since that is the widest range that can be guaranteed to be efficiently representable on all platforms.

Note: As a future extension, Wasm could also introduce wider integer references, such as i32ref . However, these sometimes will have to be boxed on some platforms, introducing the unpredictable cost of possible "hidden" allocation upon creation or branching upon access. They hence serve a different use case.

Type Structure

Type grammar.

The overall type syntax can be captured in the following grammar:

where value_type is the type usable for parameters, local variables and the operand stack, and def_type describes the types that can be defined in the type section.

Note that for the MVP, an additional restriction on the above grammar is that array fields must be mutable.

Type Recursion

Through references, aggregate types can be recursive :

Mutual recursion is possible as well:

The type grammar does not make recursion explicit. Semantically, it is assumed that types can be infinite regular trees by expanding all references in the type section, as is standard. Folding that into a finite representation (such as a graph) is an implementation concern.

Type Equivalence

In order to avoid type incompatibilities at module boundaries, all types are structural. Aggregate types are considered equivalent when the unfoldings of their definitions are (note that field names are not part of the actual types, so are irrelevant):

This extends to nested and recursive types:

Note: This is the standard definition of recursive structural equivalence for "equi-recursive" types. Checking it is computationally equivalent to checking whether two DFAs are equivalent, i.e., it is a non-trivial algorithm (even though most practical cases will be trivial). This may be a problem, in which case we need to fall back to a more restrictive definition, although it is unclear what exactly that would be.

Subtyping is designed to be non-coercive , i.e., never requires any underlying value conversion.

The subtyping relation is the reflexive transitive closure of a few basic rules:

• The anyref type is a supertype of every reference type (top reference type).
• The funcref type is a supertype of every function type.
• A structure type is a supertype of another structure type if its field list is a prefix of the other (width subtyping).
• The field is mutable in both types and the storage types are the same.
• The field is immutable in both types and their storage types are in (covariant) subtype relation (depth subtyping).
• Both element types are mutable and the storage types are the same.
• Both element types are immutable and their storage types are in (covariant) subtype relation (depth subtyping).
• For each parameter, the supertype's parameter type is a subtype of the subtype's parameter type (contravariance).
• For each result, the supertype's parameter type is a supertype of the subtype's parameter type (covariance).

Note: Like type equivalence , (static) subtyping is structural . The above is the standard (co-inductive) definition, which is the most general definition that is sound. Checking it is computationally equivalent to checking whether one DFA recognises a sublanguage of another DFA, i.e., it is a non-trivial algorithm (even though most practical cases will be trivial). Like with type equivalence, this may be a problem, in which case a more restrictive definition might be needed.

Subtyping could be relaxed such that mutable fields and elements could be subtypes of immutable ones. That would simplify creation of immutable objects, by first creating them as mutable, initialize them, and then cast away their constness. On the other hand, it means that immutable fields can still change, preventing various access optimizations. Another alternative would be a three-point mutability lattice with readonly as a top value and mutable and immutable as two incomparable smaller values.

Casting and Runtime Types

The Wasm type system is intentionally simple. That implies that it cannot be expressive enough to track all type information that is available in a source program. To allow producers to work around the inevitable limitations of the type system, down casts have to be provided as an "escape hatch". For example, that allows the use of type anyref to represent reference values whose type is not locally known. When such a value is used in a context where the producer knows its real type, it can use a down cast to recover it.

For safety, down casts have to be checked at runtime by the engine. Down casts hence need a runtime representation of Wasm types: runtime types (RTT). To avoid hidden cost and make RTTs optional when not needed, all runtime types are explicit operand values ( witnesses ). For example:

This instruction checks whether the runtime type stored in <operand> is a runtime subtype of the runtime type represented by the second operand.

In order to cast down the type of a struct or array, the aggregate itself must be equipped with a suitable RTT. Attaching runtime type information to aggregates happens at allocation time. A runtime type is an expression of type rtt <type> , which is another form of opaque value type. It represents the static type <type> at runtime. In its plain form, a runtime type is obtained using the instruction rtt.canon

For example, this can be used to cast down from dataref to a concrete type:

More generally, runtime type checks can verify a subtype relation between runtime types. In order to make these checks cheap, runtime subtyping follows a nominal semantics. To that end, every RTT value may not only represents a given type, it can also record a subtype relation to another (runtime) type (possibly anyref ) defined when constructing the RTT value:

This creates a new witness for <type> and defines it to be a subtype of the runtime type expressed by <rtt> . Validation ensures that <type> is a static subtype of the type denoted by <rtt> . Consequently, runtime subtyping is always a subrelation of static subtyping, as required for soundness.

The above form of cast traps in case of a type mismatch. This form is useful when using casts to work around limitations of the Wasm type system, in cases where the producer knows that it will succeed.

Another variant of down cast avoids the trap:

This branches to $label if the check is successful, with the operand as an argument, but using its refined type. Otherwise, the operand remains on the stack. By chaining multiple of these instructions, runtime type analysis ("typecase") can be implemented:

There are a number of reasons to make RTTs explicit:

It makes all data and cost (in space and time) involved in casting explicit, which is a desirable property for an "assembly" language.

It allows more choice in producers' use of RTT information, including making it optional (post-MVP), in accordance with the pay-as-you-go principle: for example, structs that are not involved in any casts do not need to pay the overhead of carrying runtime type information (depending on specifics of the GC implementation strategy). Some languages may never need to introduce any RTTs at all.

Most importantly, making RTTs explicit separates the concerns of casting from Wasm-level polymorphism, i.e., type parameters . Type parameters can thus be treated as purely a validation artifact with no bearing on runtime. This property, known as parametricity, drastically simplifies the implementation of such type parameterisation and avoids the substantial hidden costs of reified generics that would otherwise have to be paid for every single use of type parameters (short of non-trivial cross-procedural dataflow analysis in the engine).

Future Extensions

In the spirit of an MVP (minimal viable product), the features discussed so far are intentionally limited to a minimum of functionality. Many additional extensions are expected before GC support can be considered "complete".

Samantha Putterman, PolitiFact Samantha Putterman, PolitiFact

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• Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/fact-checking-warnings-from-democrats-about-project-2025-and-donald-trump

Fact-checking warnings from Democrats about Project 2025 and Donald Trump

This fact check originally appeared on PolitiFact .

Project 2025 has a starring role in this week’s Democratic National Convention.

And it was front and center on Night 1.

WATCH: Hauling large copy of Project 2025, Michigan state Sen. McMorrow speaks at 2024 DNC

“This is Project 2025,” Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, D-Royal Oak, said as she laid a hardbound copy of the 900-page document on the lectern. “Over the next four nights, you are going to hear a lot about what is in this 900-page document. Why? Because this is the Republican blueprint for a second Trump term.”

Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, has warned Americans about “Trump’s Project 2025” agenda — even though former President Donald Trump doesn’t claim the conservative presidential transition document.

“Donald Trump wants to take our country backward,” Harris said July 23 in Milwaukee. “He and his extreme Project 2025 agenda will weaken the middle class. Like, we know we got to take this seriously, and can you believe they put that thing in writing?”

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Harris’ running mate, has joined in on the talking point.

“Don’t believe (Trump) when he’s playing dumb about this Project 2025. He knows exactly what it’ll do,” Walz said Aug. 9 in Glendale, Arizona.

Trump’s campaign has worked to build distance from the project, which the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, led with contributions from dozens of conservative groups.

Much of the plan calls for extensive executive-branch overhauls and draws on both long-standing conservative principles, such as tax cuts, and more recent culture war issues. It lays out recommendations for disbanding the Commerce and Education departments, eliminating certain climate protections and consolidating more power to the president.

Project 2025 offers a sweeping vision for a Republican-led executive branch, and some of its policies mirror Trump’s 2024 agenda, But Harris and her presidential campaign have at times gone too far in describing what the project calls for and how closely the plans overlap with Trump’s campaign.

PolitiFact researched Harris’ warnings about how the plan would affect reproductive rights, federal entitlement programs and education, just as we did for President Joe Biden’s Project 2025 rhetoric. Here’s what the project does and doesn’t call for, and how it squares with Trump’s positions.

Are Trump and Project 2025 connected?

To distance himself from Project 2025 amid the Democratic attacks, Trump wrote on Truth Social that he “knows nothing” about it and has “no idea” who is in charge of it. (CNN identified at least 140 former advisers from the Trump administration who have been involved.)

The Heritage Foundation sought contributions from more than 100 conservative organizations for its policy vision for the next Republican presidency, which was published in 2023.

Project 2025 is now winding down some of its policy operations, and director Paul Dans, a former Trump administration official, is stepping down, The Washington Post reported July 30. Trump campaign managers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita denounced the document.

WATCH: A look at the Project 2025 plan to reshape government and Trump’s links to its authors

However, Project 2025 contributors include a number of high-ranking officials from Trump’s first administration, including former White House adviser Peter Navarro and former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson.

A recently released recording of Russell Vought, a Project 2025 author and the former director of Trump’s Office of Management and Budget, showed Vought saying Trump’s “very supportive of what we do.” He said Trump was only distancing himself because Democrats were making a bogeyman out of the document.

Project 2025 wouldn’t ban abortion outright, but would curtail access

The Harris campaign shared a graphic on X that claimed “Trump’s Project 2025 plan for workers” would “go after birth control and ban abortion nationwide.”

The plan doesn’t call to ban abortion nationwide, though its recommendations could curtail some contraceptives and limit abortion access.

What’s known about Trump’s abortion agenda neither lines up with Harris’ description nor Project 2025’s wish list.

Project 2025 says the Department of Health and Human Services Department should “return to being known as the Department of Life by explicitly rejecting the notion that abortion is health care.”

It recommends that the Food and Drug Administration reverse its 2000 approval of mifepristone, the first pill taken in a two-drug regimen for a medication abortion. Medication is the most common form of abortion in the U.S. — accounting for around 63 percent in 2023.

If mifepristone were to remain approved, Project 2025 recommends new rules, such as cutting its use from 10 weeks into pregnancy to seven. It would have to be provided to patients in person — part of the group’s efforts to limit access to the drug by mail. In June, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a legal challenge to mifepristone’s FDA approval over procedural grounds.

WATCH: Trump’s plans for health care and reproductive rights if he returns to White House The manual also calls for the Justice Department to enforce the 1873 Comstock Act on mifepristone, which bans the mailing of “obscene” materials. Abortion access supporters fear that a strict interpretation of the law could go further to ban mailing the materials used in procedural abortions, such as surgical instruments and equipment.

The plan proposes withholding federal money from states that don’t report to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention how many abortions take place within their borders. The plan also would prohibit abortion providers, such as Planned Parenthood, from receiving Medicaid funds. It also calls for the Department of Health and Human Services to ensure that the training of medical professionals, including doctors and nurses, omits abortion training.

The document says some forms of emergency contraception — particularly Ella, a pill that can be taken within five days of unprotected sex to prevent pregnancy — should be excluded from no-cost coverage. The Affordable Care Act requires most private health insurers to cover recommended preventive services, which involves a range of birth control methods, including emergency contraception.

Trump has recently said states should decide abortion regulations and that he wouldn’t block access to contraceptives. Trump said during his June 27 debate with Biden that he wouldn’t ban mifepristone after the Supreme Court “approved” it. But the court rejected the lawsuit based on standing, not the case’s merits. He has not weighed in on the Comstock Act or said whether he supports it being used to block abortion medication, or other kinds of abortions.

Project 2025 doesn’t call for cutting Social Security, but proposes some changes to Medicare

“When you read (Project 2025),” Harris told a crowd July 23 in Wisconsin, “you will see, Donald Trump intends to cut Social Security and Medicare.”

The Project 2025 document does not call for Social Security cuts. None of its 10 references to Social Security addresses plans for cutting the program.

Harris also misleads about Trump’s Social Security views.

In his earlier campaigns and before he was a politician, Trump said about a half-dozen times that he’s open to major overhauls of Social Security, including cuts and privatization. More recently, in a March 2024 CNBC interview, Trump said of entitlement programs such as Social Security, “There’s a lot you can do in terms of entitlements, in terms of cutting.” However, he quickly walked that statement back, and his CNBC comment stands at odds with essentially everything else Trump has said during the 2024 presidential campaign.

Trump’s campaign website says that not “a single penny” should be cut from Social Security. We rated Harris’ claim that Trump intends to cut Social Security Mostly False.

Project 2025 does propose changes to Medicare, including making Medicare Advantage, the private insurance offering in Medicare, the “default” enrollment option. Unlike Original Medicare, Medicare Advantage plans have provider networks and can also require prior authorization, meaning that the plan can approve or deny certain services. Original Medicare plans don’t have prior authorization requirements.

The manual also calls for repealing health policies enacted under Biden, such as the Inflation Reduction Act. The law enabled Medicare to negotiate with drugmakers for the first time in history, and recently resulted in an agreement with drug companies to lower the prices of 10 expensive prescriptions for Medicare enrollees.

Trump, however, has said repeatedly during the 2024 presidential campaign that he will not cut Medicare.

Project 2025 would eliminate the Education Department, which Trump supports

The Harris campaign said Project 2025 would “eliminate the U.S. Department of Education” — and that’s accurate. Project 2025 says federal education policy “should be limited and, ultimately, the federal Department of Education should be eliminated.” The plan scales back the federal government’s role in education policy and devolves the functions that remain to other agencies.

Aside from eliminating the department, the project also proposes scrapping the Biden administration’s Title IX revision, which prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. It also would let states opt out of federal education programs and calls for passing a federal parents’ bill of rights similar to ones passed in some Republican-led state legislatures.

Republicans, including Trump, have pledged to close the department, which gained its status in 1979 within Democratic President Jimmy Carter’s presidential Cabinet.

In one of his Agenda 47 policy videos, Trump promised to close the department and “to send all education work and needs back to the states.” Eliminating the department would have to go through Congress.

What Project 2025, Trump would do on overtime pay

In the graphic, the Harris campaign says Project 2025 allows “employers to stop paying workers for overtime work.”

The plan doesn’t call for banning overtime wages. It recommends changes to some Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA, regulations and to overtime rules. Some changes, if enacted, could result in some people losing overtime protections, experts told us.

The document proposes that the Labor Department maintain an overtime threshold “that does not punish businesses in lower-cost regions (e.g., the southeast United States).” This threshold is the amount of money executive, administrative or professional employees need to make for an employer to exempt them from overtime pay under the Fair Labor Standards Act.

In 2019, the Trump’s administration finalized a rule that expanded overtime pay eligibility to most salaried workers earning less than about $35,568, which it said made about 1.3 million more workers eligible for overtime pay. The Trump-era threshold is high enough to cover most line workers in lower-cost regions, Project 2025 said.

The Biden administration raised that threshold to $43,888 beginning July 1, and that will rise to $58,656 on Jan. 1, 2025. That would grant overtime eligibility to about 4 million workers, the Labor Department said.

It’s unclear how many workers Project 2025’s proposal to return to the Trump-era overtime threshold in some parts of the country would affect, but experts said some would presumably lose the right to overtime wages.

Other overtime proposals in Project 2025’s plan include allowing some workers to choose to accumulate paid time off instead of overtime pay, or to work more hours in one week and fewer in the next, rather than receive overtime.

Trump’s past with overtime pay is complicated. In 2016, the Obama administration said it would raise the overtime to salaried workers earning less than $47,476 a year, about double the exemption level set in 2004 of $23,660 a year.

But when a judge blocked the Obama rule, the Trump administration didn’t challenge the court ruling. Instead it set its own overtime threshold, which raised the amount, but by less than Obama.

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