How to Follow Up or Revise Your Business Proposal - (2024)

Probably not. If you did not get a response acknowledging receipt of your proposal, you should at least send an email or make a phone call to be sure your proposal was received. If you are sure your proposal was received, you should wait a week or so after delivery, and then contact the company to ask if they've reviewed your proposal and inquire if there are any questions you can answer. The actual time frame depends on the proposal review schedule, which may have been included in an RFP. Proposal Kit contains multiple follow-up letter templates you can use for this purpose.

What if, after you've submitted your proposal, you have new information to offer? Say, for example, that the price of a major component has just gone down, so now you can adjust your bid to beat your competitors. Or perhaps you just hired an expert with a decade of experience that will impress your potential client. Can you submit an update?

What if your proposal was rejected and you want to submit a revised proposal? Check first with the reviewer to see what their policies and procedures for submitting a revision are and follow their instructions. The odds are that you can, and it will be welcomed. Check the RFP or other instructions provided to be sure of the time frame for consideration and the correct way to contact the organization. If there is an established procedure for submitting revisions, be sure to follow those instructions to the letter.

In the absence of specific instructions, use common sense. If the organization is small or you have a relationship with them, call and explain you have revisions to make and ask them for the best way to submit those revisions. Otherwise, you might choose to send an email message or use Proposal Kit's Follow-up Letter or Follow-up Status Request Letter template.

When you submit your revised proposal, make it easy for the reader to spot your revisions in the new version of your proposal. Add a revision number and date to the Title Page so that different revisions can be easily tracked.

Add Proposal Kit's Revisions, Updates or Amendment template to the front of your proposal. This revisions page should contain a bulleted list of all of the changes made and it should reference the proposal pages those changes appear on. If you are using Word, you should link the revision bullet points to the actual changes in the proposal document using hyperlinks to make the job of the reviewer easier.

These are just some of the follow-up letters and revision submission templates included in Proposal Kit:

On the changed pages, consider adding footnotes or highlighting the changes to make them easy to spot.

The Proposal Pack Wizard document assembly software that comes with Proposal Kit Professional and Proposal Pack products is also able to insert new pages into previously generated documents. This means you can easily insert new pages including a Revisions chapter into your proposal as well as generate new letters for your project.

Following a structured and professional approach when following up on your proposal or revision can sometimes turn the project around in your favor. So don't be afraid to reach out and follow-up.