Write a proposal executive summary the economic buyer actually reads
Writes the one page of your proposal the economic buyer actually reads: situation, cost of inaction, recommendation, expected results, investment framing, and a dated next step — in 350 words that talk about the buyer more than about you. Built from your discovery notes, so it reads like understanding, not boilerplate.
You are a proposal writer for six- and seven-figure B2B deals, and you know the truth about proposals: the economic buyer reads one page — the executive summary — and skims the rest for the price. Most executive summaries waste that page describing the vendor. Yours describe the buyer's situation so accurately that the rest of the proposal feels inevitable. Write an executive summary of 350 words maximum with this structure: 1. Situation — two or three sentences proving we understand their world, using their numbers and their words from the sales process. 2. Cost of inaction — what staying the course costs per quarter, stated plainly. 3. Recommendation — what we propose, in outcome language, with the mechanism in one sentence. 4. Expected results — two or three specific outcomes with timeframes, each tied to evidence. 5. Investment framing — one sentence positioning price against the cost of the problem (exact pricing lives elsewhere in the proposal). 6. Next step — the specific action, owner, and date. Rules: the buyer's company name appears more often than ours. No 'we are pleased to submit', no company history, no 'partnership' fluff, no adjectives doing the work evidence should do. Write like a sharp colleague summarizing the deal for their CEO in the elevator. Before you write anything, interview me. Ask me these questions ONE AT A TIME, waiting for my answer each time: 1. Who is the buyer, and what problem did they tell you they're solving? Use their words from calls or notes if you have them. 2. What numbers surfaced during discovery — current costs, targets, team size, timeline pressure? 3. What exactly are you proposing, and what will be different 90 days after they sign? 4. What proof do you have that this works for companies like them? 5. What's the price range, and what's the agreed next step if they say yes? Once you have my answers, write the summary. If I haven't given you a single number from discovery, stop and tell me the summary will be weak without one — then write the best version possible and mark where a number belongs.
How to use it
- 1
Copy the prompt into Claude, ChatGPT, or any LLM.
- 2
Pull real quotes and numbers from your discovery notes or call recordings before starting — the summary is only as good as those.
- 3
Answer question 1 in the buyer's words, not your pitch language.
- 4
Drop the output on page one of your proposal and cut whatever generic intro it replaces.
- 5
Reuse the structure per deal; the interview makes each one specific in about ten minutes.
Best practices
Count company-name mentions in the draft — if yours outnumbers theirs, regenerate with 'make it about them'.
The cost-of-inaction line is the most skipped and most persuasive part; push discovery until you can fill it with a real number.
Keep exact pricing out of the summary but never hide the frame — executives distrust proposals that feel like the price is being saved for a reveal.
Send the summary alone as a pre-read before the proposal walkthrough; if the champion says 'this is exactly right', the meeting is a formality.
Example: what this looks like in practice
An AE at an IT services firm is proposing a $180K infrastructure overhaul to a 400-person insurance company. From discovery notes she gives the model the CIO's own phrasing ('we're one outage away from a board conversation'), the numbers (two outages last quarter, roughly $90K each in downtime), and the proof (similar migration for another regional insurer, zero unplanned downtime in 14 months). The model returns a 330-word summary that opens with the buyer's outage math, frames the $180K against $360K of annual outage cost, and ends with 'kickoff April 14, owned jointly by both project leads'. The CIO forwards it to the CFO unedited — which was the entire point.
Best fit
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Six things in under 400 words: the buyer's situation in their own terms, the cost of doing nothing, your recommendation in outcome language, expected results with timeframes, a one-line investment frame, and a dated next step. What it should not include: your company history, 'we are pleased to submit', or anything the buyer's CEO would skip.
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