Proposal Writer Skill
The Setup
After a good discovery call, there’s a window. The prospect is excited. They see the fit. They’re ready to move. And then… you spend two hours writing a proposal. By the time you send it, the momentum has cooled. They’ve talked to two other people. They’ve second-guessed the budget.
I was good at calls. I was bad at writing proposals fast. Every one felt like starting from scratch — even though 70% of the content was the same across engagements. Scope, pricing, timeline, process, next steps. The structure never changed. The specifics did.
The Build
I built a Claude Cowork skill that turns rough meeting notes or a call transcript into a complete client proposal. It knows my service tiers (fractional marketing, AI workshops, Practice Presence websites, strategy sprints), my pricing, my standard process, and my voice.
I paste in my notes from the call — even messy, half-sentence notes — and the skill produces a formatted proposal: the problem the client described, the approach I’d take, the scope of work, pricing, timeline, and next steps. In my tone. With my framing. Ready to review, tweak, and send.
The skill cross-references my dossier system to pull relevant context. If the prospect is a therapist, it pulls Practice Presence positioning and pricing. If they need content strategy, it pulls the fractional marketing framework. The right context loads automatically based on what the notes describe.
The Mess
The first version wrote proposals that were too long. Four pages of detailed methodology for a $2,000 website project. The client doesn’t need to know my content migration strategy — they need to know what they’re getting, what it costs, and when it’ll be done.
I tuned the skill to match scope to length. A $125 strategy call gets a 1-page confirmation. A $4,000 website gets a 2-page proposal. A fractional engagement gets 3 pages max. The skill knows which format to use based on the service type.
The Result
Proposals go out within hours of the call, not days. The quality is consistent because the framework is consistent. And I spend 15 minutes reviewing and personalizing instead of 2 hours drafting from scratch.
The skill has also made me more willing to take exploratory calls. When writing a proposal was a 2-hour chore, I avoided calls that might not convert. Now that the proposal is a 15-minute review, I take more calls. More calls = more closed deals. Simple math.
The Takeaway
Speed of follow-up is a competitive advantage. The first person to send a good proposal usually wins.
How It’s Built
- Platform: Claude Cowork (custom skill)
- Input: Meeting notes or call transcript (messy is fine)
- Output: Formatted proposal with scope, pricing, timeline, next steps
- Context: Pulls from dossier system (service types, pricing, voice)
- Formats: Scales from 1-page confirmation to 3-page engagement doc
- Cost: Included in Claude subscription