Why does your proposal get ignored?
Because it asks one hard question — is this worth it? — and hard questions get postponed. It has no date, so there is no reason to answer this week rather than next. It opens with the seller's credentials, so it reads as being about someone else. And it arrives with nothing prepared for the five things the buyer will say next. None of that is about the price. The fix is the document: their sentence first, three options, the cost of inaction in their numbers, and a close plan with dates.
Why three options instead of one price?
Because three prices turn a yes-or-no decision into a which-one decision, and the second question is easier to say yes to. Option A, scoped, solves the stated problem only — the safe yes. Option B, recommended, solves it and the reason behind it — the intended sale, and the proposal says so. Option C, comprehensive, adds speed, scope or access, and makes B look sensible. One analyst moved from one price to three and his close rate went from about one in five to about one in three, with nothing about the work changed.
What is the cost of inaction, and whose numbers?
What leaving the problem as it is costs the buyer over a year — in money, hours or risk — placed before the options so they are read against it rather than against zero. The figures must be the buyer's: the penalties on their account, the Sunday hours they counted, the rate they named. A number built from the seller's assumptions is an argument; one built from the buyer's figures is a mirror. Label it stated, estimated or assumed.
What is a close plan?
Three steps, each with an owner and a date — sent, questions call, decision — and an expiry with its reason. A proposal with dates is a document that ends; one without is a document that waits. Tie the decision date to something in the buyer's world — the remittance on the fifteenth, the wedding in October — because a date that is theirs is one they already have in the calendar.
What should you do tonight?
Put the expiry date in the first email of the next proposal, not the last. If a proposal is pending now, send a question they can answer in a sentence — not a check-in. The full proposal instrument, with the five objections prepared before sending and the three follow-ups that are not checking in, is Chapter 7.
The three options are your three tiers, adjusted for one buyer — the fence comes first. The proposal instrument is in the book and renders itself as text in the Binder.