I've seen this play out at agencies countless times. An RFP drops with a tight deadline, everyone scrambles to throw together a response, and weeks later, they get a rejection or silence. A creative agency proposal planning template is what broke that cycle for some and helped them start winning consistently.
Now, I'm going to show you how to use a planning template to help you research the client, nail your strategy, and align your team before you write a single word. Planning first means you'll win more of the right projects and stop chasing opportunities that were never going to work out anyway.
So what exactly is this planning template, and how does it work?
It's a checklist set up in apps like Jotform or ClickUp to track client research, strategy, and team coordination before writing your proposal. This isn't the proposal itself– it's the prep work where you figure out your approach.
Planning helps you pick the right projects using a bid/no-bid framework and stops you from wasting time on bad-fit clients. Good research uncovers what the client needs and finds angles other agencies miss, so you can show exactly how you'll fix their problem instead of using generic talking points. It also nails down scope and pricing upfront so you won't lowball your estimate or do extra work for free.
Now that you understand what proposal planning does for your win rate, let's break down what goes into a template.
Your planning template isn't something you fill out once and forget about. You'll keep adding to it as you learn more about the project. Here's what needs to be in it:
Start with a checklist to help you decide whether you should even pursue the project. Look at whether the budget makes sense for what they want, if the work fits what your agency does best, if you have time to do it well, if this client could lead to more work later, and who else is competing for it.
Give each area a score from 1 to 5. If the total is too low, walk away!
Some agencies only chase opportunities that score at least 20 out of 25. This keeps you from wasting weeks on projects you're not going to win or don't actually want.
Create a research worksheet where you collect everything you learn about the client. Write down their business goals, who they're trying to reach, what problems they're dealing with, who makes decisions, when they need things done, and how much money they have to spend.
Figure out if they already work with another agency or have an in-house team you're up against.
Don't just skim their website and call it research. Dig around on LinkedIn to see who works there and what they care about, then read their recent news or press releases to understand what's happening with their business.
Scroll through their social media to get a feel for how they talk and what their brand is like, because all of this helps you speak their language when you write the creative services proposal.
Make a section where you track who else is probably bidding on this project. Write down what they're good at and where they're weak compared to your agency. Look at similar work they've done before and get a sense of how their prices compare to yours.
You're not doing this to freak out about the competition.
You just need to know what you're up against so you can show why your agency is the better choice. When you understand what the other guys bring to the table, it's easier to explain what makes you different.
This competitive intelligence becomes crucial when you're developing your positioning strategy and helps improve your proposal win rate by ensuring you're highlighting genuine differentiators rather than generic strengths.
Go through the RFP line by line and figure out what they're asking for, then think about what they need but didn't mention because sometimes clients don't know how to ask for what would really help them. Match up your services with what they're trying to accomplish and mark anything that seems confusing or risky so you can ask about it later.
Be clear about what you'll do and what you won't do, so there's no confusion once the project starts.
This keeps you from finding out halfway through the project that you and the client had completely different ideas about what you were supposed to deliver.
Come up with two or three main reasons why you're the best choice for this particular client. These aren't generic "we're experienced and creative" statements. There are specific connections between what your agency does well and what this client actually needs right now.
Pull together proof from past projects that backs up your claims, using real examples and results you've gotten for similar clients to show you can deliver. Write out how you'll explain what sets you apart from everyone else pitching, and make it about their situation instead of just talking about how great you are.
Figure out who on your team will work on this project and make sure they have time when the client needs it done.
Decide now if you need freelancers for missing skills and check how this affects your team's current workload. Get everyone aligned on roles before you promise the client you can deliver, because winning a project you can't handle is worse than not winning at all.
You don't want to win a project and then realize you can't actually deliver because your best people are slammed with other work.
Having all these components in place is one thing, but knowing how to use them in the right order makes all the difference.
You get the most out of your planning template when you use it the same way every single time. It turns a basic RFP into a focused pitch that's way more likely to win.
When an RFP lands in your inbox, don't say yes right away just because it feels exciting.
Give yourself 24 hours to run it through your checklist. Score it honestly. If it doesn't hit your minimum, send a polite "no thanks" and move on. You just saved your team from wasting days or weeks on something you weren't going to win anyway.
If the opportunity scores high enough, make it official. Put one person in charge of the proposal and get your team ready to start digging into research.
Try to get on a call with the client if you can, because even 30 minutes of conversation beats guessing what they need. Then start your research using the checklist by looking at their marketing, checking out their brand, and seeing what their competitors are doing.
Invest the time this phase deserves– typically 8 to 12 hours for mid-sized opportunities, because this is what separates agencies that win from agencies that lose. Write down everything you find, note anything that worries you, and come up with questions you need to ask before you can write a good proposal.
Get your key people in a room together– strategy, creative, account managers, and operations– and go through what you learned in your research. Come up with your win themes as a group, figure out how you're positioning the agency, map out the scope, and talk about what makes your approach different.
Discuss pricing and make sure you have the people and time to do the work, because if anyone has concerns or sees problems, now's the time to bring them up instead of waiting until after you've sent the proposal and promised things you can't deliver.
With your strategy and positioning locked in from the planning session, it's time to get specific about what you're actually proposing.
Take the requirements you mapped out and turn them into a detailed scope. Build a realistic timeline with clear milestones. Figure out your pricing based on the value you're delivering, not just your costs. Calculate what it'll actually cost you– team time, tools, freelancers, everything.
Add some cushion for the unexpected stuff that always comes up. Make sure your final number makes sense compared to what the client has to spend. If your price is way over their budget, you need to adjust the scope or walk away now, not after you've written the whole proposal.
With your scope, timeline, and pricing locked in, you're ready for the final checkpoint before writing begins.
Once you've filled out the whole template, get a sign-off from leadership and make sure everyone agrees on the plan before you start writing. Then you can finally begin drafting the actual proposal using everything in your planning template as your blueprint.
Hand out assignments for who writes what and who handles design, and the proposal should practically write itself because you already did the hard thinking.
Even with a solid template in place, agencies still fall into predictable traps during the planning phase. Here are the most common mistakes to watch out for, and how to avoid them.
A lot of agencies chase every opportunity that comes their way. They feel like they have to respond to every RFP or they're leaving money on the table.
The truth is, some projects are a waste of time from the start. You'll never win them, or even worse, you'll win them and regret it because the client turns out to be a nightmare.
Use your qualification checklist every single time.
Score the opportunity honestly and walk away from the ones that don't make the cut. It feels weird to turn down work, but it frees up your team to focus on proposals you can actually win.
Related to skipping qualification, another common error is rushing through the research phase. When you're in a hurry, it's tempting to skim the client's website and start writing.
The problem is your proposal ends up sounding like everyone else's because you're making guesses instead of actually knowing their business. The client can tell you didn't do your homework.
Treat research as a dedicated phase, not a quick task. Allocate specific time for it and involve multiple team members to gather different perspectives.
Even agencies that qualify opportunities properly and do thorough research often stumble when it comes to scope definition.
Some agencies just take whatever the client says they want and build their proposal around it. They don't question whether the timeline makes sense or if the budget matches the work. Then they win the project and realize the client expected way more than what they can actually deliver.
Now you're stuck doing extra work for free or dealing with an angry client.
Check the client's requests against reality. If something doesn't add up, flag it now. Have the hard conversations before you send the proposal, not after you've already signed the contract.
Once you've nailed the scope, the next pitfall to avoid is pricing without thinking strategically.
A lot of agencies figure out what the project will cost them and then add a markup. The problem is that this ignores the actual value you're creating for the client. You end up in price wars with other agencies, all of you racing to the bottom. Your work gets treated like a commodity instead of specialized expertise.
Fix it by pricing based on what you're delivering for the client and how you stack up against competitors. If you're solving a major problem or bringing skills nobody else has, charge accordingly. Don't just calculate your costs and slap on 20 percent.
Finally, even with perfect qualification, research, scoping, and pricing, your proposal can still fall apart if only one person handles the planning.
When one person handles the whole proposal by themselves, the rest of the team has no idea what was promised. They find out after you win the project, and suddenly everyone's scrambling because nobody agreed to the timeline or understood the scope. You get pushback from your own team, and delivery becomes a mess.
Bring your team into the planning process from the beginning. Hold planning sessions where strategy, creative, and operations all weigh in. When people help build the plan, they're invested in making it work.
Avoiding these five mistakes takes discipline, but the payoff is substantial.
Winning proposals start with a plan, not a blank page. When you think things through before you write, you win way more projects, and the planning you do upfront becomes your actual project plan once you win.
A solid creative agency proposal planning template helps you win more proposals and deliver better work. Once you start winning consistently, you'll need a system to manage the workload. ManyRequests is a client portal built for subscription agencies that combines request intake, delivery workflow, and subscription billing. Download our free template for your next proposal, and if you win, try ManyRequests for 14 days free!
Your template should include everything you need to decide if you're going after the project, research the client thoroughly, check out the competition, map out the scope, plan your resources, figure out your win themes, set your pricing, and spot potential problems. When you have all of this in one place, you're completely prepared before you even start writing the proposal.
Plan to spend 8 to 15 hours on proposal planning for most projects. Smaller ones might only need 5 to 8 hours. Big projects worth six figures or more deserve at least 15 to 20 hours of planning time. The bigger the opportunity, the more time you should invest upfront to get it right.
A proposal planning template is what you use to research, strategize, and get ready before you write anything. A proposal template is the actual document you send to the client with all the formatting and sections. Planning happens first. The finished document comes after you've done all that prep work.