How to write a professional proposal with AI

A man who runs a tree business told me what eats his week. Cutting trees and grinding stumps, that's the job. What he does by hand is everything around it. Proposals. Invoices. Quotes.

That's the paperwork standing between him and getting paid. And AI can write a professional proposal from a couple of sentences.

In March I showed this on camera. Here's the whole process, including a mistake I caught that you need to watch for.

Start with a couple of sentences

You don't need a template. You need the facts. Here's roughly what I said, for a demo client:

"Write a proposal for Sarah. She has a real estate business and wants a custom website. The price covers design and development for both the desktop and mobile site, and it should take about two weeks."

In the real prompt I gave it the price too. That's the recipe. Give it:

• Who it's for.
• What they need.
• What's included.
• The price.
• The timeline.

Leave one of those out and the AI will fill the hole with a guess. So don't leave one out.

What came back

A real proposal. Prepared for Sarah, with my name on it and a proposal number so I can keep it in my records. An overview of what she's trying to do, which is establish a professional online presence for her real estate business. What we'd build: a custom site, fully responsive across desktop, tablet and mobile, laid out to attract buyers.

Then the work in phases. Phase one, phase two, phase three. Then the timeline, the investment and the payment terms.

Don't skip payment terms. Especially if you do custom work. That's where disagreements start.

Make one edit, then check it everywhere

The draft came back with 50% upfront and 50% after delivery. I wanted something different.

"Instead of 50% upfront and 50% after delivery, can we do 25% upfront and 75% after delivery? Change that before we turn it into a PDF."

It said the payment terms were updated. So I checked. Down in the payment terms section, yes. But the terms also showed up higher in the document, and that spot didn't change.

That's the lesson right there. When you change a number, check every place that number lives. AI will often fix the line you pointed at and miss the copy of it two sections up. A proposal with two different payment terms in it looks sloppy at best. At worst it starts an argument with a client before the work even begins.

Look at it before it goes out

Then:

"Generate the PDF so I can take a look at it. If a PDF is too much, generate a local HTML file so I can review it before we send it out."

It came back clean. Phases, payment terms, everything, ready to send. After I read it.

A few habits worth keeping:

• Send it to yourself first. Save it as a draft in your email and read it the way the client will.
• Talk instead of type. I do a lot of this by voice because it's faster. On a Mac, dictation is one key away.
• Keep the record. I liked that mine was saved with the client's info. When she comes back, the history is there.

The question I get the most

The same week I filmed this, an eighteen-year-old asked me what skills he needed to start his own business. I told him: learn how to use AI. Then he asked if I had tutorials. I said, man, I'm literally shooting one right now.

Back then I was teaching it inside Kiyomi Max. The skill is the same in Claude or any good AI. Clear facts in. One careful edit. A full read before it goes out.

Your practice

Pick a client. Generate a proposal. Make one edit. Then send it, to yourself first if you want.

What this means for you

Proposals, quotes and invoices are where small businesses lose hours every week. The tree guy shouldn't be writing them by hand, and neither should you.

If you want to learn this on your own business, that's what the RMDW Platform does: a 10-minute assessment, then lessons built around your business, starting with Claude, with new ones every month.