You've got a deal worth winning and a proposal that doesn't look like it. Maybe the template has been passed around for three years. Maybe your team is great at selling and nobody wants to open design software at night. Either way, you're looking at a proposal design agency, and you want to know which questions separate the good ones from the expensive ones.
Here's what we'd ask, including the questions we'd want you to ask us.
Who writes the words?
This is the question that matters most, and it's the one people forget. A lot of what gets sold as proposal design is layout. Your team writes it, and the agency makes it look good. That has value. But on a big deal, our read is that the writing decides more than the look does. A beautiful page that says the wrong thing to the CFO still says the wrong thing.
Ask whether the agency writes, edits or only designs. Ask who on their side will read your discovery notes. If the answer is nobody, you're paying for a new coat of paint on the same proposal.
At Closewell, we write, design and build each proposal. You give us the deal, and we give you back the case.
What do I get at the end?
Some agencies hand you a PDF. Some hand you a template file to keep editing. Some build a web page. Ask exactly what the deliverable is and how the buyer will open it.
Our view is that a big deal needs both a live web version and a matching PDF. The web version is how the champion and the executives read it, on a laptop or a phone. The PDF is what procurement files and what gets printed for the meeting. Every proposal we build ships as both.
How do you learn about my deal?
A proposal built from a sales deck reads like a sales deck. Ask how the agency gets to know the buyer. A good one will want your discovery notes, call recordings if you have them, the buyer's own words about the problem, who's on the committee and who you're up against. If the intake is a form asking for your logo and brand colors, keep looking.
How is it priced?
Pricing for proposal work is all over the map. Some agencies charge by the page, some by the hour and some on retainer. Hourly pricing is fine until the project runs long, and on a deal with a deadline it usually does.
We price by what we build. Handshake starts at $5K, for a deal with one buyer and one decision. Signature starts at $7.5K and adds a chapter for every person who signs off. Board starts at $10K and is built for formal reviews scored line by line. You get one exact number after the brief, and nothing starts until you've agreed to it. See what proposal design costs for how that compares with templates, software and freelancers.
What happens if the deal changes?
Deals move. A new stakeholder shows up, the scope shifts or the buyer asks for a second option. Ask how revisions work and what happens after the proposal goes out.
Every Closewell proposal includes one round of updates within 30 days, and we host the live version for 12 months. If the deal comes back in three months with a new timeline, the link still works.
Will you sign an NDA?
You're handing over pricing, strategy and a buyer's private details. Any agency worth hiring should sign an NDA before you share them, and should be clear about who on their side sees your files. We sign one before the brief.
Can I see the work?
Ask for examples, and look closely. Do they read like they were written for one buyer, or like the same template with a new logo? Open the live ones on your phone. Read the pricing page as if you were the CFO. Look for the buyer's own problem on the first screen.
You can see our concept proposals. Each one is built around a fictional deal so we can show the whole thing, pricing included, without exposing a real client.
What should the agency ask you?
A good agency interviews you as much as you interview them. Expect questions about the buyer, the competition, the timeline, the people who sign off and what happens if you lose. If an agency is ready to quote before it knows any of that, the quote is a guess, and so is the proposal it'll build.
When a proposal design agency isn't the right call
We'll say this plainly. If your deal is small, your buyer is one person who's already sold or the proposal is a formality, you probably don't need us. A solid template will do. Our Canva template comparison covers when that's the right move.
Where a proposal design agency earns its fee is the deal that would change your year. Several readers, a real competitor and a buyer comparing you side by side. On a $250K deal, a $5K proposal is 2 percent of what's on the table.
The short version
Ask who writes it, what you get, how they learn your deal, how it's priced and what happens after it goes out. The right agency should be glad to answer all of it, and should have a few questions of its own.
If you're ready to talk about a specific deal, start a proposal.
