238 | Win More Business with Less Effort - How to Write Winning Proposals in 15 Minutes Using AI

0:00Hello and welcome to the Leveraging AI podcast, the podcast that shares practical ethical ways to leverage to improve efficiency, grow your business and advance your career. This is Isar Maitis, your host. And in this episode, we're going to dive how to write winning proposals in order to get more business while investing significantly less time. If you have been listening to this podcast for a while, you know that I've been saying multiple times that a business can run without HR, it can run without marketing, it can run without accounting, it can run without a lot of things that exist in most businesses, it cannot run without clients.

0:32Because if you don't have clients, you don't have a business. You could be a good nonprofit, but you cannot run a business without clients. But to get clients, you need to be able to write proposals, not just proposals. You need to write proposals that actually win you business. So what does a good proposal look like? So the first thing you need is to understand what the client exactly wants. You also want to connect with the client emotionally, because if you can connect with them emotionally, there's a significantly higher chance they're going to buy from you because humans as living creatures make most of the decisions based with emotion, and then we justify it based on parameters.

1:05And so if you can, A, present your case in an easy way to follow, connected with the client's needs and connect with them emotionally, even better. Now, as far as what I said, making it easy to follow and understand is a big deal of writing a successful proposal. And there's actually two types of proposals, or there's probably more, but two big categories of how you write a proposal or how you understand the client's requirements. One is based on communication with a prospect or an existing client for an additional work. And that could be based on meetings and demos and emails and chats and different ways of communication.

1:38So you can understand exactly what they need. The other option is an RFP. In bigger projects, the client will write a request for proposal, which will clarify exactly what they need, how they want the proposal written, and so on. And then you need to write them a proposal based on that. And we're going to cover both of these options in this episode. Now, either way, writing good proposals is really time consuming. And in many cases, it's not straightforward in connecting the dots of exactly what the client wants, or whether through an RFP or through the different means of communication, and writing a proposal that will capture all of that in an effective way.

2:13Now, also in many proposals, you have two aspects. You have the written proposal, which would be a Word or a PDF or a Google Doc. And there's the financial component that in most cases is going to be Excel or a Google Sheets, and we're going to cover both these as well. We are going to start with the first option of capturing the client's requirements, which is communication with the client and not an RFP, because I believe that most of you write most of your proposals based on that. So what kind of communications can you have? This could be meetings in person, either in a showroom or at your offices, but this could also be a Zoom call or emails or Slack or whatever means you use in order to chat with your clients or a combination of all of the above.

2:52So what you need is you need to capture all of these communications. So the ones that are written are very easy. You have their either in some kind of a chat platform or on your email, but the communications that are verbal, you have to record. You can either record them if you're in a Zoom call or Teams calls or Google or whatever other means you have your virtual communications. Or if it's in person, you can still record it in person. You can either do this with several different types of applications on your phone or buy a hardware product such as Plod that is the size of a credit card, gets stuck to the back of your phone, and you can then record calls in person as well.

3:26But either way, you want to capture these calls. I do all of my communication with my potential clients and prospects on Zoom. And so I record the Zoom calls and capture all the information. I use a tool called Fathom, which is a tool that can record, transcribes, and get notes from every single meeting. And there are many other tools that do the same thing. I really like Fathom for many different reasons. I find their summaries to be very effective and it's very easy to use and it saves all of the recordings in the history so I can go back and take a look at exactly what happened so I can get the context of what was said and not just the summary.

3:58But all of that doesn't really matter for the proposal because when I come to write the proposal, I don't really care. When I'm going to fathom, I have the summary of everything that happened as far as bullet points as a summary, but I also have a transcript. All I have to do is click on copy transcript and I'm good to go. what do I do with the transcript that I copied? Well, I take the copy that I have and I go to ChatGPT. And inside of ChatGPT, I have a custom GPT that I have created, which I'm going to show you exactly how to create yourself. And in that custom GPT that is called Multiply AI Training and Education Proposal, all I have to do is paste the transcript.

4:34That's it. So then I click go, and it is going to read it, and it's going to write a proposal. Now, before we jump into the proposal, I want to say two words about custom GPTs. Those of you who don't know what custom GPTs are, there are these mini automations that you can build inside of ChatGPT. By the way, as I'm speaking, it is writing the proposal. So those of you who are watching this on YouTube can see the proposal being written, but I'm going to read snippets out of it to you once I'm done. But these custom GPTs are these mini automations that you can create. You can get to them on the left side menu after you have the new chat and search and library and so on.

5:05There's a section called GPTs. If you haven't created any, you're just going to have a button called Explore. I have about 30 plus of them that me and other people in my company use regularly to do almost everything in our business, run through different custom GPTs. So this particular GPT writes proposals based on a transcript. So let's see what we have right now. We have a proposal written, and you can see that it shows up in this little interesting square thingy versus the regular chat. And you can see that it has an edit button inside the top of that square. This is because I requested the custom GPT to write this in what ChatGPT calls Canvas.

5:41So if I click on edit, now what I have is I have a side-by-side setup where I have the chat on my left and I have the proposal on my right. And on the top of the proposal said AI training and consulting proposal for We Are Sassy, which is a company I completely made up, but I really do this with every single proposal that I write. And then it says provided to John Smith, founder of We Are Sassy, provided by Isar Mehdi, CEO at Multiply, date November 3rd, 2025. Introduction. This proposal outlined a tailored AI training and implementation program for We Are Sassy. The initiative is designed to accelerate your journey into the AI-enabled business operations by identifying and unlocking high ROI use cases, streamlining proposal writing and lead generation, and building internal capacity through custom live training sessions.

6:26And then it goes to objectives. Identify and implement high ROI, AI use cases within the next 90 days, build internal capacity and automate core workflows, such as proposal writing and lead generation, establish baseline AI capabilities, et cetera, et cetera. It goes through all the things. Then he talks about why AI training is urgent, and he touches on exactly the topics that they mentioned. As you can imagine, in this particular case, it was lead nurturing and proposal writing. Why work with multiply? So there's several different bullet points. Why to hire me, basically, to be the one delivering the training?

6:58And he touches on a very important point that, again, are tied back to their needs. And then he talks about training formats and recommendations. So it gives several different options of formats, and he talks about why they should do each one. So there are great justifications. I'll read a short snippet out of that. Online workshops, in parentheses, use case specific. We recommend a series of focus two-hour workshops delivered live via Zoom. These workshops are designed to address specific bottlenecks and high-value opportunities, in parentheses, proposal, automation, lead generation, et cetera.

7:27Bullet point number two, include live demos and hands-on experiences tailored to your business. Bullet number three, involve core team members and freelancers, regardless of location. This particular real client, again, I've changed the name, has a relatively small in-house team and a very large team of freelancers. And the idea was to create online workshops so other freelancers from all around the world can participate in these workshops. And then it goes to other options that they could do instead or in addition to the two-hour workshops that were suggested. Then it goes to a roll-up plan. What happens in November?

7:59What happens later on? What happened in December? What happens next year? Then it goes to pricing. Then it goes to data preparation and confidentiality, like what kind of data they need to provide to me, and so on and so forth. It's a really long and highly detailed proposal. Now, I know that those of you who've never done anything like this go, holy crap, I want something like this. How the hell, did you just do this? And so two things before we dive into how I did this. The reason I do this within Canvas, which again is this format where I can see the document on the right and the chat is on the left, is because now I can edit the document.

8:32If I want to add another objective or I want to change the objectives, I can click inside of it and I'll just type. And I can now type whatever I want inside this document. I can delete components. I can add components. I can reorder a component just by copying and pasting. Think about it as having Microsoft Word or Google Docs within ChatGPT. Now, the other thing that is very helpful, because it is within ChatGPT, I don't have to do the editing manually. So one of the things here, it says, why work with multiply? And it has already existing four bullet points. The third one is combines business acumen with AI expertise to focus on real practical ROI.

9:06Sounds great, but let's say I want to say more about it that is related specifically to their business. I can highlight this section. And then when you highlight anything within Canvas, it pops up a little pop-up thing. And one of the options there, it says, Ask Chat GPT. So if I click on that, now it is going to work related only to the highlighted area. In this case, a specific bullet point. And I can say, please provide more information about this aligned with the needs of the client. And then it is going to rewrite just this one bullet point. As you can see now, or those of you who can't see, I will read it.

9:45There used to be just one sentence, and now it's an entire paragraph with more information related specifically to the conversation that I had with the client. So this is the huge benefit of Canvas. And basically, because I've defined exactly the format that I want, so it has numberings and headings and bullet points, exactly the way I usually write proposals. Once I'm done editing it here, I'm basically done. All I have to do, there's a copy button on top. I copy it, paste it into my regular template, either in Word or Google Docs with my header and footer and so on, payment terms, all the stuff that is standard, and I'm done and I can send a proposal.

10:20But how did it happen? How does this thing work? So I'm going to close the canvas for a minute and I'm going to go back to the custom GPT that again, you can see here on the left and I will show you exactly how it works. So if I go to edit GPT, how does a GPT work? By the way, I've done an entire episode about how to create custom GPTs, and that's not going to be the focus of this one. If you want to check the custom GPT episodes in which we dive exactly how to develop them, you can go back to episode 175 that is labeled, Stop Wasting Time, Automate Repetitive Task with Custom GPTs. So you can go back and check that one again, episode 175.

10:57But now let's dive into this custom GPT. Its name, as I mentioned before, is Multiply AI Training and Education Proposal. The description says, writes proposals based on a template and meeting transcription. And then there's the actual instructions. By the way, the name and the description doesn't matter. It's just for you to know what it does. So if we look at the instructions, the instructions are where the magic actually happens. And it says the following, you are an expert proposal writer. Your goal is to write clear, easy to follow and attractive AI training proposals. Cool. Now you obviously write your own thing, however you want it.

11:26Now I define the inputs. So the inputs include, and I'm quoting, use the master template of AI training and consultation proposal in your knowledge base as a template. And then it gives different options of the things that I do. But then it says the following. Each proposal that you write will include one or more of these training options. You need only to include the components that were discussed with the prospect in parentheses based on the transcripts and emails I will provide to you. Also, you have access to the Multiply AI Services brochure. Every time you will write a section from the proposal about a specific type of service, you must add a short description of the relevant service and its benefits from this brochure.

12:07Combine it seamlessly with what was discussed in the call. And in parentheses, it says what the prospect or client said and how they said it. Then it talks about what is the second input. So the first input was documents that I'm providing it. I'm going to touch on that in a minute. The second input is client meeting transcript and or email communication with the prospect slash client. The user will provide you with a full transcript of a discovery call with a potential client, the transcript, who the client is and what do they do, what they are trying to achieve with AI, team structure and distribution, any strategic initiatives such as upcoming sprints, rollouts, goals, etc.

12:41And there's a bunch of those you obviously need to write your own. Yours is going to be very, very different than mine. I provide AI training consultations to companies and workshops to organizations. And so this is my instructions, but yours could be very, very different. And then I define the output. The output is using the template proposal as a base, generate a customized client-ready proposal. The final output should, and now there's a list of things, update the title and headers, because I have a generic title in headers, right? So include client's names instead of, and the template has company name in bold letters in order to tell it what to replace.

13:16Update the recipient names and relevant dates, adjust introduction and objective sections, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And then it tells it all the things it needs to update, all the use cases that it needs to bring up. And then it also suggests to customize the data prep section, include any use cases and or documents they plan to share, Jira stories, test cases, anything that they're going to provide to me that was discussed in the call or in the emails. It also suggests to add client-specific benefits and ROI. And the two things that I'm suggesting is reflect their business objectives, e.g.

13:48speed of sprint execution, team enablement, et cetera, whatever they're going to mention. And number two, emphasize alignment with their transformation goals. And you've seen that in the proposal that it connects back to what they said in the call and in the emails. I have really exciting news for you today. The biggest thing that everybody's after with AI is automating different tasks in your business, right? This is the holy grail that everybody's chasing. This is why these companies are worth many billions of dollars because they promise to automate stuff that otherwise will require people to do the work.

14:20Well, most people hear about this and drool about this, but they don't have a clue how to actually build these automations. Many people who have taken my course, the AI business transformation, thousands of people at this point learned the basics of how to prom properly and how to use different AI tools, but to learn how to actually effectively build automations that can actually automate tasks across any aspect of the business is something that requires the basic training that I've delivered and then going beyond. And this is exactly what we are starting to deliver. Starting on the first week of December, we are launching a course that will teach you everything you need to know to automate stuff in your business, how to connect your existing tech stack, your CRM, your ERP, email, marketing platform, whatever aspect you want together with advanced AI capabilities to create workflows that automate more and more aspects of your business.

15:12Think what that might be worth. This can dramatically accelerate more or less every single thing that you do while dramatically reducing the cost, freeing people to do more important jobs than the mundane stuff they're doing every single day. So everybody wins. You have happier partners and employees. you run faster and you drive more business, all while investing less money than you're investing right now, which means regardless of the size of your business, this is an incredibly valuable offer. And we're doing this for a price that makes it a joke. So if you want to learn more, we are launching this course again, the first two weeks of December.

15:50It is going to be two weeks on Mondays at noon Eastern. So you can join us at noon, December 1st, and then December 8th. And And in four hours, we will take you from I know how to prompt and I know how to use AI at a basic level to having all the tools, including templates that I have personally created and that I use for myself and for my clients that you are going to get for free that will get you and save you hours of figuring it out on your own. So come and join us in December. By the way, if you don't have the basic knowledge and you're saying, this sounds a little above my head, I need to get the basics first.

16:20We are launching another cohort of the highly successful AI business transformation course that I've been teaching for two and a half years since April of 2023. And we're updating it every single time we're running it. And we've run it at least once a month since. So it's been updated many, many times. We are launching another cohort of that at the end of January. So if you want to start 2026 with the right foot forward, knowing either the basics, if you're a beginner, or the more advanced automation capabilities, don't miss this opportunity to start 2026 with the right foot forward. I'm not sure what we're going to teach the next cohort of this.

16:56So this is an amazing opportunity to finish this year strong and start the next year even stronger. All of our courses sell out, literally 100 % of them. So don't wait. There's going to be a link to both courses in the show notes of this podcast. just click the link, check the landing page. It has the syllabus and everything you need to know about the course. And you can then start automating your business and moving significantly faster next year. And now back to the episode. Then there's a few additional things that are very specific as far as the formatting and how I want it, what to include and not to include.

17:28And in the very, very last sentence, it says, write the proposal in Canvas, which means it is going to write it in that format that allows me to edit the proposal and work in collaboration with ChatGPT on making it perfect. So what else is in the CustomGPT? There is the knowledge base. What is the knowledge base? The knowledge base is where you can give the CustomGPT additional information. In this particular case, there are two files. The first file is the master template of AI training and consulting. And that template has literally every single service that I provide, which I will never actually use in a real proposal, but it allows the AI to then pick and choose the different services that was defined in the conversation with the client.

18:06So as you heard in the instructions, I tell it to pick and choose just the component that it needs. The other document is the Multiply AI services brochure. This has a much longer description of the different services that I provide, and the AI knows how to pick from that in order to describe the services and the benefit that they provide to the client based on what they said and based on their needs. And then the final section here, it says capabilities. And in the capabilities, you can choose different options like web search, canvas, image generation, code interpreter and data analysis. And the only thing I checked is canvas because it's the only thing I need.

18:37And that is it. If you take this exact concept and make it your own, meaning combine your proposal template and your information about the services and product that you sell with instructions on how to use a transcript or any other means of communication with the client, you'll be able to write your own proposals. something that used to take me about two hours, takes me about 15 minutes right now with most of the heavy lifting actually done by AI. But as we mentioned, this is just one aspect of the proposal. You also need the financial side of it. You want to deliver an Excel, sometimes a very complex Excel with multiple tabs and multiple formulas that are connecting it together.

19:15And the best way to do that is actually in Claude. So Chachipiti is great and it's even okay at running formulas in Excel. But once you start getting into really complex Excel files, especially with multiple tabs, Cloud becomes a much, much better tool, at least as of right now. So let's look at a similar example in Cloud. So what I've done here in this particular one, and I'm not going to run it in real time because it takes it a while to create. So what you can see here is a audio visual proposal generation. And the reason I chose that is A, because I have a lot of client in the smart home industry, but also because it has a gazillion different options and different things.

19:53And what you can see here is that I'm looking at a page out of a multiple page Excel file that was completely created by Claude. And all I had to do is a very similar thing. You can see that I uploaded a document that's called Client Showroom Meeting Text, which is basically a text transcript that was taken from a hardware device inside the demo room. And it captured the entire conversation with the client. And all I did is just that and click go. and it said, and now Claude said, I've reviewed the client showroom meeting transcript before I begin creating the Excel proposal, I need to clarify several important items to ensure accuracy.

20:25And it's going to ask me multiple questions. Why does he ask me questions? Because the instructions that it has inside the Claude project, ask it to ask it clarifying questions. So it says, okay, what are the names of the clients? What is the theater configuration? Are we looking at the theater system tier or other things? So different options of how that may look like. What kind of audio details it is going to include? It provides me several different options based on the conversation. What is the video wall size? Because two options were mentioned in the conversation. What is the speaker selection?

20:54So there's several different options for that. Room by room count. So what is going to be the number of speakers in each and every one of the rooms? Because that may have not been finalized or agreed upon in the meeting transcript that it has. TV location and sizes. Vinyl player location. So a lot of very relevant questions that it needs to answer in order to do the proposal properly. And it goes on and on and on. There are 14 different questions. Because I wanted to do this as a demo and I wanted to run this quick, I basically said act as an AV expert, answer all these questions on your own and create the Excel proposal.

21:25I will obviously never do that with a real proposal. I will actually answer all these questions in detail, most cases by voice. So I click on voice type. I voice type most of what I do right now and just answer all of those questions. And then Claude went ahead and started working on the proposal, wrote all the different components and provided me with this highly detailed Excel with the dining room and kitchen and pantry and what are the speakers and what are the control panels and everything that exists in every single room. And this is, again, just one page out of like six or seven pages, each and every one of them with different sets of systems that all feed back into this Excel file.

21:57And you can see up here on the top, because I connected it with my Google Drive, I have a drive button. And if I click on that, I can download it straight into Google Sheets. You can do the same thing by connecting Claude to SharePoint and then download it as an Excel file straight into SharePoint. Is this perfect? No. Does that get me 85 % of the way there? A hundred percent. And sometimes it gets me 98 % there with all the different tabs, all arranged, all in the format that my client is using to provide answers to their clients. And it all is generated instead of in a few hours, in a few minutes.

22:33And again, all these minutes are spent by Claude and not by you. So all you have to do is upload the transcripts or any other notes or communications that you had with a client, and it will write this proposal. And then the following step is very similar, right? It is combined into a proposal, as you have seen before. So I can actually take the output from this, upload it to the other custom GPT, or create a similar concept inside of Cloud. So in Cloud, custom GPTs are called projects, and this works exactly the same. So now let's take a look at how this is created. So this thing, if I go to projects in Cloud, and it looks like a little folder thing on the left menu in Cloud, you can see that I have AV proposal generation, and you can see that it has multiple files connected to it, like showroom meeting agenda, template, round examples, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, different PDF files of different things and how the output should look like.