getdeckStop rebuilding every bid proposal from scratch: start with the structure
Bid and sales proposals need almost the same set of slides for each kind of job. Why forcing content into bought templates is frustrating, and what picking the structure first looks like instead.
Every proposal starts with one blank slide
When a new bid notice comes out, you open last time’s proposal. The company introduction stays, while the understanding of the project and the execution plan are new. But which slides you need and which you can drop is a question you answer from scratch each time. Copy slides from the old file and the fonts and colors get mixed. Build new ones and you are aligning everything again from zero.
Buying templates still leaves the complaint
What you need is not more templates. It is the order: decide the message first, then pick the parts that fit it.
So many people buy templates. But templates come with their own complaint. On r/consulting, the top-voted reply under a post about buying templates (2024-10) says: "they make you think 'this visualisation is available so I will fit my data into it' instead of 'i have this message and I should present it that way'" The point is that you end up bending your message to the shapes the template has. The same thread has the opposite view: treat a template as parts to pick from rather than a mold, and work goes faster. If both are right, what you need is an order where the message comes first and the parts come second.
It is easier when each job already has a structure
The deck templates page in getdeck has a deck structure for each kind of job. Pick a bid proposal or a sales proposal and you see the order of slides that job usually needs. Each slide is a layout, so a slide that does not fit your content can be swapped for another layout or removed. You start from the structure and pick parts, instead of forcing content into a mold. Swap a theme onto the same structure and the mood of the whole deck changes. You can try structures and themes on this page without logging in.
How to use it
- When a new notice comes out, open the structure for that job.
- Remove the slides this bid does not need, and swap the ones that do not fit for another layout.
- Enter the client’s color as a HEX value under "+ New theme" and see how it looks.
- Fill in the content.
What changes when you use it
- You do not start from a blank slide. The order of slides is already laid out, so "which slides do I need?" turns into "which ones do I drop for this bid?"
- You feel less like you are bending your message to a template. You can change the layout of every slide, so the message comes first and the shape follows.
- Slides copied from different files stop clashing in style, because every slide comes from the same theme.
- You see the mood that fits the client before you decide. Change the color, see what the whole deck looks like, then fill in the content.
Where it does not fit
It fits proposal writers who rethink the structure every time. It does not refresh a report whose numbers change every month. For that, a tool that connects to your data fits better.