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How to Write an Import/Export Proposal

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This video illustrates how to write a business proposal for an import/export company. This could range from selling services, selling products, pitching a project, starting up a business or responding to an RFP related to importing and/or exporting goods.

Read this related article: How to Write an Import/Export Business Proposal

Proposal Pack HelpWatch this related video: How to Write a Logistics Proposal

In this video we're going to demonstrate how to create an import and or export related business proposal using Proposal Kit. We'll show on our website real quick first that we have an article how to write an import/export business proposal. You can scroll down this article and it'll give you some higher level details, some examples, links to example proposals, that are actually in all of our Proposal Packs and we're going to be illustrating creating these and some of the design themes that are commonly used for import/export related proposals.

We'll illustrate a couple of these as well. Once you've got the Proposal Kit installed, and whatever graphic design theme of ours you have installed you're ready to create a document. Import/export can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people and the information you put in the proposal is going to vary dramatically depending on the situation, the company, whether it's products being sold or services or a project or so on.

Whether it's an RFP response to a very specific set of instructions or if it's a free free–form proposal and so on. There are countless ways you can assemble an import/export type proposal using the Proposal Kit. The examples you see are just illustrations of a couple ways it can be done.

We're going to illustrate this first one with our Transportation #7 design theme the design theme really that's a personal choice that you can create any document in any design theme. Now to create a document every time you're going to create a new document click this Document Projects button and click Add New Project. I'm going to turn off Excel dynamic linking just for purposes of the demo.

This feature in the Expert Edition will allow you to dynamically link the Excel spreadsheets for doing calculations directly to the Word document so as you change cells, quantities, totals and so on in the Excel spreadsheet for cost related pages it will auto–update into the Word document. There are other videos that cover that specific feature. We'll click the Pick Documents button.

This is where we're going to select all the chapters that will go into your import/export type proposal. This first screen you see is the 40 most common chapters that anybody would use such as a Cover Letter, Title Page, Back Page, Table of Contents, an Introduction or Executive Summary, cost related pages and so on. You can click this drop down here now you've got a couple thousand of these topics to pick from so if you want to scroll down and see say import/export, transportation related specific chapters you can come down to the Supply Chain/Logistics/Transportation category and you'll see chapters specific for imports/exports.

Shipping Information, Vessels, Vehicles, Distribution, Supply Chain, Logistics and so on. So you can get to the thousands of chapters through these drop downs. If you just need chapters specific to your company you can come down here and pick chapters specific to you such as Client Testimonials, Endorsements, References, information about your Capabilities and so on.

So the Search by Name tab, this is where you might go if you want to search for a very specific chapter. Since this is an import/export type proposal what if we want to talk about customs. Just search on a single word so pick a single word not an entire phrase that's related to the topic you're looking for.

You can see there's a Customs chapter and we can add that to our proposal. This is how using these two tabs you can individually select all the chapters that are going to make up your proposal or business plan, report, study, whatever document you're creating. You might want to come over to this Quick Start tab or the View Samples tab and get started a little faster with a pre–made list of chapters.

We're going to do a search on the word import and you can also search for the word export, transportation, logistics, supply chain and so on. Search on a word or two that's going to cover the type of situation you're in and you can see there's an Import/Export Services Proposal. We'll just start off with that one and once you select this it'll tell you what chapters make up this proposal layout.

Just click the Import Topics from List. This pre–made list of chapters also has sample content, there's an actual filled in sample so now we have the option of pulling in the sample content. In this case so we're going to say Yes instead of using the general purpose boilerplate text in the templates.

You can change the order of these chapters, you can remove chapters that you don't need, you can also use the Add Templates, Search by Name to add additional pages into this layout. So you have a lot of customizations you can make to tailor the list of chapters specifically to what you're doing. You'd start with a pre–made list and then customize this list until you get it just right.

When you're all done click the Ok, Use Selected Templates button. We're back on the project and you can see it says 16 chapters selected. The next thing you'll do is you'll fill in the Company Data and Client Data so whatever you put in here this is your company information this will get put into things like the Cover Letter, Title Page, Back Page, About Us and so on.

Then Client Data this will be the name and address of whoever you're writing the proposal to. Now that we have our templates selected, we have our data selected we have our options all set, we have our design theme selected now we're ready to actually generate a Word document. We'll click the Ok, Save Project and Build Documents button.

Click Yes and now we'll just wait for the progress bars to complete. All right, this document has been generated. Take a look at it and you can see the name and address, current date, our company and client data has been pulled in merged.

You can see the sample content from the actual pre–written sample has been pulled in in place of the boilerplate general purpose text and you can see the design theme, our Transportation #8 design. The list of chapters that we selected and all the chapters. So that is how you create a document import/export related in the Proposal Kit.

I will illustrate another example here. We're just going to change the design theme. The design theme really doesn't matter for purposes of the actual proposal.

Any proposal can be created in any of our design themes. We're just going to pick the Transportation #8 which is more of a airline style transportation design. Just like before we're going to create a document click button #2 Document Projects.

Click the Add New Project button, click the Pick Documents button and we'll go back to the Quick Start tab and we'll do a search on the word transportation this time. We're just going to select the Transportation Shipping Services Proposal. This is another one where we have sample content for.

I'll just say Yes and again we can change the order of these chapters, remove chapters, add new chapters and so on. We're just going to use the set pre–made list and like before you'll fill in your Company Data and fill in the Client Data. Now i'm just selecting pre–set records here and once we've set everything up we again click Ok, Save Project build the document and just wait for the progress bars to complete.

All right, this document has now been generated we'll open it take a look at it. Like before you see the Cover Letter with the name and address merged in, different sample text now has been pulled in from the sample. You see a different design theme, a list of chapters for this document.

That is an example of another import export related document. I'll illustrate one last example here. We'll change the design theme to something that's not specifically transportation.

We'll use our Concepts #14. This is a good design for maybe a manufacturer, a fabricator or something like that. Like before, click the Document Projects button, click the Add New Project, click the Pick Documents button.

We'll go back to the Quick Start again. I'll search for the word export this time and we're going to select the Manufacturing and Distribution Proposal layout. This one just happens to have the Imports and Exports chapters being used.

This example is from a product manufacturer that's going to produce, manufacture and then transport the goods to the client and this one has pre–written content as well so we'll pull that in. Company Data and Client Data again. We're just going to keep reusing the same dummy records here just for illustration purposes.

When we're all done click Ok, Save Project and we'll build another document. You can see how the Proposal Kit is being used for generating any combination of documents. You just select a set of body chapters and a design theme, enter your data and the Wizard will custom assemble documents on the fly with all of the settings.

Alright, this last example has been generated. Open it up take a look at it and you can see once again name and address information merged in, the sample content has been pulled in from the sample and you can see a different design theme here now the Concepts #14. Since this proposal was for a product manufacturer went with this design theme just so you can see how you can mix and match templates, designs and so on.

Plus you can customize these designs. With the Expert Edition you can create your own design themes or completely customize them. You can swap in your graphics, your background pictures, you can change colors and so on.

See the sample contents been pulled in. That is how you can create any number of variations of import/export related proposals using Proposal Kit.

Proposal KitPublished by Proposal Kit, Inc.