Your proposal goes to a committee without you
Barbara Minto's 5 structure rules applied to a sales proposal, the 1-page checklist, and a full proposal annotated.
Anyone can defend a McKinsey report without the author in the room
According to Gartner, B2B buyers spend only 17% of the buying process with you. The rest of the time, your proposal has to defend itself. Anyone can defend a McKinsey report without the author in the room: it's not design, it's structure. Here are the rules.
The rule Barbara Minto built at McKinsey in the 60s, and that almost no sales proposal follows: start with the answer. When your client defends your proposal, they don't have the document in front of them. They have their memory.
Cover, about us, methodology and case studies. Your recommendation? Page 9.
Page 1: the recommendation and its three reasons. Everything else is the appendix that backs it up.
The room you're not in
Gartner has measured it: in a complex B2B purchase, 6 to 10 people make the decision, and each one shows up with 4 or 5 pieces of information they found on their own, without you. When they finally sit down together, 74% of those committees argue in what Gartner calls unhealthy conflict: clashing goals and people who simply get steamrolled.
You're not there. Your document is. And your client will defend it from memory, in two minutes, against seven people who arrive with their own data. These five rules exist so they win that conversation.
Where the decision happens, per GartnerYou get 17% of the process with them. For the rest, your proposal is on its own.
The 1-page checklist
Run your last proposal through it.
- Sí:
The recommendation is on page one, not page nine. The test: can your client say what you recommend without opening the document?
- Sí:
The price sits next to the recommendation, not at the end. The test: if someone jumps straight to the price, do they find the why on that same screen?
- Sí:
Every term has its reason right next to it. The test: is there any term someone will have to explain from memory?
- Sí:
Headings make a claim, they don't label a section. The test: reading only the headings in order, does the full recommendation make sense?
- Sí:
There's a written decision, with a date and an owner. The test: does the document say what is being decided, who decides and by when?
01 · Start with the answer, not with who you are
Nobody defends a conclusion from memory when it lives on page 9
Barbara Minto built this at McKinsey in the 60s and it's called answer first: the recommendation goes at the very top, and the reasons that support it go underneath. The opposite of how you think. You reach the conclusion at the end of your analysis, so you naturally write it at the end. But your client doesn't read your reasoning: they repeat it. And people only repeat what they remember, which is what they read first.
Cover · about us · methodology · case studies · and on page 9, what you recommend
Page 1 · the recommendation in one sentence · the three reasons · everything else is appendix
02 · The price goes up top, not at the end
The person who signs doesn't read your proposal in order. They jump to the price.
You save the price for last to build value before you reveal it. That works when someone reads in order, but nobody on a committee reads in order: the person who signs opens the PDF and hunts for the number. If the number sits alone on the last page, it reads naked, with nothing next to it to justify it. Put it next to the recommendation and next to what it pays back, and the number stops being a cost and becomes a consequence.
Price on the last page · after 8 pages of context · on its own · no payback next to it
Price on page 1 · right next to the recommendation · with what it pays back and when
03 · Write the terms that will be debated without you
Whatever you don't put in writing, someone who doesn't know you will improvise
Consultants group things with a rule they call MECE: no overlaps, no gaps. Each term appears once, and together they cover the whole issue. In your proposal: group the terms and put the reason right next to each one. The 12-month commitment isn't just "the commitment": it's why it's 12 months and not 6. Your client will need that sentence when you're not there.
Terms at the end · in gray · flat list · no reasons · debated without context
Grouped with no overlaps or gaps · each with its why next to it · defensible without you
04 · The 30-second test
Read only the headings, in order. If they don't hold up, you lose the deal.
This test exposes everything and takes thirty seconds. Read only the headings of your proposal, one after another. Is it clear what you recommend and why? If you read "Scope. Price. Team. Next steps.", you've read a table of contents, not an argument. Consultants call them action titles: they make a claim instead of labeling, and they're what separates a document that defends itself from one you have to narrate.
"Scope" · "Price" · "Team" · "Next steps" · read together it's a table of contents, not an argument
"€18,000 that pays back by month 7" · "Two people, none of them new hires on your payroll"
05 · No question, no answer
This is why you hear the "no" three weeks late
Minto opens every document with four pieces: situation, complication, question and answer. The one that always gets dropped is the question. Your proposal closes with "we look forward to your feedback", which doesn't say what's being decided, who decides or by when. And a committee without a written decision in front of it doesn't tell you no. It just stops replying, and you find out three weeks later, when there's nothing left to do.
"We look forward to your feedback" · no owner · no date · three weeks of silence
"Decision: approve the 3-month pilot · Who: management committee · When: by September 30"
The full proposal, annotated
The five rules applied one after another to a single document. In each row, what the committee reads and the rule behind it. The example is fictional: swap in your own numbers.
| In the document | What the committee reads | The rule | How it holds up |
|---|---|---|---|
| Page 1 · heading | We recommend the 3-month pilot at the Burgos plant: €18,000 that pays back by month 7. | Rules 01 · 02 · 04 | Recommendation and price together, on the first line, with a heading that makes a claim. Anyone who reads only this already knows what's proposed and what it costs. |
| Page 1 · the three reasons | 1. Unplanned downtime costs you €4,200 a month. 2. The pilot tackles it without touching production. 3. If it doesn't drop in 3 months, there's no contract. | Rule 01 | The reasons go under the answer and hold it up. Three, not seven: your client has to be able to repeat them from memory. |
| Page 2 · terms | 12-month commitment, because the payback shows up in month 7 and anything under 12 doesn't leave time to measure it. | Rule 03 | The reason sits right next to the term. If someone in the room says "12 months is a lot", the answer is already written, without you there. |
| Page 2 · close | Decision: approve the 3-month pilot. Who: management committee. When: by September 30. | Rule 05 | An explicit question, with an owner and a date. If they don't approve it, you know on September 30, not three weeks later. |
Page 1 · heading
- What the committee reads
- We recommend the 3-month pilot at the Burgos plant: €18,000 that pays back by month 7.
- The rule
- Rules 01 · 02 · 04
- How it holds up
- Recommendation and price together, on the first line, with a heading that makes a claim. Anyone who reads only this already knows what's proposed and what it costs.
Page 1 · the three reasons
- What the committee reads
- 1. Unplanned downtime costs you €4,200 a month. 2. The pilot tackles it without touching production. 3. If it doesn't drop in 3 months, there's no contract.
- The rule
- Rule 01
- How it holds up
- The reasons go under the answer and hold it up. Three, not seven: your client has to be able to repeat them from memory.
Page 2 · terms
- What the committee reads
- 12-month commitment, because the payback shows up in month 7 and anything under 12 doesn't leave time to measure it.
- The rule
- Rule 03
- How it holds up
- The reason sits right next to the term. If someone in the room says "12 months is a lot", the answer is already written, without you there.
Page 2 · close
- What the committee reads
- Decision: approve the 3-month pilot. Who: management committee. When: by September 30.
- The rule
- Rule 05
- How it holds up
- An explicit question, with an owner and a date. If they don't approve it, you know on September 30, not three weeks later.
And here's the real reason underneath, which isn't the one you'd think.
This structure doesn't make you win: it makes the committee's job easy. Gartner found that committees that manage to reach agreement rate the deal as high quality 2.5 times more often than those that don't. You're not writing to convince the person reading you. You're writing so the person reading you can convince everyone else.
What this checklist won't fix
Step 2Now your proposal defends itself. What's missing is who you send it to.
These five rules fix the document, which is step 1. Step 2 is the one you're still missing: which companies are worth sending it to, and which of the decision-makers inside is your contact. A checklist can't fix that, because it's not a writing problem. It's what we do at Neety: we list the companies that truly fit what you sell and who decides inside each one.
Who wrote this
- Co-Founder · Neety
Asier Olaizola
These rules come from watching good proposals die in committees the sales rep never reaches. I build the sales AI that spots who's moving inside those rooms. If your team closes with the client and loses in the room next door, let's talk. Follow Asier on LinkedIn
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