Which tool to choose
For a structured text with a professional tone, Claude and ChatGPT work well; Claude tends to keep an orderly structure and a measured register without slipping into the pompous. Choose one and have it do two passes: first the draft, then a review from the point of view of the person receiving it.
Interfaces change, but here you use the normal chat. No special feature to look for.
How to do it
Proposals end up in the bin when they talk about the sender instead of the reader. AI helps you flip the point of view, if you set it up well.
- Focus on the concrete benefit for the recipient: not what you do, but what changes for them if they accept.
- Give the AI all the elements and ask for a precise structure. The operative syntax:
Help me write a collaboration proposal. I'm a small artisan coffee roaster. I'm writing to a neighborhood cafe with a good clientele. I'm proposing to supply their coffee, with training for the baristas and materials for the counter. For them the benefit is higher quality, a story to tell their customers and better margins. Structure a short email: personalized hook, value for them, concrete proposal, a single clear request. Professional but human tone, no bureaucratese.
- Personalize the hook with a real detail about the company you're writing to: it shows it isn't a mass mailing.
- Keep it short. One page, one request. If needed, the attachments and details come later, not in the first email.
A concrete example
A small coffee roaster wanted to get into the city's cafes and was sending emails that started with "We are a company with twenty years of experience." No reply. They asked Claude to rewrite starting from the cafe: the opening named the venue and the fact that it took care of breakfast, the central part explained what the cafe's customers would gain by drinking better coffee, the request was a single one, a trial tasting in the shop. The new version, short and centered on them, got three appointments out of ten mailings. Before it had been zero.
When it DOESN'T work (and how to fix it)
If the proposal only talks about you
"We are, we do, we offer": it's the mistake that makes people close the email. The fix: ask the AI to rewrite every sentence from the recipient's point of view, turning what you offer into what they get. The subject of the key sentences should be the reader.
If it's generic and smells of copy-paste
A proposal that would fit a hundred companies convinces none of them. The fix: insert a specific detail about the recipient, something you noticed about them, and ask the AI to build the hook on top of it. Personalization is what sets it apart from spam.
If it's too long and no one reads it
A three-screen proposal gets postponed and then forgotten. The fix: ask for a single page and a single request. Everything else, price lists and details, goes in the next conversation, when the interest is already there.
A tip from someone who actually uses it
Before sending, ask the AI to read the proposal in the recipient's shoes and tell you what they'd think and where they'd stop reading. It's a check that uncovers the weak spots better than a thousand rereads of your own. And always leave a single clear request at the end: a proposal that asks for five things gets none of them.
Frequently asked questions
Can it be done with the free version?
Yes. Structuring and reviewing a proposal is a writing task the free versions handle without trouble. No subscription is needed to get a professional text.
Can I paste my business's confidential data?
Give the AI what it needs to write, but keep out sensitive numbers, confidential price lists and customer data. To set the tone and structure you don't need the exact figures: you add those yourself on the draft, before sending.
Can a proposal written with AI be spotted, and does it count against you?
What gets a proposal discarded isn't the AI, it's the generic. An impersonal, bloated text gets spotted and bores, whether written by a person or a machine. A proposal with a specific hook, a concrete benefit and a clear request works regardless of how you produced it. You sign it, you review it, the responsibility is yours: the AI only helped you start from the right point, their interest instead of yours.