IT consulting

Ship the proposal before they ask for another architecture diagram.

Independent IT consultants are usually called when something is already late: a migration, a vendor who will not commit to a date, or a system only one employee can restart. The proposal should name that operational mess and the week it stops, not a menu of technologies.

The mess they will pay to end

Buyers in this trade have already sat through a deck that listed every system on the network. What they remember is the afternoon the warehouse could not invoice, or the month the finance export and the stock system disagreed by a number large enough to matter. Write that afternoon into the first paragraph. If you cannot name it, you are not ready to quote.

Keep the technology specific and short. Say which two systems are in scope, who uses them, and what 'working' means on a Tuesday. A client who sells parts does not need a paragraph on your preferred cloud. They need to know the re-keying stops.

What you leave running

The close of an IT engagement is not a handover workshop. It is a system a named person can operate, a short note on what you refused to migrate because it was junk, and a date when you stop being the one who gets the call. Put that date in the timeline field and let the proposal repeat it.

Third-party licenses, the vendor's own professional services, and a new project that appears in week three are out of the fee. Say so. IT proposals overrun when 'while you are in there' is treated as included.