Disclaimer: This article was AI generated from my YouTube video transcript.
I used to spend hours generating client proposals - collecting all the information together, populating the template, and then sending it off. Now with Claude, the same job is done in two minutes. When you multiply that time saving across every client you send a proposal to, it’s huge. In this article I’ll show you exactly how I set it up for myself, so you can copy it for your own business.
What you need
All you need is a Claude subscription, which comes in at NZ$40 per month. That’s not just good value for proposal generation - Claude runs my entire business. Once you’ve subscribed, make sure to install the desktop app as well, because that’s where the connectors live.
From there, getting set up is two jobs. First, you connect Claude to the different software and tools where your proposal information lives. Second, you teach it the step-by-step process you follow to actually generate a proposal.
Step one: connect Claude to your tools
In the desktop app, head to Customize on the left-hand side and click Connectors. If you’re already using some, they’ll show up here; otherwise it might be blank. ClickAdd connector and then Browse connectors. This is where you plug in any bit of software that your proposal information could be sitting in.
- Email is usually the starting point. Search for Gmail and log in, or if you’re in the Microsoft environment, connect Microsoft 365 the same way.
- Meeting notes: if you use a note-taker like Fireflies, add it in. Mine come through Google Meet and Gemini into Google Drive, so I have Drive connected instead.
- Your CRM: a popular one is HubSpot - click in and log on. This is where a lot of client context lives.
- Notion (or whatever else you run your business in) - I have that connected too.
Each one is just a one-click login. Once everything is connected, open a new chat, click the plus sign, go into connectors, and make sure they’re all turned on. Then test it - try something like “Can you read my latest email?” You may have to approve the action, but check that it actually pulls the information back and that it’s correct. When mine pulled back a real email, I knew it was all working.
Step two: map out your process
Now that Claude can read from your systems, you need to work out the exact step-by-step you take to generate a proposal, because that’s what you’re going to teach it. Open a notepad, or even write it down by hand, and outline what you do. For my process, that looks like this:
- Review all the email communications between me and the client.
- Check the CRM for any other notes.
- Look through the meeting transcripts to find exactly what they said they’re after, so the proposal matches it.
- Check previous proposals I’ve sent to similar clients to spot patterns worth reusing.
- Combine all that information and populate a new proposal template.
- Draft an email response to send it out with.
This will be unique to you - the point is just to map out, step by step, what you actually do. The last thing you need is a real proposal handy, one you’ve genuinely sent to a client, so Claude can scrape it and use it as a template. Make sure it’s one you’d be happy for it to copy going forward.
Build the skill
In a new chat, type /skill creator and tell it what you want: “I want to create a skill for automating my client proposals. Here are my steps...” The more detail you give in your notes, the better. Pass through your step-by-step, attach your example proposal, and ask it to look into your connected software to pull any additional information and templates, build you a skill, and ask any questions along the way.
It will review the documents, read your process, and check which tools it has available - for me that was Gmail, Notion and Drive. Here’s where Claude is different to a lot of other tools: instead of quietly making a pile of assumptions and charging ahead, if it’s unsure about something it stops and asks you. It came back with questions like what font size to use, how to structure the document, and whether to include pricing. You just answer those, and it folds your answers in.
Once it’s done, you get a skill.md file - a markdown set of instructions Claude follows to execute the task. Scroll through and review it, and if there’s anything you want changed, just message back and tell it. When you’re happy, hit the Save as skill button in the top right to save it to your account.
Run it
Now open a new chat and ask it to build a proposal, giving it the client details. It reads your proposal generator skill, loads the tools, and pulls information back from Gmail and Notion, along with meeting transcripts and previous chats from Google Drive. It works all the way through and generates the full proposal, complete with the little diagrams I like to include for the software side. From there it can store the proposal into Notion and even draft that first email response in Gmail for you.
The three things you need to automate any task
Ultimately, Claude can replicate almost any repetitive manual task in your business as long as you have three things in place:
- Connection: you can connect Claude to the software you use - your Gmail, your Xero, whatever it may be.
- Process: you can clearly outline the steps you take, one by one.
- Examples: you can give it some really good examples to work from.
A lot of the time it’ll get you 90% of the way there and you’ll do a bit of tweaking - that’s the nature of it - but it’s genuinely fast and the time saving adds up quickly.
I’m Blake, an AI engineer who has helped over 20 businesses across Australia and New Zealand speed up their workflows with Claude and train their teams to use it properly. If you’d like help automating a repetitive task in your own business, reach out for a free 30-minute chat. Cheers.
