Businesses of all sizes use proposals to sell their services and solutions to prospective clients. Consultants in particular are proposal writing machines.

I'm convinced there's an art to writing proposals. A proposal ties the selling process to a specific action a client can purchase. Book shelves are full of books on how to write proposals, they're that important and that mysterious a business task.

StartUp Journal offers suggestions from a panel of business experts on how proposals can best be used to win business. Of particular interest to me when I first read the article is the importance of brevity.

Once you've got a prospect, keep your proposal short. length is the single best determinant of whether a proposal will be accepted, says Mr. Weintraub, who says he has studied the factors relating to proposal acceptance. Brevity beat out both follow-up efforts and passion, among other factors.

"The shorter the proposal, the higher the hit rate," he says. "When we talked to the salespeople who were the ones associated with the short proposals, they said the only way you can write a short proposal is to really understand the needs of the customer." And, he adds, do all your selling before you write it.

Being as brief as I can...here's the list of 10 suggestions on effective proposal writing.

Do you agree the length of a proposal is a significant determining factor of its success?