How to use AI in my small business: the proposal deck

You can build a client proposal deck this afternoon from one page of brief, using Claude Docs and Slides, on one condition. Every number on every slide is typed from the rate card, never taken from the model. Anthropic's Claude Docs and Claude Slides, announced on 16 September 2026, produce documents and presentations you can edit directly, present from Claude, or download as PowerPoint or PDF. For a South African firm that sends three proposals a week, this is how to use AI in my small business on the document that decides whether there is a business. The rule about numbers is the whole method.

Both are in beta on paid plans, which means Pro, Max and Team, and not on Free. The brief is the work. If the one page is right, the deck is a formatting job the model does in a minute. If the one page is vague, the model fills the gaps with plausible sentences and a plausible price, and slide six carries a figure nobody quoted.

Before you start

• A paid Claude plan. Docs and Slides are a beta, so check your account before you plan the afternoon around it.
• The rate card, dated, open in another window.
• A proposal you sent last quarter that won. The structure of the deck is that proposal's structure, not the model's.

Step 1: write the one page

Who the client is and what they asked for, in three lines. What you will do, as three phases with a name each. What each phase costs, from the rate card, as a number you typed. What the client gets at the end of each phase, in one line, and who on your side is responsible. That page is the brief, and it is also the record of what you offered.

Step 2: paste the brief and name the deck's shape

Ask for a presentation with these slides in this order: the client's problem in their words, the three phases, one slide per phase with deliverable and price, the timeline, the team, next steps. Name the slide count. Ten slides for a 40-person client. The model will offer twenty and every extra slide is a place for an invented claim.

Step 3: tell it what it may not do

One line in the prompt: "Use only the figures in the brief. Do not add prices, percentages, statistics or client names that are not in the brief. Where the brief is silent, leave a bracket." The bracket is the point. A bracket on slide six is a gap you can see. A number on slide six is a gap you cannot.

Step 4: read every slide against the brief

Open the deck next to the one page. For each slide, find the sentence in the brief it came from. A sentence with no source in the brief is cut or bracketed. This takes ten minutes and it is the step that turns a draft into a proposal.

Step 5: type the numbers yourself

Even if the model copied them correctly, retype each price from the rate card into the slide. It is the discipline that catches the model's one transposed digit, and it means the number on the slide was put there by the person who will be asked about it.

Step 6: edit in the tool, then download

Fix the wording in Claude's editor rather than in PowerPoint, so the version the model holds and the version you send are the same. Then download as PowerPoint for the client who edits, or PDF for the client who does not. Save the brief alongside it with the same file name and the date.

Step 7: log the version

Proposal number, brief version, rate card version, the date, and who read step 4. One line in the proposals register. When the client accepts in November and the rate card has moved, that line says which prices they accepted.

What breaks here

The plan tier. Docs and Slides are in beta on paid plans, and Enterprise admins choose when to turn them on. The wider change in the same post, Cowork and chat merging into one Claude, reaches Pro and Max "over the next few weeks". Team and Free follow "soon", and Enterprise admins are given at least 30 days' notice. A firm on Free has no Docs and Slides at all, so check the account before promising the afternoon.

The deck that looks finished. The model's output is formatted, consistent and confident, and that is the danger. A slide with a made-up 18% saving looks the same as a slide with your real one. Step 3 and step 4 exist because looking finished and being right are different properties.

Rands and the plan price. Anthropic's pricing page lists Pro at $20 a month, Max from $100 and Team at $20 to $25 a seat, all in dollars, and the rand figure on the day is not in our record. Read it before you sign up, and note that the dollar price is fixed while the rand one moves with the rate.

Personal information in the brief. The client's name is a company and that is fine. A proposal to a sole practitioner names a person. The same pricing page says Free and Pro train on your content unless you opt out, and Team and Enterprise do not by default. Check the setting before the brief goes in, and strip the name if you are on a plan that trains.

When this stops being enough

The deck is accepted and now it has to become a quote in the CRM, a job in operations and an invoice in the accounts, with the same three phases and the same three prices. Retyping them is where the numbers drift, and we have written before about the gap between the quote and the cash in South African businesses. The connected version has the brief's three lines become the quote's three lines without a keyboard in between. That is what Zorah builds: the AI workspace drafts the deck from the quote record, and the quote record is what the invoice is raised from.

On Monday, take the last proposal you sent and count the numbers on it that are not on the rate card. Each one is a number you would have to explain, and the model would have made more of them.