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People think proposal management is a thing, but it’s not. Proposals are not even a thing. Proposals at different companies have more differences than similarities, even though we tell ourselves otherwise. Similarly, proposal managers come in many different types. Some are a better match for a given company than others. When you see a type that’s the opposite of yours, you might think it’s wrong for proposal management. But there is an environment out there where that style is a better fit than

What one company calls a proposal manager, another might call an administrative assistant. Or an editor. Or a coordinator. Or a production manager. Or a pursuit strategist. Or a capture manager. Is the proposal manager the person is charge of the proposal, in charge of producing what people give them, or just a proposal specialist assigned to support the proposal effort? Or, on occasion, just some unlikely person who happened to be available. A large portion of the conflict and difficulty relate

When people use the term proposal manager they often mean different things. When people use the title proposal manager they often give it to staff with varying capabilities. And even more variation in the level of authority. What one company expects from a proposal manager can be very different from what another company expects. When people think of a proposal manager as the person ultimately responsible for delivering the proposal, they sometimes make the mistake of rolling up all the possible

See also: Proposal Management Take a step back from proposal mechanics. Becoming a better proposal manager has more to do with understanding the goals and what’s required for people to improve their performance than it does with making the trains run on time. A conductor doesn’t just keep the musicians in synch. A conductor helps them be more than the sum of their individual parts. Here’s how to apply that to proposal management:  Decide on what kind of proposal manager you want to be. You may

Most corporate cultures are a mixed bag. No real attention is given to it. As a result, it is defined as much by the personalities of key staff as it is by intent. They grow like weeds instead of being designed. If you are in charge, the odds are that your corporate culture is not what you think it is. The reality is different from your aspirations. And yet your corporate culture is as important to your company’s ability to grow as the steps in your business and proposal development processes. S

Most corporate cultures are a mixed bag. Other than aspirations, no real effort is put into it. As a result, it is defined as much by the personalities of key staff as it is by intent. Without nurturing, a corporate culture will grow like a weed instead of being designed. If you are in charge, the odds are that your corporate culture is not what you think it is. The reality is different from your aspirations. The reality is how people are behaving when you are not in the room. How your proposals

All proposals are competitive. Even if the RFP is completely wired to give the advantage to one preferred company and no one else bids, that company is competing against themselves. They can still blow it. And a naïve upstart can always come in and steal it away because they don’t know they can’t win. It may be rare, but it does happen. And customers are sometimes ready for something new. Which will the customer select? You should go into every proposal assuming it’s competitive and pushing to b

When most people think about what their competitive advantages might be, they tend to focus on themselves. They ask questions like “What do we do better?” and “How can we exceed the requirements?” But they are missing that they do not matter. The customer who will be making the decision matters far more than you do. A much better way to find your competitive advantage is to focus on what they prefer. A competitive advantage is something that will make it more likely the customer will pick you ov

Proposal win themes should articulate why you are the customer's best alternative, and they must do that from the customer's perspective. If you just think of them as the key messages or benefits, your win themes will tend to get watered down into what you think makes your company good instead of what the customer needs to see in order for you to win. What makes proposal win themes so hard to write is that people show up unprepared to articulate why they are the customer's best alternative. When

Once you understand what proposal themes are and how they contribute to winning, then comes the hard part: articulating your message in the form of theme statements. When we review people’s proposals we see a lot of theme statements that are either: Grandiose statements that sound like bragging and are completely unsubstantiated. Like being the best-in-class industry leader ever. Claims of qualifications or experience as if they matter, without saying why they matter. Bland, boring statements

Proposal themes are defined in many different and not very helpful ways. Try googling it. How does someone new to proposals write a “concept” that gets “woven throughout the proposal” to “call attention to the benefits” you offer? Definitions like that can't be acted upon. Because themes are defined in such a nebulous way, they often end up being overly-broad claims of greatness that do nothing to persuade the customer. When I review proposals I often see unsubstantiated slogans that sound like

Warning: proposal damage may occur Let’s start by addressing things you should avoid: Claims. Especially unsubstantiated claims. But claims in general. They rarely pass the “So what?” test. They rarely increase your evaluation score. Claims belong in advertisements. Proofs belong in proposals. Proposals get read differently than advertisements. Things that work in advertisements can backfire when used in proposals. Descriptions. Descriptions add very little value for the evaluators. Evaluators

Proposal writing is very different from other forms of writing. The goals are different, the methods are different, and even the word choices are different. Extremely competent professional writers often produce copy that would be acceptable for other applications, but which amounts to rather ordinary proposal writing. Ordinary proposal writing is not enough to win. So I’m constantly looking for ways to show people how to get from ordinary proposal writing to great proposal writing. When I do pr

Understanding what matters about proposal costs The first thing to understand is the economics of proposals. Usually, a small increase in win rate generates so much additional revenue that it is smarter to focus on proposal ROI than it is on proposal cost. Do the math. An increase from a 20% win rate to a 30% win rate returns (on average) 50% more revenue. For each single percentage increase in win rate that’s 5% more revenue. It’s worth investing in improving your win rate, and it can be foolis

Congratulations. You have a good proposal. Too bad you’re probably going to lose. If your proposals have a win rate under 50%, then mathematically you are probably going to lose. Wishful thinking won't change that. If you want better odds, you need to submit a better proposal. The good news is that you can turn ordinary proposals into great proposals, and you may not have to rewrite the entire thing to get there. If you have a good proposal, here are some things you can do to improve it and make

If you depend on your website and pay attention to the traffic you get from the search engines, you've probably noticed a decline over the last couple of years. A Pew Research Center report found those who get the AI summaries in their searches visited websites in the search results half as often. And in May, Google started showing these to everyone by default, even if you have not opted in. There have been many other, similar reports. This trend will continue and has incredible implications for

The goal of writing a proposal is to persuade the customer that you are their best alternative, so that they will accept your proposal. This requires taking into consideration all of the factors that impact whether the customer selects your proposal from among all of their other options. Even if your proposal is the only one under consideration, the customer may decide to do nothing. In fact, sometimes the customer deciding not to do anything can be your greatest competitor.  Who decides what th

To write a proposal from the customer’s perspective requires not only responding to the RFP, but also understanding how the customer will evaluate your response. How will they read it? Will they read it, or will they simply score it per their evaluation criteria? And if they do score it, what is their process? If the customer has a formal RFP evaluation process, like they do with government proposals, the RFP evaluation criteria can give you clues about their process. Are the evaluation criteria

Everyone says they have a proposal process. But what little they have on paper to describe it is different from what they actually do in practice. In many ways, the proposal process is something that is in continual development. It’s not something you write down and are done with. But what should concern you is that most of the hundreds of proposal process implementations I have seen have critical flaws. I'm not even talking about procedure mistakes. I'm talking about having the wrong goals and

The RFP is just one source of requirements that drive what you should offer in your proposal. If all you do is design an offering that responds to what is in the RFP, it will be at a competitive disadvantage compared to a proposal submitted by someone with a deeper understanding of the customer and their requirements. To prepare the winning offer, in addition to the RFP, you need to consider: See also: Offering Design What matters to the customer? The customer will make their selection not only