How to write proposals when you don't know the customer that well

Sometimes you have to bid when you don’t have a previous relationship with the customer. So how do you write from their perspective, when you don’t even know what that is?

While you may not know them directly, you may know people like them. You can ask yourself questions like:

• What matters to people in their environment and circumstances?

• What goals have they stated publicly?

• What would they find useful, helpful, or beneficial?

• What is their culture like?

• What are their characteristics?

The trick is not to imagine them being like yourself, but to use your imagination to imagine how they are. Your goal is to build a profile that will help you visualize what you think the customer is like when you don’t really know them that well. Make sure that you separate the people from the organization.

The people who are the customer:

• What matters to people like them?

• How does a person like that tend to make decisions?

• What would they need?

The organization that is the customer:

• What matters to organizations like theirs?

• How does an organization like that tend to make decisions?

• What attributes do you think the organization has and how do they impact your proposal?

• What is the organization's culture?

This approach gives you someone to visualize so that you can write from their perspective. It is better to write about results and benefits that are relevant to people like the customer, than to not write about results and benefits at all. And it is far better to write about results and benefits instead of telling the customer who they are or what their attributes are. If you choose the right results and benefits, the customer will naturally find them compelling.

If you really don’t know the customer, their organization, their industry, their type, or anything about them, then all you can do is use yourself as an example. Write about the results and benefits that would matter to you if you were them or had their job. Even though we vary a great deal as individuals, we all share a human nature. Just don’t write it about yourself. Make it about what the customer will get and how they will benefit from it.

When you don’t really know the customer, people tend to water down their writing so they don't make any mistakes. This makes your proposal weaker. Making your proposal about the customer and the results and benefits you think might appeal to them has better odds of actually appealing to them than a watered-down proposal.

You can hedge your bets by using words like “usually” and “most” when you want to say that something matters to everyone, but you don't know if that is true. You can also use examples of things that matter, such as how you take customer concerns into consideration, without saying that those concerns matter to the customer (even if you suspect that they do). When you don't know the details, you can share what you would consider.

Another approach you can take is to make your submission the first step in a conversation. Even when there is a written RFP and everything is set in stone, once the contract is awarded there will be plenty of discussion. By making the proposal conversational, you can show your expertise by addressing important considerations, while maintaining flexibility with regards to the options, trade-offs, or approaches favored by the customer (as soon as you find out what they are).

While you may not know the individual or company's details or specific concerns, you can still write about organizations like theirs. By focusing on issues that matter to most people and subtly hedging your language, you can prepare a proposal from the perspective of a typical customer and still be superior to one that simply describes the company submitting the proposal.