7 ways to turn ordinary proposals into great proposals

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 it great:

1. Have you maximized your evaluation score? If your customer will have a formal proposal evaluation, then the place to start is whether you have given what the customer needs to maximize your evaluation score. When proposals are scored and not read, an ordinary proposal might score well, but if it's not the top score does it matter? A great proposal is designed to achieve the highest possible score. Have you assessed your proposal against the evaluation criteria? At the time of writing, your solution, team, and price are what they are. But you can still make your proposal score better. Have you used the same words they use in the evaluation criteria to make it easy for the customer to complete their scoring forms? Have you effectively shown them how to give you the top score by providing the justification for it? Is your proposal organized and written to be easy to navigate and easy to evaluate? Can you include references to the evaluation criteria in the text? Can you use tables that show how you stack up against the evaluation criteria?
    

2. Are you filling your gaps with wishful thinking? Have you matched every requirement to a proof point? Or are you responding with claims? Are you responding to requests for experience with approaches, and responding to requests for approaches without details? Are you telling yourself that you should bid because you can do the work, even though you do not currently have the staff or any referenceable experience? Are you telling yourself that you have relevant experience when it doesn't cover the requirements of the new Statement of Work? Have you responded to a requirement for a plan with a plan to have a plan instead of actually providing a plan? Are you responding to requirements with commitment and promises instead of results? Is your primary qualification that you can hire the incumbent staff and they'll know what to do? What are you filling your gaps with?
    

3. Have you shown real insight? Or did you just copy some text from the customer’s website? Have you talked about what matters and what impacts success? Have you gone beyond what’s in the RFP? Can you show a depth of knowledge that makes you an asset to the customer? Instead of merely claiming to be innovative, have you shown ideas that are perceptive and clever? Have you explained the reasons why you do things? Have you incorporated all the intelligence you’ve gathered about the customer, opportunity, and competitive environment? Or are you merely compliant? A compliant proposal is good. But if that's all your proposal is, it's not great.
    

4. Have you differentiated? Have you claimed the same things that everyone else will claim? Have you proposed the same approaches, but only a little bit better? Or can you offer something different and better? You can’t produce a great proposal if it’s the same as everyone else’s. Great proposals are more than just a little better. Great proposals go beyond the same best practices that everyone else will bid. Great proposals change the rules. Great proposals give the customer a real alternative to choose from, and that requires them to be different. What do you do that’s special? Why do you do things the way you do? What does it add up to that’s great?
    

5. Have you taken risks? If you don’t take risks, you can’t be exceptional. If you aren’t exceptional, you can’t be great. A great proposal is not normal. It is not safe. Competition is not safe. A great proposal may lose. But the odds of losing with a good proposal that plays it safe are a whole lot worse. Good proposals can safely count on being #2 behind a great proposal. A good proposal can become great by taking strategic risks to differentiate or showing insight that no one else would ever dream of. This is how you become the only alternative the customer even considers.
    

6. Have you written your proposal from the customer’s perspective? You do not decide whether your proposal is worthy of winning. The customer does. Your attributes do not matter. What the customer gets as a result of your attributes matters. Your commitment does not matter. A great proposal is not about your promises. It is about the customer and what they are going to get if they select you. A great proposal is not about you telling your story. A great proposal is the customer reading your proposal and getting excited about their future. Can you read your proposal the way the customer will and say things that reflect the customer’s perspective instead of your own? Can you make the proposal about the customer and make them excited about what they will get if they select you instead of how important winning is to you?
    

7. Did you put everything into the right context? An ordinary proposal has all the right details. A great proposal puts the details in context. Can you show insight about why the details matter? Putting things in context brings meaning to them. Can you explain to the customer what it all adds up to?

To do these properly, every item above requires doing your homework before the proposal even starts. If you don’t start already having the information you need, you may not be able to get it during the proposal and you may not be able to write like you could if you had it. Proposal writers can’t make up greatness. They can’t fake it. But you can make sure that you’ve fully leveraged all that you know about the customer, opportunity, and competitive environment. In the rush to get to a draft, companies often fall back on descriptive writing and sticking to the RFP. They focus on submitting instead of winning. Often, the people with knowledge about the customer, opportunity, and competitive environment aren’t even the ones doing the writing. So if you can achieve a good proposal with some time remaining before your deadline, you might be able to turn it into a great proposal. If you can't achieve a good proposal with enough time left to make it great, then fixing that is a great place to start. If you want to be competitive.