Articles
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It sounds so obvious that few companies bother to define it. But if you want to maximize your win rate, it’s worth giving some attention to how you define proposal success. You can't intentionally seek proposal success or consistently achieve it if you're just guessing at what it is. Let's start by looking at some common but counterproductive ways that people try to define proposal success: Anything that wins! During the proposal phase you haven't won or lost, so it doesn't help you any to use t- 0 comments
- 4,162 views
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Everything I needed to know about proposal writing I learned from writing the introduction paragraph
As soon the introduction to a proposal is written, it becomes obvious whether it's going good or bad. Right from the start. The first draft of the introduction tells you a lot about the maturity of a company's proposal process. Writing a good introduction demonstrates what you know about what the customer really wants. If you can't write that, then you don't know what you're proposing. And if the introduction consists of nothing more than information that can be found in the RFP, you know that t- 0 comments
- 4,195 views
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Take a moment and ask yourself why you're interested in reducing the amount of proposal writing. It could be because you're out of time. Or have strict page limits. Or have other priorities and want to reduce the effort required by a proposal. This is where I'd normally jump in with an ROI calculation that shows that the impact on your win rate of doing a proposal well makes it mathematically worth it. However, today I'm going to skip that and take an unjudgmental look at what it takes to reduce- 0 comments
- 4,774 views
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Each and every paragraph in your proposal should make a point. Every sentence within those paragraphs should have its own point. And those points should not be about you. They should not simply describe. They should never make unsubstantiated claims of greatness. You should provide the information the customer needs, while pointing out why you are the customer’s best alternative. But what should you talk about to make those points? How do you go beyond answering an RFP requirement to make your p- 0 comments
- 3,848 views
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What can you expect? You can expect more. We’ve added a community on top of the massive amount of content we’ve created. We’re also opening up our platform to other authors. So over time you’ll see a lot more online training and events posted. Service providers, consultants, and trainers will be available to you. All of it is delivered in an updated, easier to use interface. This was a massive refresh. The online training has also been updated, and the downloads are more accessible. An all-new e- 0 comments
- 1,338 views
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In a past life I helped a company create a new proposal department. The company was part of a billion dollar government contractor. They had a history of business units not accepting process guidance from the proposal group. It’s not an uncommon problem. Does it sound familiar? The old proposal group kept saying things like, “If they’d only submit their drafts on time” or “if they’d only listen to us.” What they meant was “If they’d only do what they’re told.” They thought the solution was for s- 0 comments
- 1,121 views
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Within the MustWin Process Architecture we divide the organizational layer into the following areas: Executive, Approaches, and Resources. The organizational layer forms a context that impacts your ability to win bids. But it can’t necessarily be accounted for as inputs to the process. It’s not part of the process flow, but it impacts every step of the process flow. It is roughly analogous to style in writing, only it’s the management style of the environment your process operates in. Your win
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- 166 views
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What you should write about? How should you present it? How do you know if it's correct? Before you jump into proposal writing, you need a plan. And you need to validate that plan to prevent rework. Why this goal is important If you think the best way to figure out what to write about in your proposal is to start writing, you may be making a colossal mistake. The mistake is that you’re skipping the part where you “figure it out.” You are thinking by writing about it. Responding to an RFP is not- 0 comments
- 495 views
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Nearly all of the examples of selling in writing that we see in life teach us the wrong ways to write for proposals. From the ads on TV and the junk mail we receive, to the ads in publications. Even the materials handed to us by other companies are written completely wrong for proposals. And yet, when people sit down to write a proposal, they can’t help but emulate what they’ve seen when others try to sell in writing. Even what we learn in school about writing is wrong for proposals. When you wr- 0 comments
- 2,130 views
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Figuring out what should go into your proposal is the most important part of the proposal process. It usually starts with an Request for Proposals (RFP) that can be intimidating if you don't know how to read it. To prepare your proposal, you need more than an outline or a compliance matrix to figure out what to write. You need to take into consideration the instructions in the RFP, how the customer will evaluate your proposal, what you will offer, and what you know about the customer, opportunit- 0 comments
- 32,769 views
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To write a proposal, you must overcome eight challenges. You can’t avoid them. You can’t skip any of them. You just have to face them. To help out, we’ve included links to many other articles we’ve written that are relevant to the individual challenges: Complying with the RFP. First you have to read it and understand it. Then you have to cross-reference all the requirements across the various sections. Even if your assignment is for a single section, there may be requirements in other sections t- 0 comments
- 27,007 views
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It’s not a certain style. It’s not a great layout. It’s not enough time to do proofreading or to have one more draft. It's not even what words you should use. What you need is to know what to write about, the means to make sure it happens, and some way to know if what was written is what you want. What you really need is to: Collect the right intelligence. In order to do the best job of proposing the best outcomes for the customer, you need to have an information advantage. Collecting the right- 0 comments
- 10,131 views
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Proposal content planning should give a lot of guidance to proposal writers regarding what to write and how to present it. They should be able to follow the content plan like a set of instructions, that they can follow to create the right proposal on the very first draft. You can anticipate many of the things that will need to be addressed in your future proposals, based on the nature of the work that you do and how you manage it. The problem is that unless every RFP really is the same, and not- 0 comments
- 1,147 views
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Apple is famous for having a designer lead their product development efforts instead of having an engineer lead them. Apple designers obsess over what will please their customers. In many ways that exactly describes what great proposal writers do. So who designs the offering for a company that offers complex services like engineering? Should it be a subject matter expert? Someone who understands the work? Or should it be a designer, someone who understands what will please the customer? Could i- 0 comments
- 1,460 views
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Most proposals are lost before the RFP is released. When you haven’t discovered what it will take to win and all you have to go by is what’s in the RFP, you are starting from a competitive disadvantage. You want to be the other company. The one that is starting from a competitive advantage. But even when you have staff “looking into it,” “researching it,” “chasing the lead,” “marketing the customer,” or whatever else you want to call it and doing it ahead of RFP release, most companies fail beca- 0 comments
- 1,794 views
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When you write a proposal, it should be based on what it will take to win. The challenge with that is that what it will take to win may be different for every bid. You can probably anticipate some of the things that are typically part of what it will take to win, but with every bid there can be differences that matter. Understanding what it will take to win is mostly based on discovering what matters: What matters to the customer? Customers have needs. But they can’t simply go buy what they want- 0 comments
- 5,527 views
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The things you need to know to determine if a lead is worth pursuing are different from what you need to know to close the sale with a winning proposal. A sales process that qualifies your leads is important. It is also not enough to win. If you are addressing "Should we pursue this" and "Should we bid this" as if they are the same thing in a single meeting, it's a bad sign. Lead qualification is a determination of whether it is worth investing in the pursuit of a business lead. A qualified lead- 0 comments
- 2,958 views
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It’s hard to get an early start on a proposal, and not just because you don’t know when the RFP will be released. You often get advance notice of RFP releases. When the pursuit is a recompete, you can anticipate the release years in advance. If it's the result of a sources sought notice, request for information (RFI), customer forecast, or other announcement, you may get a notice a month or so in advance. So what do you do? With the time you have available, how can you maximize your win probabil- 0 comments
- 6,691 views
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Turning the art of winning proposals into a quantifiable science is more possible than most people realize. It requires making data driven decisions. And to do that you have to thoroughly embrace performance measurement for the pursuit process. As Peter Drucker once said, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” The trick to it is to have a process that gives you the data you need without it becoming extra work. One of the things we find when implementing the MustWin Process on PropLIBRAR- 0 comments
- 5,354 views
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Most proposal writing is good. But not great. Good proposal writing is not competitive. If you want to win consistently you need to write better than good, you need to write better than everyone else. Most proposal writing sounds beneficial. It attempts to make whatever you've got to work with sound good. Most proposal writing shows that the vendor is fully qualified and meets all the requirements. It’s positive. It's good. Unfortunately, good proposal writing is not competitive. Making your com- 0 comments
- 1,283 views
