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It looks like the themes for this year's selections are not messing up, lessons learned, dealing with resource constraints, taking your proposal process to the next level, AI, and myth busting. But the common thread woven into all of them is that they all can help you maximize your win rate. It pleases me to see it work out that way. Anti-Differentiators: Don't say these things unless you want your proposals to sound ordinary I was today years old when I learned what proposal mana

People working on a proposal often ask themselves what they should do when instead they should be asking other questions. Asking the right questions will tell you what you need to do, what you should say, and how you should present It. It's important to realize that working around the questions you can't answer informs your bid strategies just as much as the questions you can answer. One of the secrets to asking good questions is to have a sense of perspective. Questions can help you

People who have worked in proposals long enough start seeing the lessons learned from proposals in everyday life. I suppose people in all careers experience this. Just as one of many possible examples, Growth is the source of all opportunity for a contractor. And maximizing your win rate means leveraging all of the customer awareness, capacity for innovation, and expertise that exist throughout the organization. Identity issues that create barriers to this end up harming your win rate.

The skills you need on your proposal team depend on the expectations of your company and the nature of what you are offering. What you need to write a proposal for complex services and unique solutions is different from what you need for engineering, which also is different from what you need for construction, product proposals, operations and maintenance, logistics, etc. Here's what I like to have in the people on my proposal teams, which are mostly mid to high value US Government proposals, wi

The skills you need on your proposal team depend on the expectations of your company and the nature of what you are offering. What you need to write a proposal for complex services and unique solutions is different from what you need for engineering, which also is different from what you need for construction, product proposals, operations and maintenance, logistics, etc. Here's what I like to have in the people on my proposals teams, which are mostly mid to high value US Government proposals, w

This is an example of four different approaches you can take to learning about proposal writing from the customer's perspective. What you see also applies to our other training topics like improving proposal quality and proposal communications and expectations. You can see how our training scales from immediate solutions to challenges to complete process guidance to continuous improvement programs. Click here for more details on how the training works. Learn about proposal writing from

Over the years we have turned some of the most important content on PropLIBRARY into training materials. Only instead of combining all that content into lengthy courses, we've kept them modular so that we can mix and match as necessary to solve your particular challenges. For full coverage, you can combine topics and make a nice, long, comprehensive course. To quickly address a challenge you face, you could choose a single topic and focus like a laser on it. Or you could pick something in betwee

Over the years we have turned some of the most important content on PropLIBRARY into training materials. Only instead of combining all that content into lengthy courses, we've kept them modular so that we can mix and match as necessary to solve your particular challenges. For full coverage, you can combine topics and make a nice, long, comprehensive course. To quickly address a challenge you face, you could choose a single topic and focus like a laser on it. Or you could pick something in betwee

Over the years we have turned some of the most important content on PropLIBRARY into training materials. Only instead of combining all that content into lengthy courses, we've kept them modular so that we can mix and match as necessary to solve your particular challenges. For full coverage of a topic, you can combine topics and make a nice, long, comprehensive course. To quickly address a challenge you face, you could be a single topic and focus like a laser on it. Or you could pick something in

Over the years we have turned some of the most important content on PropLIBRARY into training materials. Only instead of combining all that content into lengthy courses, we've kept them modular so that we can mix and match as necessary to solve your particular challenges. For full coverage, you can combine topics and make a nice, long, comprehensive course. To quickly address a challenge you face, you could choose a single topic and focus like a laser on it. Or you could pick something in betwee

Over the years we have turned some of the most important content on PropLIBRARY into training materials. Only instead of combining all that content into lengthy courses, we've kept them modular so that we can mix and match as necessary to solve your particular challenges. For full coverage, you can combine topics and make a nice, long, comprehensive course covering the topics. To quickly address a challenge you face, you could choose a single topic and focus like a laser on it. Or you could pick

AI won't enable you to win a proposal simply by asking the AI to create it for you. But it can give you ideas that could give you a competitive edge. First you have to know what to ask for. And the way you figure that out using AI is remarkably similar to following the same process you already use, only including AI as a participant. AI will not replace the process, it will just become a contributor instead of a replacement. AI makes it even more important to have an effective process in place,

Even though branding applies to all of our interactions, in writing it mostly serves to introduce who and what you are. It's the opening line before you get to the substance of the conversation. It sets a tone. It declares your aspirations and projects the reputation you want to have. And it can hurt your proposals and damage your win rate. If your branding is minimal and consists primarily of your logo, color scheme, and a uniform appearance, that's (probably) not going to hurt anything. A

If the goal for both you and your company is to win new business, then people will remain indispensable even as AI becomes amazingly helpful. The reasons people will remain indispensable will be that while AI can write, AI can't write competitive proposals on its own. Even with the entire Internet to learn from, AI will not have insights into the unpublished desires of the customer. People at your company will need to interact with people at the customer to understand them. And then people

The Impact of AI on Business Development The goal of business development is to qualify a lead, primarily by developing an information advantage. Don't assume an AI will be good at that just because it uses the word “information.” Developing an information advantage is most effectively done through relationship marketing. In fact, it's the information that hasn't been published that's usually the most valuable. You'd think AIs would be good at prospecting for leads. However, current A

Preparing government contractors for AI and radical organizational and competitive changes... I just started a new LinkedIn group and would like to invite you to join it. The changes that artificial intelligence is brining are going to affect your company even more than you anticipate. How will you remain competitive when all the rules change? Join us as we try not only keep up, but stay one step ahead...

AI can very easily enable you to make the same strategic mistakes in volume... You can write a lot of bad proposals quickly, with or without AI. Getting good at writing bad proposals isn't going to help your win rate. AI makes it so much easier and we are attracted to that. But they are still bad proposals. Why are the proposals bad? Because they: Are written from your perspective instead of being written from the customer's perspective. Describe the topic instead of showi

Proposals are deep. Understanding them and getting good at them requires skills that go beyond just getting words on paper. And the skills that you develop to write great proposals apply throughout life. This may be true of every profession. But here are some of the things I have learned from mine. I find no depth in simple rules for living. I'm not trying to write memes. Simple rules often gloss over important things and tend to be self-contradictory. I like to look at the core, at the ro

When I'm working with people who are inexperienced writers and are struggling, I often tell them to not worry about style and just write conversationally. I've written on how to have conversations in writing before. Writing is easier when you're not trying to sound like someone else or how you think something is “supposed” to sound. It's easier to just drop all that and talk. Communicate. Make your points. But some people struggle with their conversation skills. And when people are