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The goal of the Competitive Assessment in the MustWin Process is to capture the information needed to write the proposal. In the proposal you will need to describe the role of teaming partners and the benefits to the customer for having them. You will also need to position your company and offering against those of your competitors. The proposal must articulate the reasons why the customer should select you, as opposed to any of your competitors.

The scoring system for Readiness Reviews can be used to quantify your progress and readiness. By tracking your readiness you can ensure that you trend towards being ready. By tracking across multiple pursuits you can identify exactly what is helping or hurting your win rates. Will You Be Ready In Time for RFP Release? Readiness Reviews lend themselves to providing metrics. Across a single opportunity you can track whether you are trending up or trending

The MustWin Process uses a formula to schedule Readiness Reviews: The Business Development Manager should complete each report by the due date entered on this page. The due dates are set by dividing the time until RFP release evenly across the four reviews. On or as soon as possible after that date, the Executive Sponsor should review the report and assess whether the progress is sufficient to be ready at RFP release. To determine the dates, y

Most companies have their priorities backwards and it’s hurting their win rate. To show them, I like to tell companies that they should spend as little time as possible figuring out how to win, what they need to say to the customer to get the top score, and how they should present their offering. The much easier alternative is to write draft after draft until you run out of time without ever having figured it out. Do as little as possible to win. Of course, you’re not going to win if y

My wife broke the screen on her phone recently. The repair turned out fine, but her experience with the vendor wasn’t great. It wasn’t bad either. But listening to her describe it, all I could think of was what a great teaching moment it was for proposal writing. Yeah, I’m wired that way. The vendor didn’t have the right screen replacement and had to order it. When it came in, it sat until my wife called to see if it came in when it was supposed to. When she got home after she dropped her p

Victory for a proposal means that the customer accepts your proposal instead of their other alternatives. Depending on the customer, there are different paths that can get you there. And sometimes getting there means taking more than one path. The paths to victory include: Getting the top score. This is not nearly as straightforward as it sounds. First you have to assess the categories that get scored, and then what you have to do to maximize your score in each category. If the lang

Here is a list of all the tools in MustWin Now and the features you can use in them. They can be combined in many different, creative ways to help you with your proposals. If you want to explore you can use this list to make sure you know how it all works. If you find something isn't self explanatory or confusing, just let us know and we'll walk you through it. The scripts below are organized to go tool by tool, with the collaboration features last. In reality, the collaboration and proposa

There’s a line that you should not cross. It’s hard to tell exactly where that line is. But once you cross it, your proposal manager is no longer focusing on increasing your win rate and instead is simply getting proposals out the door. At the simplest level, a proposal manager is responsible for implementing the process. And being the heroes they are, they tend to fill gaps. But each gap they fill means giving up something else. And when they cross the line from overseeing the process into

First a little history: The first version of MustWin now came out two years ago. It started out as an R&D discovery that enabled us to turn Proposal Content Planning into a streamlined online activity. It opened our eyes to completely new ways of doing proposals long after we thought we knew what we were doing. The second version of MustWin Now then expanded the features to cover the entire process from lead identification through proposal writing. From it we learned how to desi

It is possible to start at RFP release and win. It may be challenging, maybe even extra challenging. It’s not something you should attempt if you’re going to be ordinary in your approach. It’s not something that should be your routine. But it is one of those things that if you are going to do it, you better seek to do it better than the folks who had time to prepare. But how?  Avoid being disqualified. Do you have the minimum registrations, certifications, and qualifications for their pu

It’s a mistake to have the same person providing proposal management and proposal writing. Not only will it increase your failure rate, but it will also decrease your company’s ability to write great proposals.  No matter how many times people say this, you still see companies thinking they can get away with having the proposal manager write small proposal sections.  Here are the risks: Stand-up and progress meetings. If I’m the proposal manager and I take on a writing assignme

1) Is what you’re offering really the best?  Having the best people is not good enough. You need the best people with the best processes. But even having the best people and best processes isn’t even good enough. You need the best people and the best processes supported by the best: Quality assurance Tools Executive oversight Issue resolution Resource allocation Communication Oh, and you need them to have the best impact on the stakeholders and

Part of our plans for the massive upgrade to the MustWin Now platform that we’re preparing to roll out include: Working with two companies who are willing to commit to 120 hours of consulting support between now and September 1 Providing support for one or several proposals over that time, as well as extensive hand-holding and training Depending on your needs, Carl Dickson of CapturePlanning.com and PropLIBRARY will either lead your proposal effort, support it, or participate

We're inching closer to the public launch of MustWin Now, our new proposal software. We're using it internally already. PropLIBRARY Subscribers are taking training in it. We're ready to put it to work. So if your company becomes a Corporate Subscriber, we'll use it to create a compliance matrix and proposal outline for you. We'll use it to help you create a Proposal Content Plan. You'll get our expert help getting your proposal off to a great start! We'll create them for you. Or you ca

This program is for people who want to build organizations that reliably win contracts. No. Let me rephrase. This program is for people who want to build their entire company around reliably winning contracts. This program is for people who want to grow by capturing the leads they chase, instead of chasing as many leads as they possibly can until they win something. This program is for people who are willing to invest because that’s necessary to achieve the highest levels of

It can be very disruptive to proposals if you aren't prepared to do them with everyone working remotely. We're doing two big things to help those of you who suddenly find you have to do your proposals with everyone working from home. We want to hear from both providers and companies who may need help. If you need help from people with experience and resources for working on remote proposals, you should check back here frequently. We'll be adding providers to this page. If you are a relevant

The products and services we offer give you flexible options for supporting the growth of your company and improving your win rate. PropLIBRARY. You're on PropLIBRARY right now. Take a look around. Here's what MustWin Now does at a glance.   Training and consulting services. If you need help winning contracts and growing your business, let's talk about what we can do to help. Tell us about the size, scope, complexity, and deadline for what you have in mind so we have enough inf

In January we're going to launch the largest, most detailed training program we've ever offered. It's going to be a lot more than just training. It's going to be project based learning. It's going to be a 6-month program that will start with an identified lead and cover everything through to proposal submission. Instead of teaching procedures, this program will teach what you need to know to implement effective processes or improve what you have in each goal and phase. It will show you how to wi

This program is a hybrid. It blends training with process development. It blends online self-study with instructor-led training. It blends course materials with real world tools and performance. It blends learning with implementation. It produces change. It is about implementing the tools, processes, and things you need to improve your win rate. At the end of each term, if you start another, you have a continuous improvement program for about a thousand dollars a month that will constantly

I am still getting surprised by discovering new ways that using MustWin Now changes how I approach doing proposals. Sometimes it’s actually being able to do things that everyone knows they should but can never quite make happen. Other times, it’s being able to do things quicker. More often it’s being able to do things better because of the way it makes it easier to think through what you need to put on paper before you start writing. A big surprise was seeing the proposal process, at least as it