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What should a proposal library contain? If you think it should contain proposal text ready to use so you don’t have to write as much in your future proposals, you’re setting yourself up to lose your proposals. There are better ways to speed up your proposals. But there are some reference materials that are handy to have. And people need inspiration. These things can help improve your proposals instead of weaken them. Proof points. You obviously think that you are the customer’s best alte

When I tell people that they should exceed RFP compliance if they want to win, they often reply “But if we do that we’ll be too expensive.” This comes from an assumption that time is money and that anything you do takes time. When I point out that you can go beyond the RFP without it actually costing anything, they often reply with “But how do we do that?” Well, here’s how… Proposal writing examples 1) Focus on “why” in addition to compliance. Show that you are the better alternative fo

How much experience do you have? How relevant is it? How about staffing? Do your staff have the right qualifications and skills? Do you have enough staff? Behind these questions are two win strategies you should know by name: depth and breadth. They are not mutually exclusive, but sometimes one is more relevant to a customer than the other. Depth communicates sufficiency of quantity If the customer is looking for one type of experience and I have 10 project examples, I may have the dept

Everything you want your customer to conclude about your proposal should be in your Executive Summary. Not the details. But what the details mean, what they add up to, and why that makes you the customer's best alternative. Your Executive Summary should introduce every key point you’re trying to make. It's not actually a summary at all. If you don’t know what to say in your Executive Summary, it’s because you don’t know what the point of your proposal should be, and this is a major problem to so

Getting into position to win before the RFP comes out requires preparation. Preparation doesn't just happen. The things you do before the proposal even starts can have a huge impact on your win rate. It makes more sense to focus on them than to rely on last minute proposal heroics. Here are links to five sets of tips that lead to even more content that can help you put just enough structure into place to be successful: Discovering what it will take to win. We think of sales as driven by ch

This proposal template applies to any industry. When combined with your subject matter expertise, it will enable you to quickly write a proposal in a way that matters to your customers. The easiest way to understand this approach to proposal writing is to think about using it to structure your paragraphs. Once you see how to do that, you can use the exact same template at the section level by breaking down each section into its components (topics, steps, features, locations, etc.). The intr

This one page of a brochure contains all of the following claims: Everybody loves us. You can depend on us. You can trust us. Family owned and operated. Since 1984. We pride ourselves on… Excellent customer service. We can help with everything… We’re the most recommended. Customers love us. It’s a mixed bag of unsubstantiated claims and claims that fail to pass the “So what?” test when taken on their own. It’s also pre

Companies often ask their proposal specialists to wear many hats. They blur the lines between sales, business development, capture, and proposals. And when it comes to proposals, they don’t make any distinction between proposal management, proposal writing, or proposal production. Some companies, usually the smallest ones, have one person doing all of them.  When that person is working on a proposal, prospecting for new leads stops. When someone is writing, they stop managing. And capture g

We want to free you up to focus on relationship marketing by doing the online searching and monitoring of opportunities. When we monitor websites like SAM and identify opportunities for upcoming recompetes you can focus lead generation through relationship marketing. We’ll even help with that by letting you know when to reach out to customers before the RFP for recompetes are written so you can reach out and establish a relationship, influence the RFP, and get into position to win. We’ll stay be

Incumbents like to play it safe, especially when things have gone well. When the recompete comes up, they often focus on not making any mistakes and submitting a proposal that is fully compliant with the instructions. You shouldn't assume the recompete is wired for the incumbent contractor. But if you want to beat the incumbent, you must take risks. Just not any risks. You should target the things the customer cares about the most. Your proposal can be more credible than the incumbent’s pro

It saves so much time to write a short proposal than writing a long one and editing it down. It also involves a lot less risk. However, it does require you to think about what you are going to write before you start. But you should be doing that anyway. Skip the introductions You don’t need a page to introduce your company. You don’t need half a page to introduce each section. Just say what matters — to the customer. Just because something matters to you does not mean it will matter to

You will not achieve the maximum ROI by staffing business development, capture, and proposals based on using the minimum number of staff to crank out the maximum number of proposals. To maximize your ROI you need to staff according to the things that most impact your win rate. Increases in win rate return orders of magnitude more than the staffing required to achieve them. Here are seven things you should staff your proposals to achieve: RFP Compliance. Achieving compliance is critical.

I'll let you in on a little secret. Nobody has found a way to make working remotely be like working colocated. I recommend that you don't even try. Treat it as an opportunity to reengineer the way you do things. You’re probably overdue anyway. This is a good time to think about what people need to complete their proposal goals. It’s not just about incorporating some new tools. Note, I did not say what people need to complete their assignments. Since you can’t just make a little change and g

A lot of companies make the mistake of treating a customer request for information as an opportunity to start selling them and end up sending them a mini-proposal. This is not the best way to position your company when the customer issues a request for information or makes a sources sought announcement. 5 things you should NOT do in your RFI or sources sought response Sell. It’s the wrong time. Selling at the wrong time makes you look pushy and out of touch. Don’t be that kind of sal

Art is in the eye of the beholder. This is mine. Proposals are more mechanical than art. They are more scientific. They are quantifiable. They are competitive. They are capitalistic. And they are art. There is a depth to doing proposals that most people don't understand and it holds them back. But the art in proposals is not where most people expect to find it. The art is not in the construction, the presentation, or the style of the words. The art is in the solution. And n

We published 98 new content items last year. But it's not the quantity that counts, it's the quality. We published some of the most useful articles ever this year. We've split them into two groups, one for everyone and one just for subscribers. Just take a look and think about how they can help improve your win rate: 12 fundamental problems you have to solve to prepare great proposals The best example of bad proposal writing I've ever seen 14 examples of proposal writing that

What drives the efficiency of the proposal process is not what you think.  It’s not how quickly you can crank out your proposals It’s not how much time you put into producing the document It’s not what causes a train wreck at the end of the proposal, or what can fix it It’s not how easily you can recycle your previous proposal content It’s not any of the things people complain about when working on proposals Losing efficiently is counter-productive. Put

The secret to business success is not to find as many leads and submit as many proposals as possible. You will not become prosperous by producing lots of cheap, low win rate proposals.  While you may catch a fish by randomly casting your line over and over, you will not feed a village that way. The solution is not to cast as many lines as you can. You need to become smarter about fishing and invest in your gear. Maybe buy a net and a boat. You need to put some effort into it. Fishing at ran

Each time you start writing without a plan for what you are going to write, I’m going to start with the points my writers are going to prove.  Every time you try to figure out what to offer by writing about it, puts me several drafts ahead of you. Every time you start your proposal without input puts you another draft behind me. Every day one of your people misses a deadline is a day added to my schedule. Each time you start without customer insights puts my score ahead of yo

When given an opportunity to network with their peers, talk to experts, and forge relationships with potential customers, why do some many people simply go on LinkedIn to post ads? What percentage of LinkedIn posts start off with "We are so excited to announce..." And why do so many of them write their proposals the same way? It's like they all follow the same template. Here's what it looks like when you inject a little too much honesty into it: We are so pleased to submit the followin