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Most proposal process "best practices" fail in the real world. In the real world, some companies are centralized and some are decentralized. Some companies are authoritarian and some are consensus driven. In some companies the pre-RFP pursuit and the post-RFP pursuit are organized under the same leadership and in some they are not. Successfully implementing a proposal process requires understanding which practices are a match for your company. So how do you design a proposal process to surviv

Getting input from subject matter experts is vital for winning proposals. However, the instincts of the people who do the work are often all wrong. Writing documents for proposals is different from writing project documents. It’s easy to get fooled. RFPs ask for documents related to projects in the proposals. They ask for things like: Quality control plans Risk mitigation plans Staffing plans Project management plans Security plans Safety plans

It’s a pretty common mistake. When you’re under schedule and budget pressure, it seems like starting from a page that already has some words on it should be easier. It seems like such a waste to spend all that time, effort, and money on preparing a proposal for only one use, so it must save money to use it as a starting point for the next proposal. Unfortunately reusing your proposals will end up costing you far more than it might save you. The economics of recycling proposal narratives are not

Ordinary proposal writing is not competitive. Ordinary proposal writing fulfills the customer’s requirements. If you want an ordinary proposal, you can recycle something already written that fulfills the requirements. In competitive proposal writing, fulfilling the requirements only means that you get evaluated and compete against other companies that also fulfill the requirements. In competitive proposal writing, the reason why behind the requirements is more important than the requirement

Proposal win themes should articulate why you are the customer's best alternative, and do that from the customer's perspective. If you just think of them as the key messages or benefits, your win themes will tend to get watered down into what you think makes your company good instead of what the customer needs to realize in order for you to win. What makes proposal win themes so hard to write is that people show up unprepared to articulate why they are the customer's best alternative. When

When most people think of a proposal re-use library, they think of pre-written proposal sections. We’ve invented a new kind that can have a far greater impact on your win rates. Instead of trying to capture all of your proposal text and recycle it, which turns out to have a negative impact on your win rate, try focusing on your win strategies instead. When you do enough proposals, you start to see patterns emerging. In similar circumstances, you position yourself in similar ways. For exampl

People often assume that because the topic of a proposal is similar to an earlier proposal, that earlier proposal can be easily recycled just by “changing a few words.” This is never ever true, unless you sell a commodity. We call pre-written ready to re-use proposal sections “boilerplate.” Working from boilerplate is supposed to save you time because editing is assumed to be easier than writing. But unfortunately, the level of effort required to transform the focus, goals, win strategies, theme

People often assume that because the topic of a proposal is similar to an earlier proposal, that earlier proposal can be easily recycled just by “changing a few words.” This is hardly ever true. We call pre-written ready to re-use proposal sections “boilerplate.” Working from boilerplate is supposed to save you time because editing is assumed to be easier than writing. But unfortunately, the level of effort required to transform the focus, goals, win strategies, themes, results, keywords, and po

Do templates make proposal creation easier, result in better quality, or destroy your chances of winning? First, let’s make a distinction between templates for formatting vs. templates for content. This article is about using templates for content, organization, or reusing previous proposals. Whether it makes sense to use a proposal template depends primarily on: The type of offering. If you are proposing a unique or engineered solution, you probably can’t use a template or reuse

The traditional Strength, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) analysis doesn’t work well for proposals. It was invented to support corporate planning in the 1960s at the Stanford Research Institute by a management consultant named Albert Humphrey. The traditional SWOT model looks like this: When a SWOT analysis is used on proposals, it’s usually a part of a fishing expedition that starts without any knowledge of the customer, competitive environment, or offering design. Every

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 your next one. Wishful thinking won't change that. If you want to win, you need to submit a great proposal. The good news is that 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: Have you maximized your evalu

Hinz Consulting has a partnership with CapturePlanning.com, LLC, the company behind PropLIBRARY. Hinz Consulting is tailoring the MustWin Process and other PropLIBRARY content to meet the needs of our consultants and customers. This page provides information from Hinz Consulting and links to the content that Hinz recommends and has tailored. Key Resources for Hinz Consulting Useful links for consultants who work for Hinz Consulting Useful links for customers of

Price always matters. But price is not always the most important factor. If it was, no one would buy iPhones. With a consumer product, Apple succeeds even though their value proposition is completely intangible and unquantified. In a written proposal submitted to an organization, you’re going to need different strategies. To win with a higher price, you must convince the customer that you’re giving them something that makes the price difference worth it.  In a competitive procurement, to av

Anyone can win a single proposal. What’s hard is winning consistently. Winning proposals consistently is different from winning a single proposal. You have to make your goal winning every single one. Sure, we say that's our goal when the boss is around, but then distractions and budget happen and we don't behave like it's true. Winning a single proposal is a simple matter of figuring out or guessing what the customer wants, presenting it as their best alternative, knowing what needs to

A goal-driven proposal process is far superior to one based on steps or milestones because it is more adaptable and is easier to tailor to your company's specific needs. You can see how this works with a framework based on accomplishing 6 goals and with 49 questions that point you in the right direction for how to accomplish the goals that you can tailor to your circumstances. The challenge with a goal-driven proposal process is determining the best way to achieve your goals. The questions

In many ways, the everything on PropLIBRARY is about training. Some of it takes the form of online training and some of it takes the form of guidance while doing. And some of it I deliver in person. My favorite form of training is to coach new staff from a junior level and help them become fully capable experts. By providing a few hours a week of guidance, quality assurance, problem solving, and feedback, a company with junior level staff can operate as if it has a proposal executive. And d

When your bids win or lose based on how well your proposals help the customer reach their decision, the best competitive advantage is often an information advantage. Everyone has the same RFP. Knowing how the customer makes their decisions, what matters to them, and what they need to see in the proposal can give you an edge in how you respond. Gaining an information advantage is why relationship marketing is so important. The relationship is the goal. Your goal is the result of the relation

Sometimes you have all the advantages. Sometimes a proposal is yours to lose. And while you can easily lose if you make mistakes, it takes more than a good defense to win. Playing defense in a proposal means focusing on compliance. It means giving the customer exactly what they asked for. It requires understanding the RFP and not making mistakes. I have seen proposals lose after spending a great deal of time scrutinizing the text, only to accidentally leave out a copy of one form. A simple

Q&A or point-by-point proposal formats are so easy. You don’t have to give much thought to the outline. But that’s not the reason to choose them. Easy is not always the best. What should drive your approach to creating the outline for your proposal is what the customer wants to see in your proposal and where they expect to find it. You do not want to lose just because the customer didn’t see things where they expected them and didn’t go looking for them. What information do they need to

I realized today when I was working on the specifications to support pre-RFP opportunity pursuit and capture, that nearly all of the functionality could be achieved right now using the current version of the MustWin Performance Support Tool. Sure, it would lack some of the automagic streamlining we're planning, but the core of what you need to use it during the pre-RFP phase is already there. I love it when things work out like that. It confirms that we're on the right track with how we've desig