Articles
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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
- 6,682 views
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Creating proposal graphics can be thought of in two parts. My friend Mike Parkinson of the 24hr Company refers to them as: • Conceptualization. Figuring out what to communicate visually and what the graphic needs to communicate. • Rendering. Drawing the graphic. Rendering is where all the artistic skills are required. But conceptualization is where you figure out what should go into the graphic and what the graphic should accomplish. Conceptualization does not require any artistic abilitie- 0 comments
- 2,542 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
- 5,133 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
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When the customer reads your proposal there are many reasons they might decide your proposal is their best alternative and select it for award. The goal of proposal writing is to enable them to reach a conclusion in your favor. Some of the reasons they might do this include: They can trust you to deliver as promised better than any alternative You know what needs to be done and how to do it better than any alternative You bring lower odds of failure or problems than any alternative You are re- 0 comments
- 1,402 views
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People perform better when they have the right support. Teams of people perform better when their collaboration is coordinated. The proposal process is only part of what is required to optimize the performance of proposal contributors. Proposal management begins with the implementation of a formal process. But that is just the beginning. It is only part of managing what it will take to win. It takes more than defining some steps and telling the proposal team what to do to and on what schedule.- 0 comments
- 1,722 views
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Companies that want to get better at doing proposals often struggle with their proposal process. They struggle with the steps. They struggle meeting deadlines. They struggle with time management. But mostly, they just struggle. Part of the reason for the all the struggles is their process. It’s not that it needs improvement. It needs replacing. And it’s not just the process that needs replacing. It’s the whole way you look at the proposal process. Proposals are not completed in steps It would be- 0 comments
- 1,750 views
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Let’s start with the end result we’d like to achieve. A winning proposal. Now let's work backwards. In order to win the proposal we need the top score. In order to get the top score we need to build the proposal around what it will take to win: A proposal that reflects what matters to the customer in a form that follows the RFP’s instructions, is compliant with all requirements, and is optimized against the evaluation criteria, with no weaknesses A differentiated offering that the customer perc- 0 comments
- 1,376 views
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Your proposal process is broken. But don’t feel bad. Everyone’s proposal process is broken. And while it might be easier to accept that the proposal process can always be improved, it's better to be honest about just how broken it is. I have worked on countless proposals at a few hundred different companies. Some proposal process implementations are better than others. But all of them have serious defects and people are usually in denial about it. This doesn’t get their proposal process fixed.- 0 comments
- 1,838 views
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I tend to focus on winning proposals instead of efficiency. One more win can produce enough revenue to cover the inefficiency of many proposals. If you want more revenue, you are better off focusing on winning than reducing proposal effort. Unfortunately, many organizations treat proposals as a cost instead of as an investment (let alone the core competency of the organization). Proposal costs are covered out of the overhead portion of the budget, and that’s always under pressure for reduction.- 0 comments
- 6,816 views
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Unless your company sells a commodity, there can be great variations in the proposal process for every pursuit. It can be better to think of your proposal process as a series of goals than as a series of steps. It is not a procedure to be followed, it is a series of things to be achieved, with flexibility regarding how they are accomplished. Achieving the goals matters far more than the procedures used. Here are the six goals we use to drive everything we do, with links to the relevant portions- 0 comments
- 3,010 views
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You can't follow the steps to create a great proposal, because the steps are different every time. They aren't even steps. At best we talk about phases. But even those change, overlap, or get redefined every time. That's why most companies really just have a way of doing their proposals that isn't legitimately a process. If a process requires a certain person to run it, it's not really a process. See also: Great proposals Writing a winning proposal is really based on a flow of information, from- 0 comments
- 4,583 views
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Before you can create proposal criteria, you have to understand what it will take to win Proposal Quality Validation starts with identifying what it will take to win. This is the standard used to measure quality against. The MustWin Process facilitates identifying what it will take to win by collecting the intelligence you will need during the pre-RFP phase. The MustWin Process will also guide you through preparing a list to document what it will take to win. This list is the first step in p- 0 comments
- 286 views
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There are three competing interests when wording headings for a proposal, and they are listed in priority order: Making it easy for the customer to find things in your proposal. Telling a story through your headings alone. Logically organizing what you have to say. When constructing a proposal outline: You must give using the customer’s wording the highest priority. If they have specified an outline, use their wording exactly so they can find what they will be looking for. Make it easy- 0 comments
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The new PropLIBRARY will go live in a week or two. We're not going to announce it right away after it goes live, because there are some content migration issues that we have to address on the live server. In the meantime, these images will give you a peek behind the curtain. The new menu for PropLIBRARY is a lot more functional than the old menu. It's not just about content. There is a lot more that you can do. If you look closely, you'll see, just from the menu, s
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Creating a compliance matrix sounds complicated in text. View this slide show to see how it works.- 0 comments
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Cross-reference matrix creation sounds complicated in text. View this slide show to see how it works.- 0 comments
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A presentation Carl Dickson, founder of PropLIBRARY gave on the topic of What defines proposal quality and how can you develop quality criteria to assess it.- 0 comments
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monthly_2025_09/HowchangestoPropLIBRARYwillcreateopportunitiesforconsultants.mp4.19cf4908cb97009392820465cd693750.mp4
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Great proposal writers often have to write about things they don't know anything about. How do they do it? Instead of thinking about what they can say, they: Start by figuring out what needs to be said Break down what the customer has asked about Consider what the customer needs to hear for each one Address how they prove their claims Finish with what would show the most value These are just some of what they need to figure out, and not the seque- 0 comments
- 4,063 views
