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This app has three main features that help you win your proposals: Search for Consultants. To search for consultants who are available locally, enter your zip code. If no one is available locally, try the advanced search. With the advance search you can search for future dates. For example, if you expect an RFP to come out in 30 days, you can see who expects to be available then. When you get the search results, if you tap on a consultant their LinkedIn page will load.  You have a cho

This checklist is a companion to an article we wrote describing 30 reactions the customer might have to your proposal that could result in your losing. That article provides hints for what you should say in your proposals and how you should say it. We created this item to make it easier to use as a checklist or a test, so you can see whether you'd accept your own proposal. Have you actually made contact and had a conversation with the customer? Does your proposal rely solely on exp

We have a couple of tools coming out that will make it much easier for companies and consultants to find and work with each other. The beta release will be unlike anything else out there, but very simple. It won't take hours to figure out. All it will do is solve two key problems that make it easier for companies to get the help they need to win their pursuits. Did I mention simple? Simple, but useful. And given the size of our audience, we anticipate thousands of users within 60 days of re

Too many companies lead with their experience as if it’s the most important consideration for the customer. This is especially true of incumbents. The problem is that every company that’s a serious competitor will have relevant experience. Maybe it won’t be the same. But it will be enough for the customer to consider their offer. If all you put on the table is your precious experience, then you’re at risk of losing to someone with a better offering. The main reason you are at risk is that e

PropLIBRARY A We have four different ways we can get started working together for less than $5,000.  The content you see on PropLIBRARY will give you a good idea of our expertise and approach to doing things. Click the Concierge Button so we can start a conversation and find out what we can do to help each other. There are several ways we help consultants who want to grow their practice If you are a consultant there are several ways we can work together. We can support your growth wit

There are so many options for publishing content that it’s easy to get overwhelmed: blogs, websites, LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+, email, online forums, etc. "How should you choose?" is really the wrong question. How you publish your content depends on your goals: If you are trying to attract anonymous strangers to your website, search engine optimization matters If you are trying to directly engage with potential customers, then social netwo

What is "content marketing?" Content marketing uses the publishing of material to achieve your marketing goals. It can be used to support inbound or outbound marketing. Content marketing has become extremely popular because of the web, where it is used primary for inbound marketing. Companies post content that brings visitors to their websites. Because of the growth of the web, sometimes this is the only form of content marketing that you hear about, with some additional references to sea

Watching TV growing up and seeing thousands of advertisements every day has ill prepared people for content marketing. They practice sales in writing when they should be doing marketing. People only procure contracts for services and solutions from companies they trust. Content marketing is about earning trust. Sales requires trust. See the difference?  If you want a high conversion rate at closing sales, don’t make your pitch until you’ve established that trust.

What is "content marketing?" Content marketing uses the publishing of material to achieve your marketing goals. It can be used to support inbound or outbound marketing. Content marketing has become extremely popular because of the web, where it is used primary for inbound marketing. Companies post content that brings visitors to their websites. Because of the growth of the web, sometimes this is the only form of content marketing that you hear about, with som

Quantifying what you need vs. what you have First you need to quantify what you need and compare it to what you have. You can do this in a table if you want to break it down in detail, such as by multiple locations or by labor categories. But comparisons are better made visually. One way to do this is with a pie chart: The goal is to show that the gap is really small and you already have the vast majority of what you need.  &#

IntroductionEven when you provide the same offering as your competitors, you can differentiate your proposal by demonstrating that you will do a better job of achieving their goals. Of course, it will help to understand what those goals really are.  Consider the following questionsWhat should you say about the answers in your proposal? How do you define success, based on the requirements and goals described in the RFP or your customer awareness

People buy from people they know and trust. But sometimes they don’t know any of the vendors who respond to the RFP (which does happen, more in some markets than others) or they’ve had bad experiences with the vendors they do know. Trust is a complicated thing. You don’t achieve trustworthiness by claiming it (as in stating that you are a “trusted supplier” or anything similar).  You don’t achieve trustworthiness by sincerely feeling that you are trustworthy, or t

Features and benefits are often presented in a table in a proposal. But they are also addressed throughout the text. The following list can help you call out the things that matter most about your offering, its attributes, or its specifications.  What really matters though is how the customer is going to benefit from the presence of a feature. But how the customer benefits depends on the evaluation criteria and the customer’s needs and preferences. Some things can

Ingredients What performance metrics will you use? What is the baseline you’ll use to measure performance against?  Will you use any industry benchmarks for comparison? What are your minimum performance standards? How will you collect and track metrics data? How will you record or document the collection of metrics data? How you will analyze metr

Sometimes the customer needs you for ongoing services. Sometimes they need something created. And sometimes they need help solving a problem. When customers are procuring services, they face a lot of intangibles. When companies sell services, their capabilities may only be limited by their ability to hire people to do the work. This creates an environment in which the contractors tend to pursue anything they can and all look the same to the customer. It doesn’t he

Ingredients What steps will you take to get ready to start the project?   Will you take steps to prepare before the contract is even awarded? What is the schedule for implementing the plan and its duration? What hardware, software, equipment, purchases, procedures, and staffing that you will put into place during the Transition Period? What staff that you will use to implement the Transiti

Ingredients What deliverables will you produce? What is the benefit to the customer for each? What specific requirements will each deliverable meet? How will you manage the production of deliverables? What standards will you use to evaluate the quality of deliverables? What is your schedule for delivery? What is the review/acceptance process for

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Circumstance Sometimes the customer tells you exactly what to bid. Other times, they tell you what the problem or need is and ask you to propose a solution. When they tell you what to bid, everybody is bidding the same thing and it’s hard to stand out from the pack. Approaches When everybody is bidding the same thing, to establish a better value you must either: Offer more than what they asked for. If you focus on

Here is the proposal recipe I already have related to quality:  "Quality" as a subject could have many more recipes on specific aspects. For example, here is a graphic that could turn into a recipe on Quality Improvement Projects. In fact, it could become several separate recipe topics based on the topics in the graphic. https://www.rsna.org/uploadedFiles/RSNA/Content/Science/Quality/Storyboards/2013/Bankes-LLQSETU4A.pdf