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Ghosting the competition is an advanced proposal skill. It involves explaining why the customer should not select your competitors. Here are some examples of the wording you can use to do that covering many proposal sections. Click here for an explanation of techniques for ghosting the competition. Use care when ghosting the competition and note how important it is to offer a differentiated solution that shows why the customer should select you before pointing out that it is also a reason why th

People think proposal management is a thing, but it’s not. Proposals are not even a thing. Proposals at different companies have more differences than similarities, even though we tell ourselves otherwise. Similarly, proposal managers come in many different types. Some are a better match for a given company than others. When you see a type that’s the opposite of yours, you might think it’s wrong for proposal management. But there is an environment out there where that style is a better fit than

What one company calls a proposal manager, another might call an administrative assistant. Or an editor. Or a coordinator. Or a production manager. Or a pursuit strategist. Or a capture manager. Is the proposal manager the person is charge of the proposal, in charge of producing what people give them, or just a proposal specialist assigned to support the proposal effort? Or, on occasion, just some unlikely person who happened to be available. A large portion of the conflict and difficulty relate

When people use the term proposal manager they often mean different things. When people use the title proposal manager they often give it to staff with varying capabilities. And even more variation in the level of authority. What one company expects from a proposal manager can be very different from what another company expects. When people think of a proposal manager as the person ultimately responsible for delivering the proposal, they sometimes make the mistake of rolling up all the possible

Most corporate cultures are a mixed bag. No real attention is given to it. As a result, it is defined as much by the personalities of key staff as it is by intent. They grow like weeds instead of being designed. If you are in charge, the odds are that your corporate culture is not what you think it is. The reality is different from your aspirations. And yet your corporate culture is as important to your company’s ability to grow as the steps in your business and proposal development processes. S

Most corporate cultures are a mixed bag. Other than aspirations, no real effort is put into it. As a result, it is defined as much by the personalities of key staff as it is by intent. Without nurturing, a corporate culture will grow like a weed instead of being designed. If you are in charge, the odds are that your corporate culture is not what you think it is. The reality is different from your aspirations. The reality is how people are behaving when you are not in the room. How your proposals

When most people think about what their competitive advantages might be, they tend to focus on themselves. They ask questions like “What do we do better?” and “How can we exceed the requirements?” But they are missing that they do not matter. The customer who will be making the decision matters far more than you do. A much better way to find your competitive advantage is to focus on what they prefer. A competitive advantage is something that will make it more likely the customer will pick you ov

Proposal win themes should articulate why you are the customer's best alternative, and they must 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 see 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

Once you understand what proposal themes are and how they contribute to winning, then comes the hard part: articulating your message in the form of theme statements. When we review people’s proposals we see a lot of theme statements that are either: Grandiose statements that sound like bragging and are completely unsubstantiated. Like being the best-in-class industry leader ever. Claims of qualifications or experience as if they matter, without saying why they matter. Bland, boring statements

Warning: proposal damage may occur Let’s start by addressing things you should avoid: Claims. Especially unsubstantiated claims. But claims in general. They rarely pass the “So what?” test. They rarely increase your evaluation score. Claims belong in advertisements. Proofs belong in proposals. Proposals get read differently than advertisements. Things that work in advertisements can backfire when used in proposals. Descriptions. Descriptions add very little value for the evaluators. Evaluators

Proposal writing is very different from other forms of writing. The goals are different, the methods are different, and even the word choices are different. Extremely competent professional writers often produce copy that would be acceptable for other applications, but which amounts to rather ordinary proposal writing. Ordinary proposal writing is not enough to win. So I’m constantly looking for ways to show people how to get from ordinary proposal writing to great proposal writing. When I do pr

Understanding what matters about proposal costs The first thing to understand is the economics of proposals. Usually, a small increase in win rate generates so much additional revenue that it is smarter to focus on proposal ROI than it is on proposal cost. Do the math. An increase from a 20% win rate to a 30% win rate returns (on average) 50% more revenue. For each single percentage increase in win rate that’s 5% more revenue. It’s worth investing in improving your win rate, and it can be foolis

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. Wishful thinking won't change that. If you want better odds, you need to submit a better proposal. The good news is that you can turn ordinary proposals into great proposals, and 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

If you depend on your website and pay attention to the traffic you get from the search engines, you've probably noticed a decline over the last couple of years. A Pew Research Center report found those who get the AI summaries in their searches visited websites in the search results half as often. And in May, Google started showing these to everyone by default, even if you have not opted in. There have been many other, similar reports. This trend will continue and has incredible implications for

The goal of writing a proposal is to persuade the customer that you are their best alternative, so that they will accept your proposal. This requires taking into consideration all of the factors that impact whether the customer selects your proposal from among all of their other options. Even if your proposal is the only one under consideration, the customer may decide to do nothing. In fact, sometimes the customer deciding not to do anything can be your greatest competitor.  Who decides what th

Everyone says they have a proposal process. But what little they have on paper to describe it is different from what they actually do in practice. In many ways, the proposal process is something that is in continual development. It’s not something you write down and are done with. But what should concern you is that most of the hundreds of proposal process implementations I have seen have critical flaws. I'm not even talking about procedure mistakes. I'm talking about having the wrong goals and

When every company intending to bid is struggling to prepare their proposal, then the one who does the best job of recovering from their mistakes is the one who is most likely to win. It may be counterintuitive, but in addition to giving your attention to implementing best practices, maybe you should give some attention to getting better at submitting imperfect proposals. It takes both offense and defense to win Putting effort into writing a great proposal is like playing offense. Putting effort

Don't let the name fool you. An Executive Summary has a specific purpose in a proposal. But it has nothing to do with the name. If you don’t have time to read the whole proposal, what do you want to know? Is it: A little about each section of the proposal? A recitation of your own mission and goals from someone who claims to "understand" them? Information about the company submitting the proposal? Why this proposal is your best alternative for getting the most of what you want? An Executive

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 purchasing

One of the joys of managing proposals is that none of the people who are drafted to contribute to the proposal actually report to the proposal “manager.” And frequently they are expected to contribute to the proposal after all of their other responsibilities are taken care of. It can be like working two jobs. So even when they want to help out, they often aren’t the most enthusiastic and cooperative people to depend on. Organizations that want to grow will do everything to ensure nothing gets in