How to write proposals that beat your competitors

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 company sound good may please The Powers that Be within your own company, but it's not what the customer wants to hear. And that's why it's not competitive.

Every company that will make it into the competitive range will have written a proposal that is fully qualified, meets all the requirements, and has a competitive price. They will all be good proposals. But the winner will be the one that pleases the customer the most.

To make your proposal writing great enough to win over all competitors, instead of aspiring to create a proposal that sounds good, you should set the standard for your proposal writing to be based on what it will take to win. Doing that requires discovering what pleases the customer the most and what they need to see in order to conclude that your proposal is their best alternative. This usually involves saying less about yourself and more about what they are going to get as a result.

Achieving this requires more than just having a lead to bid.

A good lead is one where you have enough insight into what matters to the customer that you have an information advantage, combined with a great offering and enough insight to present it from the customer's perspective. A good lead is one where you can define what it will take to win and write a proposal based on it. A lead without this is really just a cold lead. What percentage of your bids are cold leads?

Believe in yourself. But not too much.

Everyone who submits a proposal believes they have the best offering. But they often deceive themselves about how much insight they have. They don’t see that as a disqualifier and the result is they lose far more than they win. 

Winning over all competitors is easier when you don’t deceive yourself about how much insight you have into the customer, the opportunity, and the competitive environment. But even those with real insight often fail to drive it into the document that closes the sale.

What to do about it

To raise the bar on your competitiveness:

• Take your customer insight and use it to write a proposal from the customer’s perspective. Don't make your proposal sound "good." Make your proposal sound like what the customer needs to hear in order to decide that your proposal is their best alternative. Instead of filling your proposals with things you think sound good, fill it with things that will help them make a decision in your favor and get it approved by their management.
• Prove that your offering is not only superior and meets the requirements, but that it matters in ways that make it the customer’s best alternative. Instead of making your proposal sound "good," make it matter.
• Write your proposal based on the customer's decision making and evaluation process. Instead of writing your proposal to sound "good," write it to get the maximum score against the evaluation criteria.

It turns out that proposal writing has less to do with writing and more to do with:

• Understanding the customer’s perspective
• Knowing what matters to the customer
• Having a superior offering to present
• Understanding the mechanics of how the customer evaluates proposals
• Having insights into how the customer makes decisions

Hardly any proposal writers know all these things or even how to write about them at the start of the proposal. It is unfortunate that most companies start their proposals without providing this insight and input to their proposal writers. Whether your proposal staff come from an editorial, technical writing, engineering, marketing, or other background, they need input and guidance. If your proposal writers are not informed in all these things, how do you expect them to capture the win with only an outline to guide them? Your competitiveness depends on how well you provide this information to your proposal writers.

Filling these gaps is the secret to achieving great proposal writing.

Proposal writing is a process

The proposal process should be designed to bring this information to the proposal writers. If proposal writing starts with just an outline, you are not going to get a draft that achieves all of these goals. Your proposal writing will not be competitive. Your win rate will suffer.

Proposal writing must be based on an understanding of what it will take to capture that win. If you’re not talking about how to build the proposal around your insights, a plan for what to write based on what it will take to win, and how the writing will be presented before the proposal writing even starts, you’re just not trying to win. Making a submission is not the same as trying to win. Even if you think the proposal is "good."