Carl Dickson

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. The best way to prove that you already have the staff is to name names and explicitly identify them as existing hires that you commit to delivering if you are awarded the contract. The next best way is to show letters of commitment by the staff to join your firm upon award. Quantifying that you can fill the gap Once you've shown the gap, you still need to show that you can fill it. This is a similar issue. You want to show that you have access to far more staffing resources, either within your company or on your team, than you need to fill the gap. Again, visually works best. You want to show that what you need is tiny compared to the number of relevant applicants who are directly within your reach. These might include the number of resumes you have received and track in a database. They could also include the resumes that your team members have in their databases. They could include other sources that you use for recruiting, such as estimates of the draw from placing advertisements.

The heart of this app is the "Set Availability" page. It updates the database used by the companion app, Get Proposal Help, so that potential customers know your status. Once per week, the app will send you a notification to update your status. All you have to do is slide and set it to keep everyone updated on your availability. Other options If you are working on an extended project, take a long term job, or are going to be unavailable for any other reason, click the "Unavailable until further notice" box. The app will leave you alone until you uncheck the box. Updating your consultant profile If you want remote work, click the box. If you don't mind travelling, click the box. If you don't want to travel, don't click the box. Click the areas you support. They are at a pretty high level because we don't want to make users doing a search have to read through a long list of that splits hairs. We want them to look you up and read your LinkedIn profile or visit your site to determine whether you're a match. You can include an hourly rate, or not. It's your choice. Some customers will only click through if they see it. Some might not if they get sticker shock. It's an ancient dilemma. We'd rather let you decide for yourself than force a particular approach on you. The service description should be more like a tag line than a brochure. You've only got 100 characters to work with. It gets displayed under your name when you are displayed in search, so we don't want a lot of word wrapping. Updating your account settings It's pretty basic. Email, username, first/last name, and zip. But this is where you can upload your picture by tapping the icon. Having you picture set will result in more people clicking on you. Promotions Once you download the app, using it and all the exposure it brings you is free. But we also have some extra options for you overachievers and serious marketers. In addition to the apps, we publish to over 100,000 people every week. Our website gets nearly that many visitors every month. If you click on promotions, we give you some inexpensive ways to get in front of our audience. Our entire audience is composed of people interested in winning more business. You will not find a better qualified audience anywhere. If you want to run a special promotion, such as a discount or free service, you can use this to get the word out. All of the proceeds from the promotions get reinvested into upgrades for the apps.

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 choice when contacting consultants. You can contact them directly, without us in the middle. Or you can tap the button for the Proposal Help Desk and we’ll provide concierge service. We’ll select from consultants we know and trust for you and then help plan, manage, and provide quality assurance for your pursuit. Proposal Help Desk. Tap the button to contact us and we’ll recommend a solution to your needs. You can contact us via phone, text, or email. Instead of searching and contacting consultants one-by-one, we’ll assign someone we know and trust. We’ll take the lead and make sure things are done to our standards. PropLIBRARY. We’ve included the starting points from our content library that cover strategic planning, pre-RFP pursuit, proposal development and more. Feel free to browse and use what you learn to win. Or better yet, become a subscriber to access our premium content. You might only need a consultant rarely, but you can always use PropLIBRARY to improve your ability to win your pursuits.

See also: Winning There are only three ways to win a proposal. All the strategies and techniques you can think of fit into these three. The three are fundamentally different. Understanding that gives you an advantage when it comes to figuring out the winning strategy. Most companies just muddle through, with strategies based on any one of them at any given moment. This gives you an opportunity to gain a competitive advantage by understanding the implications of how they apply to you. If you understand which applies and when, you can present a more focused message based on strategies that are clearer. Selling what you've got and convincing the customer to buy it. You have to get what you have through the customer’s selection process. You search for the perfect words to turn what you’ve got into what the customer wants. Product companies generally fit into this category. You have to convince the customer that the benefits of having your company’s offering make it worth the cost and effort required to procure it. The customer has to trust your ability to deliver. Figuring out what the customer wants and selling them an offering that fulfills it. You can offer anything you can think of and deliver. You need to understand what the customer needs, so that you can become it. Tailored services and solutions generally fall into this category. You have to convince the customer that you are the best alternative to fulfill their needs. The customer has to trust your capabilities and insight. Selling on price. Price always matters, and sometimes it’s the only thing that matters. The closer what you sell is to a commodity, the more important price will become as a consideration. Everyone tries to have a low price. But having the lowest price requires effort. This is especially true for services businesses where everyone hires from the same labor pool. To sell on price you have to know just how little you can get by with. You have to convince the customer that in spite of your low price, you are still trustworthy. You have to be really good to be trustworthy at the lowest price. While difficult, it is possible. It just requires a completely different way of operating. Muddling through and being a little of all of them will keep you from being the best. And you can’t consistently win proposals without consistently being the best. Even when the evaluation is formal and bureaucratic, like in government procurement, these forces are still in effect. They just operate in an environment with regulated acquisition procedures and written evaluation criteria. Sometimes what the customer wants most is a procedure followed. Sometimes convincing them requires following that procedure. The key to winning is to understand what you have to convince the customer of. The key to winning consistently is to build your organization around being that. You don’t just want to create branding around something that sounds positive. You want branding that supports the kind of selling you do. You don’t just want to appear trustworthy, you need to appear trustworthy in the ways that reinforce the kind of selling you do. You don’t just want the best offering, you want the best offering based on the kind of selling you do. And the kind of selling you do needs to be based on the kind of buying that your customers do.

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 through commitment or intent. In a seller/customer relationship, trust must be earned. Here are some ways to earn a customer’s trust that you can build your win strategies around: Knowing each other for long enough that the customer has seen that you deliver on you promises Methods or processes that are transparent, verifiable, and reliable A track record or history that is verifiable (and not simply claimed) Covering all contingencies Being up front about risks and having a credible approach to mitigating them (instead of just saying that you will) Details (having a plan is better than having a plan to have a plan) Warranties and guarantees Certifications Making things quantifiable Making things tangible Writing the proposal from the customer’s perspective instead of making it all about you Avoiding things that work against trust Things that work against trust: Unsubstantiated claims Failing to deliver on promises Having a bad reputation (or negative performance record) Making it up as you go along Being opaque or closed instead of transparent Leaving things unquantifiable Leaving things intangible Talking about yourself instead of showing concern for the customer You should think about trust on at least four different levels: The sales person/customer relationship. Without credibility and trust, the sale will not close. Project staff/customer relationship. In services markets, the staff who will do the work often matter more than the company that delivers them. And your customers often know it. Performance. It comes down to delivering as you promise and meeting expectations. Proposal. When you don’t have a prior relationship with the customer, all they have to decide whether to trust you is what’s in your proposal. Cynical customers know that some vendors will say anything in a proposal. Trustworthiness must be proven in order to be earned in writing. If it is possible at all… Win strategies based on trust come down to: What you need to say What you need to do What you need to deliver If they aren’t in synch, it works against trust. Stealing a contract away from a customer that already has a relationship with another vendor isn’t about getting them to like you more. It’s about getting them to trust you more. Achieving this means avoiding all things that work against trust. And thoroughly delivering on all things that build trust, before, during, and after the proposal.

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 be either a feature or a benefit, depending on how the customer perceives them. The topics below are not intended to be the features themselves, but rather are topics you can use to discover features to present that are relevant to your offering: Performance. What about your offering will have a positive impact on performance? How will it meet or exceed any performance standards or service-level agreement? Sustainability. What about your approach makes it more sustainable and lowers maintenance or total lifecycle costs? Scalability. In high growth or unpredictable environments, scalability can very important. What about your offering enables you to ramp up capacity or rapidly reduce it? How will it enable you to respond to peaks and valleys in the workload? Efficiency. How is your offering more efficient? How does it enable the customer to do more with less or conserve? Responsiveness. Customers don’t like to be kept waiting. What does your offering do to prevent that? Lower cost. Price always matters, even if it’s not quantified. Price strategy, such as increasing short term costs to lower long term costs (or vice versa), also matters. Value. Sometimes customers will spend more to get more. Sometimes they won’t. When they do, it helps for the value to be tangible, if not thoroughly quantified. Reliability. Downtime and failure has a cost. A reliable offering saves the customer that cost. Risk. Most customers are risk averse. All the little things you do to make sure things don’t go wrong can be features. Seamless. Many things the customer buys have hidden (or even known) costs related to installation, configuration, and implementation. A seamless solution can be ready quicker without these costs. Security. Security happens at many levels, personnel, physical, network, software, etc. Everything you do to protect your assets can be features if the customer is concerned about security. Size. Bigger or smaller. If it matters, it’s a feature. Weight. Weight becomes a feature when you have to carry or ship something. Sometimes a heavier weight is better. Whatever the reason, if weight is a concern, it can be a feature. Coverage. Your ability to cover the time, locations, geography, subject matters, etc. can be a feature. Flexibility. In unpredictable or changing environments, the ability to adapt to changes becomes a feature. Measurable. Simply being able to quantify or measure things can lead to better management and performance, making it a feature. Speed. Faster is not always better. But if speed matters, it’s a feature. Verifiable. When trust is an issue, being verifiable becomes a feature. Certified. Certification brings with it a presumption of qualification and reliability. Since you are in the role of being a sales person, certification can add a layer of third-party verification to your capabilities. Standards compliant. Being standards compliant is a form of self-certification. It implies that your claims are verifiable. Depending on the nature of the standard, it could also bring other benefits like compatibility. Off-the-shelf. Off-the-shelf parts and solutions tend to be lower in cost and quicker to implement. Customized. Sometimes the customer needs a solution that is tailored to their specific needs. An off-the-shelf solution may (or may not) be a good starting point, any customization you do becomes a feature. Experience. Your relevant experience is a feature and not a benefit. The benefit is what the customer gets as a result of your experience. But experience is a feature. Often features can be found in what you normally do. They do not have to add to the cost. For example, if you follow ISO quality assurance methodologies, then instead of just citing “ISO 9001:2000 Certified,” you might want to list features like the following: audited process compliance, repeatable methods, fully documented, independent quality oversight. These are all things that come with being ISO certified, but when they are listed out as features they will make your proposal seem like it offers better value, even when you are competing against another ISO certified firm. All the little things you do to make sure things are done right, prevent problems, fix things, or make things better can fall into this category. Just avoid features that don’t matter to the customer. The goal is not to have the longest list of features (even though that’s a feature in itself), the goal is to have the most impact. Also, you should remember that while features are good, customers buy based on the benefits that features deliver and not the features themselves.

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 beyond the RFP? What drives success or is required to achieve it? What constrains or limits the actions you take or resources allocated? What degree of freedom do you have in decisions and resource allocation? How do the constraints and degree of freedom impact your approach? How do your differentiators relate to your ability to achieve success? What acceptance criteria does the customer have or you can provide for their consideration? How do you make success measurable or verifiable? How do you make progress towards success measurable or verifiable? What risks, contingencies, and mitigations can you anticipate on the path towards achieving the results? Does your approach explicitly reflect the customer’s priorities and preferences? Have you accounted for schedule, budget, lifecycle, performance specifications, functionality, staffing, resources, delivery goals, risk, quality objectives or other relevant factors? Have you incorporated the customer’s evaluation criteria? What trade-offs are required? How does the way you've made the trade-offs better support achieving the customer's goals? Can you define a process or workflow based on measuring your way to success? Can you illustrate how project elements add up to success? Strategies You can expect your competitors to say they will achieve the customer's goals. This is especially true regarding the goals they describe in the RFP. To be the customer's best alternative, you need to show how you will achieve those goals and prove that your approach is the most credible. You can also add value by exceeding the customer's goals. You can do this by providing better performance specifications or you can do it by providing better goals. Either approach can become differentiators.

Most companies assign whoever’s available to the role of proposal manager. Often it’s the future project manager, someone with a technical writing or editorial background, or an ambitious administrative assistant. Excellent proposal managers can come from these and other backgrounds. But so can failures. We’ve identified seven key things to look for when selecting someone to manage a proposal effort. It’s worth noting that experience with the customer and technical experience with the offering aren’t on our list. That’s because they are not what separates a great proposal manager from a bad one. They are “nice to haves” and not “need to haves.” If you want a great proposal manager, you have to learn to look for other things. But first, there’s something critically important that you need to do: Define the role. What does it mean to be a "Proposal Manager" in your organization? Who has the final say regarding the outline, process, offering, pricing, bid strategies, and text? Those are often split between multiple people. Do you expect the proposal manager to write some or all of the proposal or participate in final production? Will they be creating the proposal or managing others who will create it? Do you want someone to take orders or give the orders? Do you know how to prepare a winning proposal or do you want someone to take the lead who does? Do you want someone to follow your process or do you want someone to create the process? A lot depends on whether you see the proposal manager as someone who pushes paper or someone leading you to the win. Whatever you do as the executive sponsor, don’t leave who is responsible for what up in the air. If you delegate figuring out what roles people should play or expect the proposal team to just know it, what you’ll get is a portion of the energy that could have gone into winning spent on indecision, turf battles, and petty squabbles that could have been avoided with more clarity. Below are eight things you should pay attention to before tossing your proposal manager to the wolves. Some key considerations for success that go beyond the proposal manager job description Instead of making a long list of everything a proposal manager needs to know or tasks to be capable of, like you might see in a typical position description, we prefer to focus on just the key things that drive everything else. There are a lot of different things you could look for in a proposal manager, but if you get these things right, most of the others will fall into place. See also: Proposal Management Do they understand what an RFP compliance matrix is, and have they ever created one on their own? If they do, you’ll get someone who knows how to flow the right information to the right sections of the proposal to make it easy for the customer to evaluate. If they don’t, you’ll just get someone who tries to do a good job, but may create a proposal that looks good but is in reality difficult for the customer to evaluate. Creating a compliance matrix often involves judgment calls. It’s not something you can do just by following procedures. Experience making those judgment calls can help a lot. If you don’t know what an RFP compliance matrix is, select someone who can explain it to you. If you do know what an RFP compliance matrix is, select someone who can explain how to make the right judgment calls to your satisfaction. Can they articulate what a quality proposal is and what is required to create one? If you don’t know what you’re trying to achieve, you’ll never get there. If you define a quality proposal as one that “wins,” it won’t provide any guidance regarding what to do to win. If all you do is focus on RFP compliance, it’s not enough to win. You want someone who knows what it will take to win and who can build the proposal around it. Have they ever participated in a proposal review? Participating in proposal reviews is a great way to learn what not to do. Making that a requirement for new proposal managers is a good way to keep your organization from repeating mistakes of the past. Knowing what you are looking for as a reviewer is good experience for being able to deliver it. A potential future proposal manager's comments during a review may be the best form of interview for the position possible. Can they help the proposal team do better than mere RFP compliance? You’ve got the RFP. You know what to do to comply with it. And so do all your competitors. To be competitive you must go beyond simply responding to the RFP and you need a proposal manager who can guide the proposal team to do that. Ask the candidates you are considering what can be done to exceed RFP compliance. See if they understand that it doesn’t have to increase the cost of what you bid. See if they understand that it has more to do with calling out the value in what you intend to offer and linking it with superior results. Do they understand what it means to write from the customer’s perspective? A good proposal describes your offering to the customer. A great proposal is about the customer and the decision they need to make, and not about describing yourself. To get from a good proposal to a great proposal, the proposal manager must understand how to guide the writers to reflect the customer’s perspective instead of simply being descriptive. Can they manage staff who don’t report to them? A proposal manager usually operates with one hand tied behind their back. Often none of the staff working on a proposal report to the proposal manager. And yet the proposal manager still has to get results from people with conflicting priorities, deadline pressure, and other stresses. It requires a certain gravitas that not all managers have. It can be the difference between proposal failure and proposal success. Can they articulate exactly what they will need from you? A proposal requires involvement from the executive sponsor at key points. A good proposal manager must set expectations and not be afraid to involve you when that is what’s required to achieve a winning proposal. If you can’t discuss it before they take on the job, then you can’t count on it under the pressures of proposal development. If they don’t push a little, negotiate well, and end with clear expectations, you might want someone else as proposal manager. Does their style of management fit your corporate culture? Are they too authoritarian, or not authoritarian enough? Do your people need to be forced to excel or inspired to excel? Do you need a teacher or a doer? Which will be a better fit: a leader, a manager, or a coordinator? Do you want a change agent or a facilitator? What is your tolerance for proposal risk and how does that impact your choice of a proposal manager? Your needs are different from other companies The nature of your company, offering, culture, and the resources available have a lot to do with what kind of person you need as a proposal manager. But if you want someone who has a chance at succeeding, the questions above will help you find the right person, regardless of their background. Should you promote from within or bring in outside expertise? How much experience is enough? What can you afford? In general, we don’t see the correlation between experience and capability that most people seem to rely on. We prefer to hire based on talent instead of experience. However, the talent to be a great proposal manager is different from the talent required to be a great project manager, salesperson or administrative assistant. Take a look at the list above, and consider which ones you can skip. Which ones can a proposal manager lack and still be successful? Which one are the most applicable to your environment? Skip all the ones that you feel are unnecessary. Then see whether you win or lose.

It can be difficult to find the right person to talk to at big Government Agencies and companies. That’s a major reason why people don’t do pre-RFP pursuit. It’s also why many companies are in perpetual sales mode, with no real inbound marketing. Before you can influence the RFP or gain pre-RFP customer insight, you have to make contact with the right people at the customer. Here are some ways to do that: Past contracts. Sometimes the best source of data about future purchases starts by identifying who the buyers were for similar purchases in the past. So start with mining the data and looking up past contracts through online databases. The points of contact may not always be up to date, but it’s a good place to start. Associations. What associations might the customer belong to? Do they publish their membership or attendee lists? Do they hold meetings where you might meet face to face? Do they publish presentations or documents that might mention names? Councils, standards setting organizations, and committees. Are there any other organizations the customer might participate in? In addition to their membership list, do they publish minutes or other documents that might provide insight or contacts? See also: Information advantage LinkedIn profiles. Can you find your points of contact on LinkedIn? If you do, can you find their co-workers and business partners? In addition to searching by demographics, you can also search by acronyms, technical terminology, program names, functional terminology, etc. LinkedIn groups. Look up what groups on LinkedIn your customers have joined. If they post, see what you can learn. If they read, you have an opportunity to put words in front of them. Just simply knowing what groups they are in can provide insight. If you can’t find your customers’ profiles on LinkedIn, maybe you can find them in a relevant group. Trade shows and events. What trade shows and events do they host or participate in? Can you get introduced? Can you meet face to face? What can you learn? What can you demonstrate? Websites and org charts. Does the customer have a website? Does it name names? Does it have an org chart that can help you navigate? Can you do an image search for a relevant org chart? Publishers. There are companies that research, aggregate, and publish databases that include customer contact information. Some can save you a huge amount of time. Google. Learn how to use Boolean search operators. Then combine fragments of names, email addresses, titles, projects, technology, locations, etc. to see if you can find the needle in the haystack. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). If it’s a Government customer, you can try doing a FOIA for rosters, staff directories, points of contact, organization charts, committee memberships, attendance lists, etc. Teaming partners. Who do your subs or primes know? Can you get a referral or introduction? Personal networking. Who do you know? Who do they know? How wide can you cast your net? Are you actively seeking to expand your network? Alumni. Not yours. Theirs. Where did they go to school? Can you track them down through Alumni organizations or discover someone else who knows them? Certification registries. If their job requires specific certifications, are there lists or registries of people with that certification? Look for coordination points. Where does the customer’s organization need to coordinate with the outside world? That’s where people will be visible. Look for common interests, platforms, tools, and requirements. Show interest in their interests. Be where they will be. Then be helpful when they arrive. As much fun as tracking down your customer can be, it’s not always the best approach. Why go to all that effort when you can get them to come to you? Doing that is not as hard as you might think. You have to look at things differently. You have to practice marketing instead of sales. You have to get past the need for immediate gratification. Here are some approaches you can take: Host the event. Don’t go to an event where they might be. Host the event. Have them come to you. Make it worth their while. And invite them. The event could involve training, or something else. Do it on a regular basis so that word of mouth can bring you more. Start a LinkedIn group. This is the same as hosting events. Only instead of face-time, it brings them to you online. Start an association. If you are trying to reach particular people, but you are having difficulty locating them as individuals, try starting an association that targets them. While this one is a long term proposition, it also has a high potential payoff as it can combine all of the other approaches. Create a forum. Whether online or otherwise, a forum encourages discussion. If your customer will participate. They have to perceive the value in it. Publish and gain followers. When you create content that the customer finds interesting, usually because they find it helpful, they’ll seek it out. They’ll invite you to put words in front of them. Instead of selling, try being an asset. Prove your value. Give them a way to follow for more and a way to invite their coworkers. Philanthropy. Host and support charitable events that your customers are interested in. Better yet, collaborate with them on philanthropic efforts. Let the customer come to you in support of your cause. Advertise. It costs money. It may or may not produce results. But it’s an easy way to get attention. It’s what you do with that attention that counts. Many of these work best when you don’t push your branding and you leave your corporate identify in the background. Selling can chase people away. The mere expectation that selling will occur can chase customers away. They’re not going to call you because they want to buy from you. When they want to buy they issue RFIs and RFPs. It’s not about selling. It’s about getting to know each other and working together. It’s about professional development. It’s about brainstorming and a quest for solutions. It’s about their mission. It’s about anything besides sales. This is inbound marketing. It’s something that government contractors rarely do, and almost never do well. But which do you think is mostly likely to result in a sale - you cold calling them, bidding blind, or them contacting you?

Congratulations! Either you got promoted or have started your own company. You’re an executive with profit and loss responsibility now, and must grow your business. You probably have some experience with business development, sales, or proposals, but being in charge of it is another matter. That’s okay, because like most executives, you’re confident you can make the stretch. My goal in writing this is to help you avoid falling into traps that look rational, but will weaken your competitiveness. Your competitors make these mistakes all the time. You can do better. See also: Organizational Development Business development is about what you close and not about how many leads you have. Closing requires understanding what it will take to win. If you sell a commodity, the strategies and processes for winning are very different than if you sell something that is not a commodity. Likewise, government, commercial, international markets are different. The rules of thumb you hear could be completely wrong for you. Vet the relevance. For non-commodity services businesses, the best competitive advantage is an information advantage. Only bid leads where you have an information advantage. If you don’t have an information advantage, it means you are competing on price or luck. Neither is sustainable or leads to the best ROI. For commodity services businesses, an information advantage may be the only differentiator you have. But it still might not be enough if all the customer cares about is price. But an information advantage is how you figure that out. Relationship marketing doesn’t work by getting potential customers to like you. It works by producing an information advantage. You can measure the success of your relationship marketing efforts by how much they produce an information advantage. People are not enough for successful business development. Being successful takes more than just hiring smart or charismatic people who “can sell.” Your organization needs to become more than just its people in order to win consistently over the long term. People work more effectively with the right processes and tools. Institutional knowledge should be grown and applied to constantly improving your win rate. Winning consistently is an information problem and not a “selling” problem. What it will take to win the proposal should drive what you do during the pre-RFP pursuit. Start with the end in mind. Ask “what will it take to win the proposal?” And work backwards from there. Use it to guide what you do at the beginning. If the staff involved in the pre-RFP pursuit don’t know what it will take to win the proposal, they can’t deliver it. Thus, the pre-RFP pursuit is really about discovering what it will take to win. Pay special attention to the questions the people preparing the proposal will need answered in order to write a winning proposal. Starting the proposal already having those answers is how an information advantage becomes a competitive advantage. Not having the answers leads to a watered down proposal. Tracking leads and customer contacts is not enough to end up prepared to win. Holding regular meetings about the status of leads will only result in starting the proposal unprepared. It’s not the status that matters, it’s the amount of information advantage you’ve developed. Your business development meetings should be about assessing your ability to answer key questions and not about status. Don’t debate whether a lead is a “good opportunity” or not. Debate whether you understand what it will take to win and have an information advantage. Making your meetings about what it takes to win and how to get an information advantage will set the right expectations and help train your staff. You can measure your readiness to win at RFP release by how well you can answer the questions related to what it will take to win. You can quantify your ability to answer the questions related to what it will take to win. You can build your pursuit process around that, as well as your bid decision process. Your strategic plan should tell people where to prospect for leads and which leads are acceptable. It should become a tool used in making bid decisions, and not just sit on a shelf. Make sure you understand how to build a funnel or pipeline and the math related to it. Study the relationship between leads, win rate, and revenue. This will help you set the right targets and know what to expect in the future. We have found changes in win rate to have 3-4 times the impact on revenue as do changes in lead discovery. If this is the case for you as well, you will want to invest in achieving a high win rate, as opposed to focusing on finding leads. Put the burden of proof on those who recommend bidding and not on those who recommend cancelling. No matter how hard it might be emotionally, you can improve your win rates simply by making bids easy to cancel and hard to get approval to continue. Continuing a bid should always be about whether the ROI justifies it. Always be prepared to walk away from sunk cost pursuits if you haven’t fulfilled your criteria for achieving a high probability of winning. Don’t throw good money after bad. You should build an organization that hits its numbers by achieving its win rate targets and constantly raising them, instead of one that hits its numbers by bidding in volume. Opportunistic bids can be pursued if they are paid for by sunk cost resources only if they don’t conflict with strategic pursuits. If you have resources sitting around not already pursuing strategic bids, then you may not be as strategic as you think you are. Your best chance to influence and improve the proposal occurs before it is written. If you come in late to the game and see that changes are required, that’s your failure and not the proposal team’s failure. Be a good role model if you want your staff to do their homework and not procrastinate. Be aware of the questions that your proposal team can’t answer on their own, and help them get the answers they need. If you don’t provide the answers, then they’ll hedge and water things down. Don’t allow the proposal review process to be subjective. Proposal quality should be defined in writing. Reviews should validate specific attributes or criteria. If your organization can’t articulate what those criteria should be in detail or hasn’t done so before the writing starts, then you’ve got a problem. Arguing over quality criteria will do far more to benefit your organization than arguing over whether to make a subjective change. Proposal writers and reviewers should have the same definition and criteria for proposal quality. Otherwise, neither one of them can fulfill it. This means you have to be able to spell out your quality criteria before the writing starts. The break/fix model is wrong for proposals. Design quality in from the beginning. If you hardly ever cancel a pursuit, you’re probably doing something wrong. The best proposals are written from the customer’s perspective. They should not describe your company, they should describe why your company’s qualifications and approaches matter to the customer. You need to understand what matters to the customer in order to achieve this. It’s a great place to start when listing your quality criteria. PS: Share this with your staff and use it to start conversations. You might say “I think this makes sense. What do we need to do to implement it?” You will be educating them, setting expectations, raising the bar, and learning yourself all at the same time.

In addition to PropLIBRARY's online resources, we also provide full-service consulting. We have experts who can provide hands on help, either at your site or remotely. The content you see on PropLIBRARY demonstrates our expertise and approach to doing things. To start a conversation about how we can do business together call 1-800-848-1563 Feel free to ask us about business development or proposals, or suggest a topic for us to write about. We're geeks about this stuff and love to chat about it. Click here to ask us a question

What's this site all about? PropLIBRARY is a site with a TON of useful information about business development, pursuit strategy, capture, and winning proposals. There are hundreds of free articles that explain the theory and foundations supporting our recommendations, and hundreds more for our paying subscribers that provide the checklists, templates, forms, and process guidance needed for immediate implementation. Our subscribers also get access to MustWin Now, a tool we've built based on our process recommendations. We also provide consulting services to help companies implement our recommendations and win their proposals. Tips for navigating our site To browse the information available, just click the menu button for our Best Practice Library and follow the links that interest you. Some people will be at the beginning, some in the middle, and some with have a particular topic in mind. We have so much content it can be overwhelming, but we make it quick to browse through. Permission to use our content We don't require any special permission if you want to link to one of our articles. If you want to reprint one of our articles or quote or excerpt a significant portion you may ask permission by clicking on the button for asking questions. If it is a single article with limited distribution we may only require attribution with a link back to the source. For anything on a larger scale, please describe your intentions so we can discuss it. Speaking and training Carl Dickson of CapturePlanning.com and PropLIBRARY is a frequent public speaker. It's one of his favorite things. Because he runs a web-based empire he doesn't get out enough. He'd love to speak at your event, but can't do them all. You are welcome to ask. Let us know when, where, about the audience, and the topics you think will excite them. You can contact him through our site. About us... We try to keep the attention on you and your needs, but how we got here is an interesting story. We are we located? CapturePlanning.com was formed in 2001 in the Washington DC area. Eventually we realized that as an Internet-based company we can be located anywhere. So these days we spend our time on the beach in Florida. Before COVID-19 we frequently travelled to our customer's sites.

In addition to PropLIBRARY's online resources, we also provide full-service consulting. We have experts who can provide hands on help, either at your site or remotely. The content you see on PropLIBRARY demonstrates our expertise and approach to doing things. To start a conversation about how we can do business together call 1-800-848-1563 If you are new to our site, here are some tips on navigating and finding things. Feel free to ask us about business development or proposals, or suggest a topic for us to write about. We're geeks about this stuff and love to chat about it. Click here to ask us a question What's this site all about? PropLIBRARY is a site with a TON of useful information about business development and winning proposals. There are hundreds of free articles that explain the theory and foundations supporting our recommendations, and hundreds more for our paying subscribers that provide the checklists, templates, forms, and process guidance needed for immediate implementation. We also provide consulting services to help companies implement our recommendations and win their proposals. Are you a proposal or business development consultant? See also: Proposal support services We have several ways that we work with consultants. We don't run a placement service, but we can support your growth with training, tools, and opportunities to promote yourself. Together we can expand what you can offer your customers and help you maximize those relationships, while keeping you up front and in control. If you are a product company or have a similar audience, let's explore how we can become partners. Permission to use our content We don't require any special permission if you want to link to one of our articles. If you want to reprint one of our articles or quote or excerpt a significant portion you may ask permission by clicking on the button for asking questions above. If it is a single article with limited distribution we may only require attribution with a link back to the source. For anything on a larger scale, please describe your intentions and we can discuss it. Speaking and training Carl Dickson of CapturePlanning.com and PropLIBRARY is a frequent public speaker. It's one of his favorite things. Because he runs a web-based empire he doesn't get out enough. He'd love to speak at your event, but can't do them all. You are welcome to ask. Let us know when, where, about the audience, and the topics you think will excite them. You can call us at 1-800-848-1563 or contact him through our site. About us... We try to keep the attention on you and your needs, but how we got here is an interesting story.

It all starts with a conversation Examples of projects we've undertaken: Proposal management and professional proposal writing ROI based Win rate improvement Pursuit process improvement (pre-RFP and post-RFP) Coaching to independence, where I provide experience and quality assurance while your staff and organization develops and then I fade out over time Proposal content planning Proposal reviews and quality validation Checklist-driven Proposal quality criteria development Pursuit strategy development Training in all the topics you see addressed on PropLIBRARY Becoming an organization that wins what it pursues Engagement options: Quarterly retainer with a master contract and task orders Not-to-exceed project quotes Hourly rate consulting I like to start by listening to you and getting to know your goals and preferences. I need enough information about the size and scope of what you have in mind to be able to make recommendations and to prepare reliable estimates. Along the way we can discuss options, approaches, schedules, and the outcomes you desire. If you want to know more about me, connect with me on LinkedIn and view my profile. Sometimes I roll up my sleeves and help create a winning proposal by employing all the recommendations you see on PropLIBRARY. Sometimes I help develop your staff, processes, and organization, so you can win more of what you pursue. Depending on your needs I might help start and plan a proposal, and then wait until it's ready to review so I can provide quality assurance. This is far more economical than billing the whole time. Or I might help you develop your company's internal capabilities and fade away over time. Our first conversation is usually to discover whether we're a match for each other. If not, I always try to make a referral or give you other options so you can get the help you need. I have some rather large agencies as partners, so it's usually not hard to find the right talent. While PropLIBRARY serves all kinds of businesses, most of my consulting engagements are with US Government contractors. When it comes to training, speaking engagements, and process improvement efforts, I work with organizations of all types. I fly all over when needed, but usually work remotely. How we can move forward together If you've got questions, you can use this green button to send them to me. Click here to send me a question Or you can use the widget below to get on my calendar for a telephone conversation so we can discuss whether we're a match.

Proposal teams are great at filling voids and getting things done without proper direction. They’ll complete the proposal no matter what. And that’s part of the problem. If they have to, they’ll water things down to gain acceptance. If they have no choice, they may even fake it. They are quite good at making the most of their circumstances, but they can’t read minds, and their authority is limited. Make things clear and your people will work more quickly and be better focused on winning instead of working around indecision. There are things that need your involvement. They don’t require a lot of time. But they do require decisions that the proposal team can’t make on their own. The team will do the work, but they need you to decide: See also: Roles Who defines quality and leads the review process? Proposal quality is too important to be left to opinion. Getting a group of people, no matter how experienced, around a table for a review without any definition of proposal quality is no way to achieve it. One of the key functions of the executive level is to define standards. Proposal quality should be defined in a way that can be validated so the reviews will be effective. Your entire proposal review process succeeds or fails based on how you define quality. But if you don’t do this before the writing starts, then don’t bother. Changing the definition of quality in the middle is worse than a consensus driven subjective and undefined concept of quality. If you feel the temptation to jump in at the end and fix the proposal because they don’t understand your vision for proposal quality, that’s your failure and not theirs. Who is responsible for identifying contributors? The proposal team can identify what is needed, but they don't own the resources required to get things done. They need help, both with identifying relevant resources and with obtaining their participation. Especially when it requires crossing organizational boundaries. Who is responsible for identifying, articulating, and approving bid strategies? If you wait until the proposal to figure out your bid strategies, or if those involved in the pre-RFP pursuit show up without anything to differentiate your bid, it's probably too late. Even though the proposal team should participate in articulating the bid strategies, someone else needs to be responsible for bringing the winning strategies to the table, and doing so at the start of the proposal. If the proposal lacks solid bid strategies, that should not reflect on the proposal team. Working out who is responsible for bid strategies and when will have a huge impact on your win rate. Who decides whether to cancel the proposal? The person who approved the bid almost never wants to cancel it. When a bid goes bad, a ton of money and effort usually gets wasted as a result. The proposal team can tell when the plug should be pulled, but who's going to listen? And if it’s worth continuing anyway, who’s going to explain why? Who is responsible for making decisions regarding contractual matters? What terms and conditions are acceptable? Who’s responsible for knowing what the small print means? Who is responsible for regulatory and other compliance? When, where, and how does that review take place? Who is responsible for making sure contributors meet their deadlines? Expectation management is crucial. The proposal team is responsible for setting the right expectations. And then others are responsible for fulfilling them. What happens when they don't? You can leave it to the proposal team to try to exert pressure while doing the proposal, or you can help with expectation management. Who is responsible for making sure teaming partners make their deadlines? If you have subcontractors or teaming partners contributing to the proposal it can be like pulling teeth to get their assignments completed. The people who network with them don't want to be the bad guys and enforce the schedule. Who's going to step in with enough clout to get the attention of staff at another company? Who makes decisions regarding what is being proposed? Who is responsible for determining what to offer, as opposed to how to describe it? Who is involved and who has the final say? With authority comes responsibility. Someone needs to define the offering competitively and on schedule for the proposal team to do its job. Who makes decisions regarding proposal content and presentation? Should it say this or that? Be organized this way or that way? Who can make changes? And who has the final say? Instead of letting games and power struggles figure it out, just put it on the table and tell them straight up. Isn't it interesting how many are all about "who?" Your staff can figure out "what" to do. But "who" does things is usually best decided higher up on the org chart. This means you. The proposal team can figure out what to do. But they can’t assign resources. They can't decide among themselves who has the final authority to make decisions without a consensus. They can negotiate with other staff to get what they need, but this takes time and often results in somewhat less than what they really need, which has a negative impact on the proposal. As an executive, you can have as much impact on your organization’s win rate as the proposal writers, without ever setting pen to paper. All you have to do is be decisive, and clearly communicate roles and responsibilities. If you are decisive, your win rate will go up. If you are indecisive, your organization will produce watered down proposals, do it more slowly, and with more risk, resulting in a lower win rate.

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 what they seem. And you ignore them at your own peril. The best approach to take for proposal writing is making it a return on investment (ROI) decision. If you focus on lowering costs you are probably not making the best investment decisions. Even though there is a cost savings by recycling proposal content, it will be less than the negative impact on your win rate multiplied by the anticipated revenue. It’s just the way the math works out, and I encourage you to explore the numbers. Unless you are dealing with a low-margin commodity or an offering priced too low to cover the cost of a customized proposal, I find the numbers almost always favor maximizing customization around your bid strategies. Especially when you run the numbers across multiple bids. Let's look at some numbers See also: Reuse If your total proposal cost is 1% of anticipated award of the opportunity, and you can lower the cost of the proposal by 10% by recycling previous proposals, the total savings is 0.1% of anticipated award. I’d argue that you won’t see even a 10% cost savings because reuse requires far more editing than people realize. But let’s pretend that 10% savings is real. Now, how much will proposal reuse lower your win rate? And what will that cost you? All it needs to do is lower your win rate by 0.1% to eliminate the savings. Consider two proposal approaches: Lower costs by maximizing reuse Skip any theoretical savings from reuse and apply it to maximizing the customization around your bid strategies If you take the second approach and it only improves your win rate by 1%, it will produce 10 times the ROI that reusing your proposal content might. If it improves your win rate by 10%, you get 100 times the “savings” from recycling your proposals. My goal in business is not to achieve a low cost and a low rate of return. My goal is a high rate of return and the costs required to bring me that return are welcome. If your goal is also to maximize ROI, but you aren't structured to prepare the proposals required to achieve it, you might want to rethink your business model. You should ensure that the investment you make in customizing your proposals around your bid strategies is efficient and is not made in a way that is frivolous. But efficient means achieving the win rate needed to produce the desired ROI. If you customize the proposal around poorly thought-out undifferentiated bid strategies, it will not increase your win rate. What should you do about it? If you are focused on organizational development instead of a single bid, then you can look at the increase in win rate as compounded interest. You can also look at proposal reuse as compounded negative interest. This means you want to train your organization to avoid reuse and invest in learning how to write proposals that maximize win rate. You want to train people to make sound decisions based on understanding the economics of their win rate, and not to take what looks like the easy path if it lowers your future ROI. The value in your previous proposals is in the ideas and approaches, but not in the narrative. I’d go so far as to consider scanning your proposals and storing them as images so people can’t recycle the narratives. Let them see the steps in the approaches, but force them to put those steps into the context required to win the current bid. Or extract those approaches and turn them into proposal recipes. Just don't copy the narrative that was optimized to win in a different context. Proposal reuse is a trap that will prevent you from maximizing your ROI If you don’t start your proposals knowing what bid strategies to customize the proposal around, you can’t achieve your ROI goals. The only way reuse increases ROI is if your profit margin per sale won't cover the cost of doing a proposal and you have to cover that cost through volume. If you care about ROI and don't sell a commodity, you can’t pursue bids opportunistically. You need an information advantage to have something to customize your proposal with. Your approach to prospecting should not be about finding leads, but should only look for leads where you can develop an information advantage. Focusing on ROI forces you to create an organization that bids to win, instead of one that bids a lot, and uses easy to submit low probability of winning recycled narratives to do it.

The easiest corporate strategy for growth is to bid everything. Proposal professionals hate this strategy because it results in a low win rate that they expect to get blamed for. It also increases their workload for little gain. But the undeniable fact is that you can win business by bidding opportunistically. That’s what makes it so tempting. The result is a certain… tension… See also: Bid/no bid decisions Whether you should bid opportunistically or strategically is a simple return on investment calculation. Add up your costs of bidding and compare it to your wins. The problem with opportunistic bidding is that it results in low win rates. When you bid without an information advantage, you bid at a competitive disadvantage. Your cost per win goes up as your win rate goes down. And the ones you win are probably the ones where your pricing was lowest, resulting in lower profit margins. Opportunistic bidding leads to higher costs and less profit. But it also results in more profit than you would have had if you didn’t bid anything. Every time I've run it with real numbers, I find that the impact your win rate has on your profitability makes investing in a high win rate the better investment. For example, at a 10% win rate, you'll need three times the number of leads as a company at a 30% win rate, just to hit the same revenue. All that opportunistic bidding is often great amounts of energy spent uselessly. The idea that opportunistic bidding produces more revenue than you would have had without it is an illusion. At a 30% win rate you’ll achieve twice the revenue of a company with a 10% win rate, and do it with half the leads and a lower cost of bidding. There is no doubt that you can win some business with an opportunistic approach. The question is whether that's the best ROI. The answer will not be the same for everybody. Consider: The closer you get to a commodity service, the less important trust and other factors become, the more important price becomes, and the more bidding in volume can pay off. If the size of your bids does not cover the costs of customizing your bids, then while win rate will remain critically important, you will not be able to afford strategically pursuing each opportunity. In certain niche markets, customers buy without advance planning or announcements. Some things are purchased by a customer only once and customers are widely dispersed, making targeting impossible. But even putting aside the importance of win rates for a moment, it’s a strategic question that determines whether opportunistic bidding will destroy your company: Does opportunistic bidding lead to growth, or does it plateau when you run out of leads that are easy to find and bid? For opportunistic bidding the only path to growth is to find more low-hanging fruit than you lose. Forever. The idea that opportunistic bidding can get your foot in the door is an illusion. Opportunistic bidding is not a way to jump start a business or something you can switch from when “you are ready.” If you can get the business without a customer relationship, then someone else can steal it from you the same way. Opportunistic bidding requires a business model that can survive high levels of churn. If you run a non-commodity services business, rapid turnover will kill your business. When you run out of easy leads, you will be unable to replace the revenue at the same rate. That’s when things go bad quickly, because you’ve built an organization that structurally, culturally, financially, and otherwise is incapable of the investment required for strategic pursuit. You can’t switch on a whim to strategic business if you don’t have the right processes, the way people think they are supposed to do things is all wrong, you haven’t mastered long lead time pursuits, your win rate is abysmal, you can’t cover the costs of strategic pursuits, and you habitually start too late. Every time I've seen it tried in a non-commodity services business, opportunistic bidding led to a crash that was most often resolved by selling the business and not simply reorganizing it, but replacing it with a strategic organization. The difference between a strategic organization and an opportunistic one is that maximizing win rate is a higher priority than maximizing the number of bids. Investing in a high win rate means doing things like relationship marketing, developing an information advantage, and perfecting your lead qualification and proposal processes. A strategic organization doesn’t focus as much on chasing leads as it does on winning them. But a better way to look at it is that investing in win rate means hitting your numbers without any opportunistic bids. You can indulge in opportunistic bids in a strategic company. You just can’t depend on them. To be strategic you have to build an organization that hits its numbers by achieving its win rate targets and constantly raising them. Opportunistic bids can be pursued if they are paid for by sunk cost resources and don’t conflict with strategic bids. If you have resources sitting around not pursuing strategic bids, then you may not be as strategic an organization as you think. Even when those resources aren’t working on a bid, they should be investing their time in increasing your win rate.

Proposal recipes work best when they reflect the specifics of the way your company does things and its circumstances. They can also help prevent your authors from reinventing the wheel. But you have to be careful when you make them specific that they remain applicable to all your bids. Luckily the question format facilitates this. You can include options that may or may not be applicable by how you phrase the questions. Instead of finding the balance between generic and specific, you can get as specific as you need to. Proposal recipes are also a great tool for bringing together the best that every part of your company has to contribute. For example, inter-departmental expertise and coordination can be leveraged by adding questions to your recipes that prompt the author with what to say, do, or remember. You don’t need people to contribute manuals, slide decks, or narrative to create recipes. You just need to know the key issues so you can insert a question that prompts the author to look into it. If you get to proposal reviews and people ask things like, “Why didn’t we include information from so and so?” you can insert a question into your recipes that will prevent the oversight in the future. Not only that, you can anticipate the need and track down the information or prompt the author with what they need to do to get it. The following list gives you some considerations you should apply to every recipe to ensure that it is fully customized: See also: Guidance for Using Recipes Business line specifics. What does you company do or offer? What does the author need to consider about that? What should they consider when designing the offering and writing about it? Customer specifics. If you bid to the same or similar customers frequently, you can add questions that reflect the customer’s concerns and preferences. Procedures. What relevant procedures has your organization already developed? What policies may impact what you say in the proposal? Terminology. What terminology do you and your customers prefer? What’s current? Recipes should prompt authors to say things the way you want them said. Bid strategies. How do you typically position your company and offering? What strategies do you employ in common circumstances? What strategic lessons learned has your organization accumulated? Resources. What people, equipment, facilities, technology, tools, assets, etc. exist in your organization that might be relevant? Points of contact. Who should proposal writers contact for more information, to obtain decisions and approvals, or to coordinate? What information should proposal writers deliver as well as potentially receive? What forms or other tools might help? Institutional knowledge. Has your organization done things before that are relevant? What does your organization know that is relevant? What practices has your organization developed? What preferences does it have? What lessons learned has it accumulated? Data. If data can be anticipated and doesn’t change frequently, it can be inserted into your recipes. For example: the number of locations your company has, its employee turnover rate, etc. If the data does change rapidly or the data required isn’t consistent enough to accumulate it in advance, you can still identify where to go, which tools to use, or who to get the data from. Inter-departmental coordination. A staffing plan might require coordination with your human resources department. Subcontracting, logistics, fulfillment, supply chain, invoicing, timekeeping, and many other functions are handled by specific departments in some organizations. If you want proposal writers to coordinate with them, you can use the recipes to prompt it. The recipes can prompt proposal writers with the who, what, where, how, when, and why of the coordination. Graphics. You can anticipate that many of the issues faced in common proposal sections can be communicated visually. Even if you don’t have the information to draw the graphic in advance, you can inspire the proposal writers by showing them the kinds of graphics that are relevant.

The goal of a proposal recipe is to accelerate proposal writing and inspire your staff to write better approaches. Proposal recipes suggest topics to write about, instead of providing topics that are already written but in the wrong context. A proposal recipe avoids providing you with a narrative you can recycle. Instead, proposal recipes ask questions about everything that should go into the narrative. When you answer the questions, you not only create the narrative, but what you write is customized for what it will take to win the current bid from the very beginning. Instead of starting your proposal with a blank screen, the questions in a proposal recipe get you started explaining the right things and putting things in the right context. By suggesting ingredients, it accelerates how quickly you arrive at knowing everything that should be addressed in your section. People spend more time thinking about and discussing their proposal sections than actually writing them. A proposal recipe gets you past that more quickly so that the writing can actually be accomplished. Creating a proposal recipe requires identifying the questions people should answer in their responses. The trick to creating the right questions is to use the questions to both give information and guide people to consider the right things. Proposal recipes typically address: See also: Guidance for using recipes What should be included in your solution, process, approach, or response What you need to know before you can write your response Options you should consider How the context impacts what you should write How issues could impact what you write Ways to add value to your response Potential ways you could use graphics to enhance your message A proposal recipe shouldn’t tell you what the steps in your approach must be. Instead, a proposal recipe should ask about everything that might go into your approach, so the author can quickly assess what is needed for this bid. A recipe should ask about various options so the author can decide what is applicable. A recipe should ask about how aspects related to the customer, opportunity, competitive environment, or RFP might impact what you need to write about. A proposal recipe should ask about any potential issues so the author can determine what to do about them. A recipe should ask about approaches that might add value. Or it might ask about how visuals could be used instead of words to make your points. There is a fine line between asking you to consider an option and suggesting things for your consideration. Suggestions are fine, but everything in a proposal recipe should be formatted as a question in order to avoid leaving the impression that the recipe is telling the author what to write. In order to end up with a proposal that is fully customized around what it will take to win, recipes help the author work more quickly without giving them the end product. The authors decide the sequence, wording, what’s applicable, and what adds value. A recipe identifies the ingredients and ways to prepare them, but the author is the chef. It’s also important to remind the author that they are not limited to what it says in a proposal recipe. If a proposal recipe inspires you to think about something that adds to the proposal but that the recipe didn’t address, then it’s doing its job of helping you figure out what to say in order to win.

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Read the proposal and make it sound better. The end.p.s. If you are not precise and careful, making a proposal sound better can actually hurt your chances of winning. Changing the wording of proposal headings and requirements can get you thrown out for non-compliance without even being read. Even if you don't get thrown out, it can hurt your score when customers search for keywords or strings in the RFP and can't find them in your proposal. Their words may be archaic or awkward, but they need to be there. Especially in the headings. See also: Proposal quality validation When you mark up the draft proposal and change headings that were based on the RFP, people will see that you didn't even read the RFP. That could bring the credibility of your other changes into question as well. The same holds true when you make changes to keywords inserted from the evaluation criteria or other sections of the RFP. This not only confirms that you didn't read the RFP, it also shows you didn't attempt to read or score the proposal the same way the customer will. When you replace the wording of focused bid strategies with nice sounding pieces of fluff that you think have broader appeal or less risk, you may be watering down your proposal to the point of making it meaningless. Everything in a proposal should be based on what it will take to win. Everything should make a point related to RFP compliance and be worded to optimize the evaluation. If you can make it sound better while doing that, great! When you make recommendations to add things to a proposal that is already over the page limit without identifying something to take out, you're not thinking about how to win, you're just putting that burden on someone else. Backing into the proposal by editing it down is a bad strategy and a sign of a review failure. It is much better to build the proposal from the beginning with intentional trade-off decisions based on what it will take to win, scaling it to fit the page limit. Don't add things on the assumption that they can somehow survive the editing that will be required to bring it all back down to the page limit. And whatever you do, don't assume that if you start with a bunch of recycled narrative, the strategies and points that matter to this bid will somehow be discovered through editing. Here's what people really need from you when you review the proposal... The proposal team needs validation of specific things. They need to confirm decisions regarding strategies. They need to know whether what's being presented is the best offering the company is capable of. They need to know whether they've left anything out or overlooked anything. They need to know whether they've achieved RFP compliance and if what they wrote is optimized to get the highest evaluation score. They need to know if the proposal reflects all of the customer insight the company has and whether the competitive positioning can be improved. They need confirmation that the proposal is written from the customer's perspective instead of simply being descriptive. In short, they need to know whether the proposal reflects what it will take to win. Is there anything about what it will take to win that isn't adequately addressed? Text corrections, tweaks to the wording, and random improvements are secondary. Wordsmithing is best done by a professional editor and not a senior review team. But validation is a critical part of creating a proposal that reflects what it will take to win. They need your strategic double-checking and second-guessing of the bid strategies in order to produce a proposal that will beat all potential competitors. The proposal team doesn't need your opinion about the writing. They need you to show up prepared and having read the RFP. They need your due diligence and above all they need your proposal quality validation. And will greatly appreciate receiving it. Premium Content for PropLIBRARY Subscribers The MustWin Process includes a methodology for reviewing proposals called Proposal Quality Validation. It explains how to figure out how many reviews you should have as well as how many reviewers you need. And it can be implemented as a forms and checklist driven review process. It also provides sample criteria to use for proposal reviews.

What you should propose is different from what you should write. You should avoid doing them both at the same time. Figuring out what to you should offer is something that you should do, and validate, before you start trying to describe it in writing. You should be able to describe what you intend to offer regarding the following items before you start trying to figure out what to say about them. See also: Content Planning Best Practices So how do you figure out what to offer before you start writing about it? Here are some things to consider: What would you like to offer? Identify the components of your offering. Break it down. What's in? What's out? Decide so you know what to describe when the writing starts. If you are offering a tangible deliverable, then what is it composed of, what parts does it include, and what are its features? If it's an approach, then what are the major steps and what are its features? Itemize the details. Itemize the things you're going to need to price it and write about it. You don't need to explain (yet). You just need to account for it so that you can validate the offering and then explain it all when the writing starts. Price to win. Add up what you've got so you can decide what you have to change before you commit it to a written narrative. If you have designed an offering that will cost more than the customer can afford, then you have lost before you've started writing. If your offering is not cost competitive, you need to decide that before you invest in writing difficult to change narratives about it. What does the customer require? Comply with their specifications. Make sure your offering design complies with all specifications and fulfills all requirements. If your offering isn't compliant, you need to fix that before you start writing about it. Don't start by writing a response to every requirement. Instead perform a review to ensure that the offering is capable of complying with them all. Once you have fully validated your design, then you can write the narrative responses required. Make sure you can address everything in the RFP. What will you need to address about your offering? Does it require research or additional details? Does it require changing what you are offering before the writing starts, or is it just additional items you need to make sure you explain once the writing starts? Optimize against the customer's evaluation criteria. How will the proposed offering be scored during evaluation? Does it need to change in order to receive the top score? It's often balancing the goal of getting a top score with having a winning price that results in disastrous changes after the writing starts. Performing that balancing act before you start writing is crucial for successful proposal development. Does your offering reflect the customer's perspective? Address what matters to the customer. Whether it's in the RFP or not, the customer is part of the requirements. If your offering design does not matter to the customer, then it's not a good offering design. You need to be able to explain what matters about your offering design, and do it from the customer's perspective instead of your own. Identify your competitive differentiators. The customer will make their selection based on the differences between the alternatives. Winning requires having the best differences in order to be the best alternative. Design in your competitive differentiators and then validate the design before you start writing. Articulate your value proposition. Being the best alternative means offering the customer the best value. Even if the customer only considers price, it's because that is their highest value. Understand what the customer values and make your cost/benefit trade-offs decisions accordingly. You need to be able to articulate your value proposition in order to validate your design. But articulating your value proposition does not mean that you start writing the proposal. It is part of getting ready to write the proposal, so that the entire document can explain and support why your value proposal makes you the best alternative. Premium Content for PropLIBRARY Subscribers We have prepared training materials you can download to help you guide your staff through implementing these recommendations: 24-Slide PowerPoint presentation on How to make figuring out what to propose simple A simple checklist in Microsoft Word summarizing the action items

Just because you really want to win a proposal, does not mean that you need to go about it in a complicated way. There may be a lot to do and a lot to think about, but that doesn't necessarily mean you need to have a complicated proposal process. Unfortunately, figuring out how to best simplify preparing proposals may not be obvious. In an effort to simplify their proposal efforts, people often do things that hurt their chances of winning. It turns out that the complexity of a proposal effort is driven primarily by two factors: How many people do you need to contribute to the proposal? Developing a proposal with other people involved means you need planning, estimating, progress tracking, quality assurance, and all the other aspects of project management. Are you willing to invest in winning? Even though we want to believe that every proposal deserves a heroic effort to win, some have a higher priority than others. The effort you put into research, planning, and quality assurance depends on that priority. If you are doing the proposal on your own and managing your own priorities, you can greatly simplify things and balance the desire to win with the effort it will take. If you are forced into doing a proposal without the resources you need, you might also be forced into simplifying things. Mythbusting: Templates are probably not the best way to simplify a proposal effort See also: Making proposals simple We've brought all the information we've written about recycling proposal content and using templates together into this Topic Hub. The bottom line is that in almost all cases they reduce your probability of winning. Only you can decide whether reducing the effort is worth sacrificing your win probability. Most of the content on PropLIBRARY is written to maximize your chances of winning, even if it takes more effort, because we've found mathematically that's usually the best investment. The purpose of this topic hub is to help people with simple approaches that still maximize your chances of winning in cases where the MustWin Process is overkill. Checklists and recipes can simplify without killing your chances of winning Checklists can help you quickly figure out what to write, without reducing your chances of winning the way recycling proposal narrative or using templates will. They remind you, help ensure that you don't leave anything out, and prompt you with things to consider. The right checklist can make winning in writing checklist simple. Instead of copying an outline or following a template, here is a simple approach to a proposal outline that is based on the customer's point of view. If you want to get just a little more sophisticated, here are 16 ways to organize your outline. And when it comes to writing, instead of templates or recycling proposal text from a previous proposal, try a Proposal Recipe to accelerate the writing in a way that maximizes your chances of winning. Simplifying proposal writing The difference between ordinary proposal writing and great proposal writing doesn't require more effort if you understand how to write from the customer's perspective. Here are 8 simple things you can do to transform ordinary proposal writing into great proposal writing. People often struggle with just getting their proposal started. Once you do that everything can fall into place. So here is a two-part strategy for writing great proposal introductions. If you are stuck because you're not sure how your proposal should look, then here is an article that should greatly simplify things for you so you don't have to worry. Telling your story, crafting your message, and articulating your proposal themes, can also be made simpler. Sometimes it's not really the writing that's the problem, it's figuring out what your win strategies should be. So here are three simple steps for formulating your win strategies. There's really only one thing that you need to do in order to win all of your proposals. And if these tips aren't simple enough for you, you can transform your proposal writing with just a single word. If it takes too much effort to write a great proposal, then aim for simply not being awful Sometimes you can make a big improvement without rebuilding your entire approach to proposal writing. Here are 6 ways to simply avoid writing an awful proposal. In addition, here are 8 simple indicators that you’re going down the wrong path before you lose your proposal. Simplifying the proposal process Thinking about the proposal process as a series of some huge number of steps is counter-productive. An effective proposal process is based on achieving a few goals. That's it. There are elaborate ways to achieve those goals, and there are simple ways. Which is best for you depends on your circumstances and preferences. But it's the goals of the process that matter and not the steps. When you think in those terms, then it's possible to consider what the simplest, easiest proposal process to get started with might be. Another aspect to consider is your role, because your role impacts your perspective, and where you should start to improve your proposals. If you are doing the proposal on your own, you might be tempted to go without a formal process. This is generally a bad idea, because you still need to achieve the same goals as described above. But even without a process, having clear and simple criteria to assess your proposal quality can make it possible to achieve a quality proposal, without having formal reviews. And if you do have a review process, here is one simple thing you can do to greatly improve your proposal reviews.