Carl Dickson

Planning graphics: There is a difference between specifying a graphic and drawing it. You don’t have to be able to draw in order to identify and specify graphics. Graphics should be identified and specified as part of your Content Planning efforts. Graphics can be created from written instructions in a Content Plan, or can be created first and used to drive the instructions for what needs to be written. It is a best practice to use graphics to drive the text. Visual communication is more efficient and memorable than narrative. Instead of setting a target like “One graphic for every three pages” (which encourages people to make up graphics that don’t add value), your content planning and validation planning should include looking for every opportunity to communicate visually. Anything that is complex or contains a discriminator can be shown graphically. Any process, approach, relationship, sequence, or comparison is a potential graphic. You should note in the Content Plan every place where you could have a graphic, even if you don’t know what that graphic is (yet). Then, for each graphic, identify the: See also: Content planning best practices Primary objective. What is the goal of the graphic? What should the reader conclude after viewing it? What benefit will your audience receive? What problems does your graphic solve? Audience. Who will the reader be? What do you anticipate their background will be? Will the reader be a manager or a worker? Will they be technical or have some other subject matter expertise? Will they be military or private sector? What other attributes might be relevant? Questions that the graphic should answer. What questions will need to be answered to achieve the primary objective? Subject matter. Answer the questions. If these are not known when the Content Plan is developed, then you should add instructions for the section author to complete them. Your goal is to track all of the graphics that need to be created, enable graphics to be written about even before they are fully rendered, and to provide a set of instructions for the illustrator(s). When writing to graphics, you should not describe what is in the graphic in a way that is redundant. Graphics should stand on their own and replace text. When referring to the graphic, you should state the conclusion/primary objective that the graphic demonstrates, substantiates, or illustrates. Don’t forget that tables can be graphics too. Tables can make showing RFP compliance easier. In many cases you can look at an RFP requirement and determine that a table is the best way to present it. Why not put an empty table into the Content Plan as a placeholder for the Proposal Writers to complete? If you plan to use Feature/Benefits tables, you can also put placeholders into your Content Plan for them. In addition to illustrations and tables, you should also consider the use of visual enhancements such as navigation and scoring aids. These can include: Relevance boxes. Links the proposal section to the RFP requirements that it addresses. Sometimes this is done by citing the RFP paragraph number, heading, and/or requirement. Sometimes it is done by citing keywords from the RFP that are relevant. Pull quotes. A box highlighting a statement, story, or example. Typically rendered with large type in order to make it stand out on the page and bring it to the evaluator’s attention. Examples of relevance boxes:

Don't use it without making sure it's fully optimized to win: If you think checking all of these will be time-consuming, you are right. Ask yourself which you can do without. This is why using boilerplate can take longer than writing what you need from scratch. See also: Reuse When using boilerplate or re-using past documents, make sure that you: ❏ Update the customer, project, and other names ❏ Ensure that any dates or numbers mentioned are accurate ❏ Check that it is fully RFP compliant and in the right sequence ❏ Add or delete relevant topics ❏ Edit it to use the same terminology as the current customer/RFP ❏ Validate that it reflects the approaches being proposed ❏ Validate that any trade-offs made previously(e.g. cost/performance) are still appropriate ❏ Emphasize the benefits that matter to this particular customer ❏ Research the previous bid strategies and evaluation criteria so you can undo anything no longer applicable to the current circumstances ❏ Substantiate the right win strategies and themes for this particular bid ❏ Optimize it against this particular evaluation criteria ❏ Ensure that any examples cited are relevant and up to date ❏ Has anything changed since the previous proposal for your company, projects, staff, technology, processes, etc. that should be incorporated? ❏ Ensure that it reflects your full awareness of the customer ❏ Check whether it includes any assumptions and if they are still relevant Return to Proposal Content Plan Implementation Tips or the Proposal Content Planning Topic Hub.

Using boilerplate in a proposal Careful thought is required before assuming you can re-use existing proposal content or “boilerplate.” People are often tempted to recycle proposal content from past proposals or “boilerplate.” Unfortunately, this only works for certain proposals. For others, it actually makes things take longer and reduces the effectiveness of the proposal. Boilerplate and re-use material can destroy your chances of creating a great proposal. When you make all the changes needed to customize it, you may find that re-using files does not save time and may actually introduce problems. In fact, improperly using boilerplate or even failing to thoroughly optimize it for the current proposal can cost you the bid. Whether it makes sense to use boilerplate in your proposals primarily depends on: The type of offering. If you are proposing a unique or engineered solution, you may not be able to employ re-use material effectively. Even if you are responding to similar requests, the number of edits required to adapt it may exceed the time it would have taken to write it in the first place. If you are proposing a product or a commoditized service, you may be able to employ re-use material effectively, if your customers’ concerns are also consistent. The consistency of RFPs. If your RFPs are very consistent, you may be able to use re-use material effectively. If your proposals don’t have a written RFP, then whether you can effectively employ re-use material will depend on the consistency of your customers’ concerns and evaluation processes. In addition, the following concerns can also impact whether or not using boilerplate works in your environment. See also: Content planning best practices The consistency of customer concerns and evaluation. Even if you are proposing the same thing, if your customers have different concerns or follow different evaluation processes, you will need to customize your response to reflect this. Since your proposal should show how your offering responds to the customer’s concerns, a difference in customer concerns can totally change the context and how you describe your offering. The strength of your writers. If you have weak writers, you may want to rely more on re-use material. Instead of training and guiding them through the process of creating winning proposal copy, it may be easier to write something good once and then re-use it often. However, this can be dangerous. Even if you provide detailed checklists and guidance, if the writers are weak to begin with, you may find that you are submitting proposals that are not customized and your win rate will suffer. The value of the bid. If the value of the bid will not cover a proposal customized to win, you may need to recycle your proposals. But then you should adjust your proposal process accordingly, because you are in a business where volume is critical. The evaluation criteria. If the evaluation criteria ignores value, then customizing around your value proposition is not needed. If the evaluation criteria focuses on price (i.e. Low Price Technically Acceptable), there is no point in customization beyond RFP compliance. The opposite of each of these is also true. When you look at the nature of your offering and the RFP, you can actually see where boilerplate might be applicable. This model shows us that: Boilerplate works best when you are offering the same services/products on every bid and the RFP is the same each time. Boilerplate requires time-consuming edits when you offer different services/products on every bid and the RFPs are different each time. In between these are two conditions where boilerplate may or may not be a good solution: When you offer the same services/products on every bid, but the RFP is different each time. When you offer different services/products on every bid, but the format, structure, and content of the RFP is the same each time. Another consideration is the strength of your writers. If you have weak writers, you may want to rely more on re-use material. However, this can be dangerous. Even if you provide detailed checklists and guidance, if the writers are weak to begin with, you may find that you are submitting proposals that are not customized and your win rate will suffer. The most important thing to remember when re-using proposal content is that there is a big difference between being similar and being the same. Most of your offerings and most of your RFPs will be similar. They may be about similar things. But unless they ask for exactly the same things, in the same order, using the same terminology, and evaluate them against the same criteria, the response will have to be different. The amount of that difference is what determines whether boilerplate helps or hurts. The Content Planning process will make it very clear whether the boilerplate meets your needs because it gives you a set of specifications you can compare the boilerplate against. After you copy the boilerplate into your Content Plan, you should note any deviations in the content from the instructions that are already there. Then you should add new instructions for how to correct them. If the goal is to win, you should be prepared to throw away the re-use material and write what you need to win. Having a comprehensive Content Plan will accelerate the writing even more than having the re-use material (once you consider how much time it will take to modify it).

See also: Content Planning Best Practices If you use the format for Proposal Recipes that we recommend, they can be easily integrated with your Content Plans. The recipes include a list of questions to answer and approaches and strategies you can take. Not only do recipes do a better job of inspiring and accelerating than recycling proposal narratives, but they also integrate with the planning process better. The questions to be answered can be dropped directly into your Content Plans. The approaches and strategies can be used to create instructions for the authors. Not all of the questions will be applicable to every proposal, so the person preparing the plan should either select the relevant ones, or instruct for the author to consider which questions are relevant as part of the writing. Using recipes can greatly accelerate things and increase the level of detail in your plans, and do it in a way that is safer than recycling narratives. By increasing the level of detail, you provide more inspiration to the authors and produce a more detailed, better quality proposal.

A few small things can make a big difference in the quality of proposal writing. And you can insert instructions and reminders into the Content Plan to help achieve them. For example, you can insert instructions into the Content Plan to: See also: Content planning best practices Make sure that the section starts with a statement about what the customer will get or receive as a result of awarding the contract to you. Write from the customer’s perspective, with the emphasis on results. Avoid describing yourself, and starting or making sentences about our company or team. Put descriptions of us or what we’ll do into a context about what matters to the customer. Start and end with something that matters to the customer. Make sure every sentence passes the “So What?” test. When addressing requirements, make sure that you address “who, what, where, how, when, and why.” Dropping a line or two like these into your Content Plan can make a huge difference, especially since the reviewers will see it when they evaluate the draft proposal. You can also provide other forms of guidance: If you want your proposal to tell a story, then explain your story to the authors and advise them how to incorporate it into their section. You can also guide them regarding what to put into the narrative, and what should go elsewhere. For example, you can separate simple facts and put them into a text box so that the narrative focuses on your story. You can even drop in text boxes as placeholders where you know they will be needed.

Two ways to accelerate your Proposal Content Planning: Cheat. Skip some of the iterations. The methodology was designed with this possibility in mind. Think "checklist" instead of "iterations." Do them all in one pass and then use the "steps" as a checklist to make sure you didn't overlook anything. Cheating is not only allowed, it's encouraged See also: Creating a proposal content plan If you skip some of the iterations, your plan will be not be as thorough, but will still add value. See the topic in the Knowledgebase titled “Scalability and Schedule Issues” to see how Content Planning was designed to degrade gracefully, and enable you to make the trade-off between thoroughness of planning and maximizing the time available for writing. Convert the steps into a checklist You may not need to do the iterations one at a time in sequence. Instead, think of them as a checklist. Once you’ve created the outline and allocated the RFP requirements, you can do all of the iterations at the same time: Create the shell Add the RFP requirements Add win strategies, themes, and evaluation criteria Add (customer, opportunity, and competitive) intelligence Add your solution and references Add graphics and tables Add assumptions, limits, and issues Add boilerplate Heading by heading you can think through and add the instructions all at once. The second approach works best on small proposals. When the page count is small, you don’t need separate passes for each topic. When the page count is large, doing it in separate passes help you stay focused and create commonality across proposal sections. If you spend about 15 minutes a page doing the planning, then for a 25-page proposal you can have a plan done in a day. At the end of the day you review it to ensure that you’ve accounted for everything that needs to go into the proposal and that it reflects what it will take to win. Having the content plan ensures that the writers know what is expected of them, and gives you a baseline that will accelerate the review of the draft proposal.

Content Plans are containers. They hold ideas, instructions, and other forms of communication between proposal planners, authors, and reviewers. It’s okay if they get a little messy because you don’t want to invest too much time in making them look good when you still have to do the actual proposal. What matters is whether they set the right expectations and are helpful. This depends on who your authors are. If you are doing a Content Plan for yourself, then you’ll know what you meant (but you may still need to make sure your reviewers do). If one person is writing the Content Plan for others to follow, then you need to make sure the instructions are clear. The more information you provide and the more clear your intentions, the better the writers will be able to meet your expectations. How should you phrase the items in your content plan? Requirements. You can refer the writers to the RFP or you can drop the requirements right into the Content Plan. It may depend on how wordy the RFP is. If you have additional requirements that are not in the RFP, you can include them as well. The better job you do of accounting for or itemizing the requirements, the easier it will be to ensure compliance. Instructions. If you are creating a plan for others to follow, then you should word the items in your plan as instructions so that they will know what to do. Questions to be answered. While we prefer the clarity of instructions, another approach is to put questions into your Content Plan for the writers to answer. Also, if you have a topic that you are not sure about, rather than set it aside, you should put it into the Content Plan as a question. As the Content Plan gets passed around to authors and reviewers, they will either answer it or see that it still needs to be answered. Reminders. You can use the Content Plan as a container for reminders, whether they are for yourself, the team as a whole, someone specific, or unspecific. By putting it in the plan, it gets tracked. Placeholders. If something should go into the proposal, but you don’t have the information or content yet, you can insert a placeholder. Re-use content. If you have information or content that is of potential use, you can drop it into the Content Plan with instructions for how to tailor, convert, modify, or make use of it. Requests, issues. If you need something or have a problem, you can put that in the Content Plan as well, to ensure that the issue gets tracked. Once the Content Plan is reviewed and the authors start writing, they can also use the Content Plan as a communication tool, pointing out things they need clarified, questions to answer, requests, or issues they encounter while completing their assignments. The Content Plan can be a way of passing messages about the writing, as well as a tool for completing the writing. While the Content Plan is in between being the initial set of specifications and a completed narrative draft, it can be passed back and forth until all of the notes and comments are resolved.

Centralized Content Planning: See also: Content planning best practices If you have one person or a small group in charge of determining what everyone else should write, you have a centralized approach to planning. When planning is centralized, one person creates the Content Plan. This makes training easier, and makes it easier to use less experienced proposal contributors. But it also creates a bottleneck. Writing can’t start until the Content Plan is completed and reviewed. With a centralized approach, the Content Plan becomes the instructions that will be given to the authors. Decentralized Content Planning: If you have leaders for each section, or each author is responsible for figuring out how to organize and what should go into their own sections, you have a decentralized approach to planning. When planning is decentralized, each contributor adds to the Content Plan, and the Content Plan becomes a tool for collaboration and coordination. With a decentralized model, all of the contributors have to understand how Proposal Content Planning works. Which is the right approach for your organization? This process supports both approaches without preference. The right approach for your organization depends on your resources and corporate culture. Some companies are authoritarian and some are consensus driven. Some proposals will have contributors who are experienced with proposals, the MustWin Process, and working with each other. And some won’t. If you don’t match the approach to the company, you will encounter problems that can result in proposal failure.

At its core, a Content Plan: Sets expectations for writers so they know what they have to do to create the right proposal. Provides a set of specifications for reviewers to use to determine whether the authors achieved what they were supposed to achieve. See also: Proposal process implementation Content Plans are flexible. You can use them on simple, quick turnaround proposals or large complicated proposals. You can use them on proposals with strong centralized management and planning, and you can use them on decentralized highly collaborative proposals. In addition to figuring out what to say in your proposal, you can use Content Plans to provide training, guidance, communication, and even issue tracking. Some of the ways you can adapt your implementation include: How you format the instructions that go into a Content Plan? Do they tell the reader what to write, what to research, or what to figure out? Do they go beyond instructions and include questions, ideas, problems, issues, or other things that impact proposal development? How do you handle access? Does everyone have access to edit the Content Plans or just a chosen few? Do you take turns? How do you pass them around for contributions? Do you use them for more than just writing? Do you use the Content Plans to drive consensus? To develop bid strategies? Or just to account for what you intend to write? The most important thing about implementing a Content Plan is not the appearance or the format, but the review. If you do not thoroughly review your Content Plan prior to writing, then your writers and reviewers may not be working from the same set of expectations. This is critically important. More tips for implementing Content Plans Centralized vs. decentralized models for Content Planning What to put into your Content Plan Content Planning for quick turnaround proposals and task orders Using Content Plans to improve proposal writing quality Using Content Plans with proposal recipes How to incorporate boilerplate/re-use into your Content Plans Checklist for using boilerplate/re-use material Addressing graphics in your Content Plans Inspiration for graphics 9 proposal metrics you didn't think were possible enabled by Proposal Content Planning

Validating your Proposal Content Plan helps to ensure that your proposal writers: Aren't trying to hit a moving target. Are aware of everything they should be when they start writing. Know what their assignments are. Define proposal quality the same way the reviewers do. See also: Creating a proposal content plan Does the Content Plan do the following? ❏ Do you have the right balance of placeholders and details to guide the writers while still responding quickly? ❏ Does it state the conclusion the customer should reach after reading the section? ❏ Does it explain how substantiate that conclusion? ❏ Does it identify the points that should be emphasized in the section? ❏ Does it identify all of the customer/RFP requirements that should be addressed in the section? ❏ Does it suggest how to optimize the score against the evaluation criteria? ❏ Does it provide information about the customer, opportunity, and competitive environment that goes beyond what is given in the RFP? ❏ Does it expand on the RFP requirements and provide guidance to help the writer respond to them in the right context? ❏ Does it explain to the writers what to do with any statements or information provided? ❏ Does it identify where projects/experience should be cited and where? ❏ Does it identify where examples should be cited and how? ❏ Does it identify any places where proposal re-use files could be used and how to modify them to fit the needs of this proposal? ❏ Does it identify any assumptions, limits, or boundaries that were identified when making trade-off decisions or in response to ambiguities or problems in the RFP? ❏ Is there a graphic in every place where it could improve the communication or navigation? ❏ Is every graphic necessary? ❏ Is it designed to make it easier to write the section? ❏ Is it designed to make it easy to validate the section after it’s turned into a narrative draft? ❏ Will it produce the right response if followed?

Validating your Content Plan before you start to write: Prevents re-writing and editing cycles. Enables you to confirm that the approaches are correct before you start writing. Provides you with a reliable baseline to measure the draft text against. Validating the Content Plan is more important than validating the draft text. See also: Creating a proposal content plan It is important to confirm that the Content Plan contains everything that it should, and that the instructions it contains are correct before you use it to create the proposal. In other words, you should confirm that if followed, it will produce the desired proposal. The time to catch differences of opinion or defects is while things are in the planning stages and before you have a narrative document to work with. When implemented properly, the Content Plan becomes something that you can use to measure the draft text against in later reviews. You can compare the draft text to the Content Plan to see whether the Proposal Writers achieved everything they were supposed to. This will only work if the Content Plan is reliable. That is why validating the Content Plan is actually more important than validating the draft text of the proposal. If the Content Plan is valid, then all you need to do is check the text to make sure it fulfills what’s in the plan. The alternative is to rush to a first draft and then perform an endless series of rewrites until you stumble across a winning proposal or you run out of time. Usually you run out of time.

Sometimes you know can guide the authors by telling them what to include and sometimes you just don’t know and need them to figure that out. You get to decide what level of detail and what form the instructions should take, based on your knowledge, the capabilities of your writers, and the circumstances surrounding your proposal. Think of Content Planning as a toolbox with many different techniques that can be used to solve particular problems. See also: Creating a proposal content plan Sometimes the instructions will tell the author exactly what to write. Ex: Describe how our approach does this, this, and that. Provide a list of our locations. And sometimes the instructions will tell the author what they need to figure out. Ex: Figure out what our approach to this requirement is and then describe it. Describe how our approach to risk mitigation will reflect the client’s circumstances. Proposal Content Plans get written at the beginning of the proposal. Sometimes you haven’t figured everything out yet. But if you know what needs to happen next, that can be the guidance you provide. You can take it further by saying “After you complete that, then do this with it.” Sometimes Proposal Content Plans are written by people who are not subject matter experts (SMEs) and may need them to figure out what should go in the proposal for certain items. Sometimes SMEs are teamed with a proposal writing specialist who interviews them to complete the proposal. You can use the Content Plan as a way to emulate this, by inserting the interview questions into the Content Plan to guide the SME through the proposal considerations and steps. If you know something should go in the proposal, but don’t have the details, it’s okay to put a placeholder in the Content Plan. Ex: Org chart goes here. Insert a table describing the features and benefits of our approach. If there is something you are not sure about, it’s okay to say so right in the Content Plan. Ex: If our widget does not meet the specifications, then identify an alternative. I’m assuming that this is not included but that is. You can actually use the Content Plan to get answers to question or track issues, simply by inserting them into the plan. You can also use the Content Plan to deliver data for the writer to assess. Ex: Here is a list of client locations. Describe how many of our locations match theirs. If possible, calculate a percentage or show it as a pie chart. You can even put instructions in the Content Plan for someone else to create the instructions. Ex: Describe, at the bullet level, what needs to be included in our approach. Phrase them as instructions to guide the author of this section. Make sure you use clear language so that the difference between a requirement and a suggestion is clear. You should also make sure that your authors know that they can use the Content Plan to insert questions and issues themselves, so that anything that gets in the way of completing a section can be identified, tracked, and routed to someone who can resolve the issue. When you write instructions for a Proposal Content Plan, you can also do it at various levels of details. Basic: Tells them what should go there. Ex: Write the management plan. Good: Tells them what should go there and what to include in it. Ex: Write the management plan. Describe how we are organized and how the project will be staffed. Better: Tells them what should go there, and also includes what you know about the customer, opportunity, and/or competitive environment, as well as you win strategies and themes. Ex: Write the management plan. Describe how we are organized and how the project will be staffed. Point out that we provide a dedicated single point of contact because we know that are competitors do not. Emphasize that all of the staff we need for the project are already hired, trained, and in place. Best: Tell them how to write it. Tell them what you want emphasized and how it should be presented. Ex: Write the management plan. Describe how we are organized and how the project will be staffed. Point out that we provide a dedicated single point of contact because we know that are competitors do not. Emphasize that all of the staff we need for the project are already hired, trained, and in place. Make these stand out as features. Make sure that it reflects what they are going to get out of our organizational, single point of contact, and staffing, instead of simply describing it. Use the keywords from the evaluation criteria as much as possible. The best instructions show the author exactly what they need to do to pass the proposal reviews that come later.

Instructions for the eighth step: Identify any relevant re-use material. Review the Boilerplate/Re-Use Methodology. Consider whether using the material you have will help lead to a winning proposal, or be more trouble than it’s worth. Apply the Boilerplate/Re-Use Checklist to any content you intend to re-use. Either correct the boilerplate or insert instructions for how to correct it. This is the final iteration. At its completion, the Content Plan will have addressed all of the topics necessary to guide the Proposal Writers. The Content Plan should be validated prior to implementation. If validation is performed according to the procedures for Proposal Quality Validation specified in the CapturePlanning.com MustWin Process, then you will have confirmation that the Content Plan reflects everything that it should before the actual writing starts.

Instructions for the seventh step: If in order to respond to an RFP you must make assumptions, establish limits, set boundaries, etc., then you want to capture that information. Insert statements regarding the assumptions that have been made. If any issues (resolved or unresolved) come up that need to be understood or remembered, capture them by writing statements into the Content Plan. If you are preparing your proposal in a collaborative environment, you can use the Content Plan to communicate with others working on the proposal by inserting questions, issues, and action items. Once they are in the Content Plan, they can’t be forgotten. At the completion of this iteration, the Content Plan becomes a working tool that supports collaboration. It becomes something that turns proposal development into a process of elimination by serving as a list of things that need to be done. It will also contain information that can help with the sections that deal with pricing and contractual issues.

Instructions for the sixth step: Insert placeholders for graphics. For each graphic that needs to be rendered, identify (in text): The primary objective of the graphic, or the conclusion you want the reader to reach. The audience for the graphic, including their needs/preferences. The questions that the graphic should answer. The subject matter being described. Finally, use the conclusion you want the reader to arrive at after viewing the graphic to write the caption. For each table, either insert a blank table to be completed by the Proposal Writers or identify the columns/content. Consider the use of navigation aids such as small compliance tables, features/benefits tables, text boxes summarizing the relevance of a section to the RFP, etc. Also consider the use of highlight boxes for pull-quotes, examples, etc. Graphics can be created at the beginning and used to drive the writing as well as created as a result of the writing. Either way, modify your instructions so that the Proposal Writers have the proper guidance. At the completion of this iteration, the Content Plan will visually communicate your message. It will not only set the stage for a beautiful proposal, but also for one that communicates better than is possible with text alone. Navigation Go to the next step; Return to the previous step; Return to 8 Steps for Creating a Proposal Content Plan; or Return to the Proposal Content Planning Topic Hub

Instructions for the fifth step: Think of this iteration as summarizing your offering. You can take different approaches, depending on how your company decides what it will propose. If a team will collaboratively decide what to propose they can use the Content Plan to document the framework of the offering prior to writing about it. If the Proposal Manager knows what will be proposed, then it can be put into the Content Plan and passed on to writers/SMEs to expand into writing. If you do not know what will be proposed, you can use the Content Plan to provide specifications, instructions, or guidance regarding what needs to be figured out. Upon completion, you should have enough of the components, steps, or key processes to be able to validate whether it is what the company wishes to propose. Add examples, citations, references, or data that can substantiate or enhance your response. Note: You can insert placeholders in the Content Plan for completion later if, for example, you know where an example should go but you do not know the specifics. If you do not know the components of the solution or relevant citation data, then insert an instruction for the Proposal Writers to complete. At the completion of this iteration, the Content Plan will reflect a compliant offering and why the customer should select it. You should describe your offering design, without writing narrative about it. You should be able to validate what you intend to offer before you commit to writing about it.

Instructions for the fourth step: Add instructions that explain to the Proposal Writers how to incorporate the intelligence you have gathered and what you have learned about the customer, opportunity, and competitive environment. Add instructions to your Content Plan to put the instructions in context, explain things, add detail, provide examples, reflect customer preferences, and otherwise implement the intelligence you have collected regarding the customer and opportunity. Specifically look for trade-offs that are inherent when responding to RFPs. Then, apply the intelligence you’ve gathered to resolve the trade-offs in ways that reflect the customer’s preferences. Use this iteration to instruct the Proposal Writers in how to demonstrate an understanding that goes beyond what you were told in the RFP. Add instructions for positioning your company and offering against those of your competitors. In some cases you can achieve the goals for this iteration by modifying or expanding on instructions already in the Content Plan, rather than creating new ones. At the completion of this iteration, the Content Plan will reflect the RFP, your win strategies, and the intelligence you have gathered that goes beyond what was said in the RFP. This step positions you to prepare a proposal that demonstrates greater insight and demonstrates true understanding so that you can submit a superior proposal.

Instructions for the third step: If your proposal formatting template has placeholders for themes (for example, at the beginning of each major section), then you should replace them with the actual theme. If the Proposal Writer will be responsible for writing the theme statements, then insert an instruction as a placeholder to explain what they should write there. Also include instructions for how to substantiate, prove, or explain the theme statements. After analyzing any evaluation criteria in the RFP, include instructions to the writers regarding how to maximize the score. In some cases, you may need to modify previous instructions to tell the writers how to put them in context based on the themes and evaluation criteria. At the completion of this iteration, the Content Plan will show not only what must be written to address the RFP requirements, but also how to incorporate the messages required to win. It positions the Proposal Writers to substantiate the themes and produce a proposal based on them. You should also be able to analyze your use of strategies, themes, hierarchy of themes, and keywords to maximize your evaluation score.

Instructions for the second step Copy and paste the requirements from the RFP into the Content Plan under the appropriate headings. It is up to you whether to include the full text of the RFP or just a pointer to the specific RFP requirement (page, section, bullet, etc.). You should make this determination based on how self-explanatory the RFP is. If the RFP requirements are not already worded as instructions to the Proposal Writers, then reword where necessary. You need to bridge the gap between what you have in the RFP and what the Proposal Writers must do, but you should not create extra work for yourself if you can avoid it. If you have a compliance matrix, use it to show which RFP requirements are relevant to which proposal headings. Then turn the data from the compliance matrix into instructions. At the completion of this iteration, you have a document that shows the Proposal Writers where to address each RFP requirement and approximately how much space they have to do it in. You have a plan to build a proposal that faithfully follows the RFPs instructions and responds to what the customer asked for.

Instructions for the first step Create a new document and then put the headings from the outline into it. Format the headings the same way they will appear in the proposal, although at this stage they will have nothing under them. If you have allocated a certain number of pages to each heading in the outline, you can place the headings on the corresponding pages What you have at the end of this iteration is structure. You have created a document that has headings, but is mostly blank. It provides very little guidance, yet. However, even with what you have right now you have enabled people to see what topics must be addressed and how much should be written for each.

You add the most value when you do all the iterations, but if you don’t have the time you can scale all the way back to even just one iteration. See also: Creating a proposal content plan You decide how to best balance schedule and resources against planning and performance. But if you need to scale back the amount of planning, this chart shows how to do it by skipping the things that add the least amount of value. Performing all of the iterations will produce a very comprehensive content plan. But for a large proposal, this could take a week or more to put together. No matter how important it might be, sometimes you will encounter circumstances where you just don’t have enough time to thoroughly plan the content first.Content Planning iterations are designed to peel away in layers. If you skip the last iteration, you’ll still have an excellent Content Plan. If you skip the next to the last iteration, it will still be a very good Content Plan. If you only do the first two iterations, you’ll have a minimal Content Plan. The more time you put into it, the more you will get out of it. But if you have to cheat, it won’t break. The Proposal Content Planning methodology allows you to cheat.

The two main approaches for creating Proposal Content Plans: The best approach depends on your organization's culture, your management style, and the availability of resources. Collaborative. The Proposal Manager uses the Content Planning approach to solicit and capture input from a variety of sources in order to gather everything that should go into the proposal. You can also use the Content Plan to build consensus and facilitate decision making. In other words, the writers and subject matter experts participate in developing the Content Plans and then use them to write the proposal narrative. Top-Down. The Proposal Manager prepares the Content Plan and uses it to direct the Proposal Writers. Writers receive a Content Plan that essentially defines their assignment, and then use it to guide the writing. See also: Creating a proposal content plan The approach you take will depend on your organization and the nature of your offering. In some organizations the Proposal Manager will know enough about the offering to write instructions for completion by the writers. In other organizations no one person will know everything needed to write the proposal. Proposals that require a lot of input from subject matter experts often use the Content Plan to solicit inputs and then give the writing to a specialist. In collaborative settings, Content Plans can be circulated like containers that each contributor adds to. Contributions can be very specific, depending on the expertise of the contributor. Content Plans become serious collaboration tools when they are used to circulate and track questions and information as well as instructions. They become a repository for gaining an understanding about what needs to be written and where any required information can be obtained.

If you don’t put a ton of thought into your proposal strategies or if you leave it until the end, after you’ve got the proposal written as if it’s some kind of icing on the cake, then you need to understand why your good proposal is going to lose. To end up with a great proposal instead of a merely good one, you need the right strategies. Before you can develop the right strategies, you’ll need to have developed an information advantage. And once you have your strategies, you’ll need to articulate them in your proposal. People throw around a lot of terminology related to proposal strategies bid strategies: win strategies, themes, win themes, etc. They often have the bad habit of using them interchangeably when there are subtle but important distinctions. Bid strategies are what you need to do to win. Proposal themes are statements that you incorporate into your proposal that turn your bid strategies into reasons why the customer should see your proposal as their best alternative. Theme statements are what you say to connect your bid strategies to the customer's decision See also: Themes One you understand what theme statements are and how they contribute to winning, then you have to learn what your theme statements should actually say. Theme statements must be more than unsubstantiated claims of greatness to be effective. If you struggle with writing theme statements that are simple descriptions of your strengths, then here is a two-part approach to help you write theme statements that reflect the customer's perspective. Theme statements depend on strategy If you are still struggling to write meaningful theme statements, it could be that the real problem is somewhere else. Theme statements explain how you compare and how do you fit into the customer's environment and impact their future, the competitive environment, and the things that matter to them. Before you can write your theme statements, you need to understand: Your value proposition Your market positioning What matters to the customer But the most important thing to understand is what makes you different. The customer selects one alternative over another based on the differences. And you can always find differentiators. If you wait until the end of the proposal and try to sprinkle in positive sounding statements like: We meet or exceed all of the RFP requirements Our experience uniquely positions us to meet your needs Our company is ready to support you We are committed to the success of this program Then your strategies, themes, and ultimately your entire proposal will add up to nothing. People write lame theme statements when they lack the inspiration provided by strategic positioning and a value proposition. If you want your themes to have substance, here are some things to focus on. When your theme statements relate to each other and add up to something that matters to the customer, they tell a story that helps the customer make their decision.

By using a Proposal Content Plan: You reduce the number of changes after people start writing by providing a means to ensure that instructions are complete and correct. You greatly reduce writing time by reducing how long it takes to figure out what to write. You eliminate the endless cycle of rewrites that occurs when writers and reviewers can’t agree on what should be written. Instead of being something difficult and mysterious, you turn proposal writing into a process of elimination where authors convert each instruction into a narrative response. You avoid wasting effort on creating a planning document that is separate from the process of writing. In other words, because the files used to create a Content Plan become the draft proposal, they do not require extra effort or get ignored. You will get better results from inexperienced writers and more consistent results from all writers. A Content Plan is a critical part of achieving quality assurance for proposals. The review of the Content Plan is actually more important than the review of the narrative. By focusing attention on the Content Plan you ensure that, if the instructions are followed, the proposal will be what you want it to be. Then all you have to do is make sure that people follow the instructions. When the draft proposal is written you can even validate it by comparing the narrative draft to the original Content Plan, which functions much like a checklist. This enables you to validate that the draft reflects everything it is supposed to.

A finished Content Plan looks like a proposal But it is just a shell, with headings from your outline. It has bullets instead of paragraphs of text, and empty tables and placeholders for graphics. Each page of the Content Plan represents a page of the proposal. When writing starts, each instruction and placeholder gets replaced with the real response. The success of your Content Plan depends on what you put into it. It starts empty, but through a series of iterations, you “fill it up” with everything you need. With each iteration, it gains more instructions. It becomes the specifications for the proposal, so that if you replace the instructions with the response you'll have the proposal you want. The more things that you identify as being critical to winning or that should go into the proposal, the better the results will be. The better the instructions, the better the writers will be able to follow them and the better the reviewers will be able to confirm that they were followed. A Content Plan helps people visualize what the proposal will be. This helps writers know how much to write and reviewers to see the proposal from the customer’s perspective — even though the document hasn’t actually been written yet.