Carl Dickson

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.

The CapturePlanning.com MustWin Process provides: A means to get everyone on the same page. Written standards and processes to expedite the process. Clearly defined roles and responsibilities that make it easier to work together and set expectations. Planning tools to ensure that everyone has the information needed to execute their role. Tools to measure progress and provide constant feedback so that everyone knows where they stand. Validation to ensure that every aspect of the proposal is right. The MustWin Process is an approach for capturing leads that require the submission of a proposal. It starts as soon as a lead is identified so that the way intelligence is gathered supports the closing of the sale with the submission of a proposal. Most “Must Wins” are already lost when the RFP comes out. Even companies who start early often find that time slips by and end up feeling unprepared when the RFP is released. The CapturePlanning.com MustWin Process provides you with a way to track and measure progress so that you can maintain momentum, achieve a competitive advantage, and position your company to win. What is a Must Win? A "must win" opportunity is critical to the company for either financial or strategic reasons. Recompetes are often "must wins" because the company relies on them financially and uses them as qualifications, and people’s jobs are often on the line. "Must wins" can also be strategic, such as breaking into a new customer, releasing a new product, or launching a new service line/capability. Applicability The MustWin Process is designed for winning written business proposals. While is designed to meet the requirements of preparing government proposals, we avoid using government contracting jargon so that the process can be used by commercial firms or anyone with a non-government RFP. It can even be used for proposals where there is no RFP if you understand your customer’s expectations. There are many, many different kinds of proposals: information technology, engineering, landscaping, construction, grants, research, products, services, staffing, healthcare, etc. This process was not designed around a specific type or industry. We encourage you to customize it to reflect any specific requirements for your industry or offering. The questions that specify the intelligence to be collected for each of the Readiness Reviews are a good place to start any customization. The MusWin Process scales to the size of your proposal team as well as the schedule. It enables small companies to compete with larger companies that have invested huge amounts in developing their bid processes and it enables large companies to fill gaps in their process and increase their win rate. It’s currently in use by thousands of people at companies that range from only having a handful of people to companies with more than 10,000 employees. How is the MustWin Process innovative? See also: Introduction It’s available and ready to use off-the-shelf. In addition to providing unprecedented economy, it gives you a way to quickly get everyone on the same page — literally. It’s easy to customize and integrate. You can use parts of the MustWin Process to supplement an existing process or implement the entire thing in an organization that doesn’t already have a capture process. It defines roles functionally. The process adjusts to the number of people available. Individuals can cover more than one function so long as everything gets covered by someone. The MustWin Process ensures that everyone involved knows what is expected of them, with clear descriptions of the functions they’ll be expected to perform. It manages expectations. Every topic or step addresses who is responsible, what they must do, what the goal is, and when it must be done. It enables pre-RFP progress to be measured. It ensures that you arrive at RFP release ready to win by providing specific questions to answer and goals to achieve. Progress toward finding the answers and achieving the goals is measured over a series of structured reviews. The metrics provided by the reviews can be used over time to unlock what is impacting your win rates. When combined with proposal Content Planning, Readiness Reviews also solve the problem of how to make a smooth transition from pre-RFP pursuit to post-RFP proposal writing. Finally, it provides an objective basis for bid/no bid considerations. It implements proportionate scheduling. The scheduling of Readiness Reviews adjusts to the time available. Whether you have a lot of advance notice or very little, the MustWin Process shows you what to do and makes the most of the time available. It provides an efficient workflow. Information collected during the pre-RFP phase flows into post-RFP proposal plans, to ensure the proposal reflects everything you know about the customer, the opportunity, and the competitive environment. Documentation of the proposal plans actually starts prior to RFP release. Proposal plans are forms-based to lower the level of effort. The MustWin Process also ensures that little or no effort is wasted on unnecessary steps by constantly moving information forward and by storing it in convenient, reusable formats. It makes writing easier while improving its quality. The Content Planning methodology introduced by the MustWin Process provides a way to ensure that the proposal addresses everything it should, provides guidance to proposal writers, provides a vehicle for collaboration between stakeholders, and establishes a baseline for measuring proposal quality. It turns the actual writing into a process of elimination. Writers don’t have to start from a blank page, or waste extra effort on planning deliverables that are destined to be orphaned, so writing is greatly accelerated. Writers also get a rubric that shows them how they will be graded long before their sections are ready for review. It defines quality in a measurable way. The MustWin Process first defines what a quality proposal is, and then aligns what you know about the customer, opportunity, and competitive environment around it. It turns win strategies and themes into quality criteria that the proposal can be measured against. It validates that the draft proposal reflects what it will take to win. The MustWin Process double checks everything that is necessary to win, and does it continuously instead of just at certain milestones. The MustWin Process ensures that reviews are effective by identifying what is necessary to win, turning those items into criteria, building plans around them, and then measuring drafts against them. It solves the problem of reviews that are not consistently effective and it makes quality and progress measurable. It also solves the problem of reviews that can’t adapt to different circumstances, by enabling you to adjust the criteria as well as how and when reviews are performed. It is highly scalable. Readiness Reviews scale to the time available. Content Planning is an iterative approach that can be rationally scaled back. Proposal Quality Validation can rationally scale both what gets reviewed and how it gets reviewed. The MustWin Process solves the problem of how to use the same process on five-day quick turnaround task orders and 60-day strategic proposals. It lays a foundation for metrics and analytics that can revolutionize your business. Progress toward RFP release is measured. The quality of the draft proposal is measured. The resulting metrics, when correlated over time against your win rate, can provide true insight into what is helping and hurting your business. The MustWin Process can enable you to know what to do, based on hard data, rather than going on experience and conventional wisdom alone. In short, the MustWin Process tells you how to gather what you will need to know and put it in the right format so that when you sit down to write you know what to say to win. It does it in a way that facilitates collaboration and provides a much more effective approach to ensure quality results. It’s available off-the-shelf, is fully documented, customizable, ready for immediate implementation, scalable, provides real metrics and measurable progress, improved readiness to win, improved content planning, and improved quality validation. Better, faster, and cheaper.

Templates that recycle text or provide placeholders or form fields will reduce your win rate. The lost sales from a lower win rate far exceed the savings that using content templates or boilerplate might bring. Instead of recycling or automating proposal content, we focus on accelerating figuring out what your strategies should be and how you should position what you will write, and providing inspiration for what to write about. We'd rather make it easier to write a win rate lifting great proposal than make it easier to submit an ordinary win rate compromised proposal. Introducing proposal recipes See also: Guidance for using recipes We use recipes to achieve this instead of win rate destroying content templates and re-use libraries that make you less competitive. Recipes provide inspiration. They provide acceleration by helping people decide what to write about. They teach. They guide. They show staff how to incorporate a company's strategic planning goals into its proposals, something that most companies never achieve. Recipes can focus on bid strategies or they can focus on content. What proposal recipes don't do is provide the writing. They give you everything you need to write except the narrative. They enable your proposal writers to quickly put things in the right context for winning. We use recipes that increase our win rate, and hope our competitors use content templates and re-use libraries.Writing is not what takes the most time on a proposal The hard part about proposals is not writing them, it's figuring out what to write and how to write it. And that starts with figuring out what it will take to win. Thinking about what to write and talking about it take far longer than the actual writing. Once you have figured out the ingredients, proposal writing is actually pretty straightforward. Recipes accelerate this. Proposal recipes accelerate and inspire by listing potential ingredients and how they can be prepared. They include options, approaches, strategies, and considerations. But the proposal writer decides which apply and how to best articulate them. They make proposals go faster, while forcing the writers to optimize what they say around the evaluation criteria. While we freely discuss our techniques, the recipes we've created are only accessible by PropLIBRARY Subscribers. Recipes for the Management Plan Organization Locations Subcontracting Staffing Project schedule Risk Performance metrics Tools, methodologies, and techniques Customer involvement Supply chain Infrastructures Customer support Security Safety Continuity plans Capacity issues Training Deliverables Transition plan Quality assurance How to write about quality in a proposal 38 Change management considerations Other Proposal Recipes 8 ways to prepare for a contract recompete Proposal introduction paragraphs How to write a better technical approach How to write about experience 22 ways to win in spite of negative past performance reviews How to use features and benefits to enhance your proposals Don't write your executive summary backwards Recipes aren't just for content. Try a bid strategy library instead... Since people spend FAR more time thinking about and discussing what to write than actually writing a proposal, the best way to accelerate things is not to accelerate the writing, it’s to accelerate the thinking. The way to do this is with a bid strategy library and not with pre-written proposal fragments. A bid strategy library can map your strategic plans, value proposition, differentiators, and strengths to potential proposal positioning. It can enable writers to know what points to make and how to organize their thoughts to make them. It can get them past the pontificating and into the RFP/TOPR details. And a bid strategy library is easy to create and use, since it's basically creating bid strategy cheat sheets. A bid strategy library not only increases your volume, it increases your win rate. Recipes for Bid Strategies Understanding the 3 ways to win proposals Formulating win strategies in just 3 steps 16 things to make your proposal about 9 sources of inspiration for the points you need to make in your proposals Lowest price technically acceptable (LPTA) evaluations When the customer tells you what to bid Strategies for offering solutions 11 topics that drive win strategies Differentiation Confounding the competition Winning by fulfilling the customer's goals How to tell your story in a proposal Transparency Escalation plans Inspiration for positioning to win What matters to the customer about what you are proposing 23 topics to inspire features Win strategies based on "trust" How to win even though your price is higher Proving that you can deliver enough staff Fixing the SWOT analysis so it will work for proposals Bid stratgies based on your customer's aspirations Recipes for doing proposals The Wrong Way One of our most enjoyable topics is how to write proposals The Wrong Way. Sometimes the best practices don't apply to your circumstances. Sometimes all you want to do is survive a proposal. That's when harnessing the power of the dark side can come in handy. And we've created recipes for doing just that. Recipes for How to Do Proposals The Wrong Way™ How to do proposals The Wrong Way™ (introduction) How to write about numbers without using any 6 things to do when you don’t have the input you need to write the winning proposal 12 ways to turn proposal weaknesses into strengths Taking proposal recipes a step further greatly improves your win rate Add a little bit of planning and structure and recipes transform from a tool into an efficient way to dominate your competition. Recipes can accelerate Proposal Content Planning and help you win your proposals before you even start writing them. The ingredients from your recipes can be inserted into your Content Plans, accelerating their completion and enabling you to improve the guidance you provide to your proposal writers. Re-use libraries require more effort than they are worth Creating proposal recipes is easier than organizing a re-use library and it's far, far easier to maintain them over time. All re-use libraries fall into disrepair over time as the value you get from them is less than the work it takes to maintain them. Most companies abandon their re-use libraries after a few years and then re-create them a few years later when people forget how hard it was to maintain. However, you can update a recipe library simply by identifying new questions. You don't have to keep narrative text libraries up to date at great expense. Here's some information that can help you create proposal recipes. Putting proposal recipes to work You can use recipes to make sure your proposal writers are asking the right questions. Or considering the right approaches. Or ways to position those approaches. Here are 11 ways to customize your proposal recipes. It's like a recipe for making recipes!

How do you know when it's time to take on the sacred cows, break old habits, and go through the effort required to change how everyone at your company reviews proposals? 10 signs that it’s time to reengineer your approach to reviewing proposals Ask yourself if you see your company in any of the following, because you can't maximize your win rate if: You don’t have a written definition of what proposal quality is Your proposal process consists of writing in anticipation of a big review and then final production The only criteria reviewers have to assess what it will take to win is the RFP You rely on people to tell you whether your proposal is any good, instead of criteria Your reviewers show up unprepared, turning your reviews into exercises in proposal sight reading You don’t separate what to review from how to review it You review against the same criteria for every proposal, instead of criteria based on what it will take to win that particular pursuit Everyone defines the scope or criteria for each review differently Writers don’t know what to expect from the reviewers The goal of the review is something ambiguous like “helping,” “providing feedback,” or “catching mistakes” instead of validating the proposal against what it will take to win See also: Proposal Quality Validation Whether to reengineer is really a return on investment (ROI) consideration, and that makes it worthy of executive-level attention. If you do the math, a small change in win rate is worth a considerable amount of effort. And we're talking more about changing culture than actual expense. How much does the company currently invest in finding new leads against its current rate, and what dose that return? How much better is the return if you increase your win rate against your current leads by improving your proposal reviews? If you see your company in the list above, it's time to start asking that question.

Your good proposal is going to lose. You can’t charm your way into a sale in writing because selling in writing is different than selling in person. In fact, winning in writing is more like cooking than speaking. Don't fear proposal writing just because you are not a writer. It helps to have all the ingredients. You have to have done your pre-proposal homework and be prepared with an information advantage. But you don't need to feel overwhelmed. You won't write a great proposal by using a template, and proposal persuasion is not about having magic words. You have to have the right bid strategies and offering design. There are so many ingredients that you can’t just simply write. You have to have a plan for what you are going to write. But at the end of the day it all comes down to whether what you say matters to the customer. The vast majority of proposals we review are about the company submitting the proposal instead of being about the customer. But you do not matter. Everything about you needs to be written in the context of what matters to the customer. You have to see things from their perspective. This is the most important skill for cultivating great proposal writing. It also helps to be good at problem solving and match making. But it does require that you have the information you need. And it helps if you avoid saying things in a way that does not matter to the customer. The things that you need to do to transform ordinary proposal writing into great proposal writing are not that difficult. And yet some people struggle with proposal writing, so here is what a great proposal writer does differently. It can come down to understanding the importance of a single word. These small things are what make the difference between a good proposal and a great proposal. If your proposal is all about your company and full of promises of commitment and unsubstantiated claims, then it probably adds up to nothing in the customer's eyes. You should read your proposal as if you are the customer, and ask yourself what's the point of your proposal? Then start deleting everything that isn't vital to what you need to say. If you're not sure, here's how to tell if your proposal is well written. A good place to start is by re-writing the introduction to your proposal. If you are still struggling with writing a great proposal, then at least show the right emotion. And if you can't do that, then here are six tips that can at least save you from writing an awfully bad proposal. If you are struggling with insurmountable challenges and the best practices have all failed you, it might be time to try doing proposals The Wrong Way™... Premium Content for PropLIBRARY Subscribers The MustWin Process provides help for people who have to complete proposal writing assignments. Introduction to Proposal Writing A simple formula for proposal writing How to Go Beyond RFP Compliance How contributors can help manage expectations during a proposal Identifying Graphics Setting priorities as a proposal writer Proposal style and editorial issues Proposal production and submission What To Do When You Receive a Proposal Assignment

Winning more business this year is not as simple as submitting more bids or trying harder. There are so many things you could improve that it’s easy to get lost in the weeds. So instead of making the longest list we could think of, we’ve prepared the shortest. There is nothing on this list that you can safely ignore. And anything we can think of to add is arguably just a subset of something already here. While we wrote the list with an entire company or business unit in mind, there should be plenty here to help you at the department or organizational level. Because we kept these so succinct, the questions have broad implications and subsume other questions at a more granular level. In answering the following, consider their full potential: See also: Pre-RFP Questions What’s your future if you stay on your current path and don’t change? Is it good? Is it bad? What should you do about it? What businesses do you want to be in? Note, this is a different from what businesses are you currently in. We played with the idea of making this one “What do you want to be when you grow up?” because we find it helpful to always be thinking about becoming and building towards something great instead of just being. What changes do you want to make internally? Separate from reactions to the external world, dealing with trends, and keeping up with the competition (and your customers!), you should periodically consider what you’d like to change within your own organization and how you do things. What numbers do you need to hit? Finance matters. It determines your resources, what you need to accomplish with them, and what strategies are applicable. How do the numbers translate into a pipeline of business? Just because you have targets, doesn’t mean you’re going to hit them. Understanding your pipeline serves two purposes. It tells you what it will take to hit your numbers, and helps you measure your progress towards achieving them. How should you invest in this future and allocate resources? Pursuing new business requires investment. But where and how much? Investment can mean both what shows up in your budget and the things that don’t. Effort is a form of investment that may or may not impact your budget. Where you are going to put effort is as important as how you are going to allocate your budget. How should you position in each marketplace you want to target? Are you the low price provider or the top quality provider? There are an infinite number of ways you can position. And you can position in the customer’s eyes, against the competition, in terms of technology, or any other way that makes sense. But you can’t position as everything to everybody. And you can’t change your positioning every time the wind blows. What differentiates you? The customer will select either you or an alternative. Differences matter. Planning to be different helps ensure that you show up with the right difference. Where should you look for leads and how will you qualify them? Where should people prospect? What constitutes a valid lead that’s worth pursuing? What information do you need to win and where will you get it? When everyone is bidding against the same RFP, being able to better interpret the RFP and understand the customer’s perspective becomes a major competitive advantage. In order to get the information that will help you win, you have to know what to seek and where to look for it. How will you track your progress in developing an information advantage for each lead? If you want to make sure you have an information advantage at RFP release, you have to take steps to ensure it happens. If you don’t track your progress, then the time will pass and you may have nothing to show for it. How you track your progress in developing an information advantage is a major part of the secret sauce for consistently winning. It’s the difference between knowing what you should do and actually doing it. Which of your leads should you not bid? Making effective bid/no bid decisions is important. If you're bidding everything you find, something is wrong. What you choose not to bid is a good indicator of how effective your bid/no bid decision process is. How does your positioning translate into bid strategies for each bid? While bid strategies should be pursuit-specific, they shouldn’t be made up out of thin air for each bid. Bid strategies should reflect the way your company wants to position itself. When you have solid positioning strategies, bid strategies are both easier to develop and more effective in implementation. How will you figure out what you should say in your proposals? Figuring out what to say in your proposals by writing them leads to re-write after re-write that ends with submission of what you have instead of a proposal that reflects your full potential. One of the single most highly leveraged things you can do to improve your win rate is to improve how you figure out what to say in your proposals before you start writing them. How should you define proposal quality? You can't achieve it if you can’t define it. If you think you know what it is and you can’t define it, then you don’t really know what it is. How will you assess quality and progress? Once you know what quality is, you need to implement an organizational approach to assessing it. Likewise, you need more than just draft reviews to measure progress towards creating a great proposal. Your ability to assess quality and track progress is crucial for the success of your proposal efforts. How will you get everyone on the same page to prepare the proposals you want to submit? Other people are a problem. Doing a proposal with other people requires coordination, communication, collaboration, and oversight in addition to just doing. You might be able to do a proposal quite effectively. But getting other people to do proposals effectively is the challenge. If your company is going to consistently win, you have to get everyone on the same page. A good place to start is by making sure everyone answers these questions the same way.

We have a lot of content. And our users have different needs. This can make for a deep and rich experience. It can also be overwhelming at first. This page provides information on how to find the content we have published that best meets your needs. The easy way to use our site Simply follow your interests by clicking links and spend countless hours reading, learning, and gaining inspiration. Becoming a power user There are methods behind our madness and once you learn them you can find just the right content at the moment of need. The information below can help. Click the symbol to open a topic box... How do I find my way around? When in doubt, click on one of the Starting Points in our menu. They'll take you to our content. Some of our content is grouped into Topic Hubs so that we can provide one place that links to everything on a given topic. It's basically a hub-and-spoke model. All you have to do is follow your interests and click on links and you can spend day after day learning more and more. You can just follow your nose without thinking about "how the content is organized." For more advanced users, we added the Table of Contents section of our menu to help you drill down through the Starting Points and Topic Hubs. It's not the same as a paper-based Table of Contents because we're dealing with dynamic content. But it gives you a list view in addition to the Starting Points. You can use whichever navigation approach you prefer. There's also a keyword search tool you can use. In addition to all that, subscribers can tag their favorites. Subscribers see a bookmark symbol next to every title. Click it and that item will be added to your list of favorites in the main menu. That makes it super easy to find your way back to the good stuff. Red links are ones that you haven't clicked yet. Black links are one that you have. Enjoy your exploration. Most of our content is not in a box you have to click to see, but it's a feature we use to simplify pages with lots of material on different topics. Like this one. What is PropLIBRARY all about? We have multiple audiences. Some people are just trying to get a proposal done. Some are proposal specialists and some are not. Some do a lot of proposals and want to increase their win rates. Some are executives who want their organizations to prosper. Some are business owners who want their companies to grow. Some are consultants who work with those companies. We are all about maximizing your chances of winning. If you just want to get a proposal done and off your desk, and aren't interested in maximizing your chances of winning if that means it may take some extra effort, then we may not be a good match. If you want to find out how to streamline the best practices for winning so that you can maximize your chances while being as efficient as possible, then we're a great match for each other. What kind of content do we have? All of our content is written to help people close a sale with a winning proposal, usually written in response to a Request for Proposals (RFP). We address pre-RFP marketing and sales, as well as corporate strategic planning in addition to business development, capture, and proposals. Can I access your site on my phone or tablet? Our site fully supports phones, tablets, and other mobile devices. There are several books worth of content to explore here, so we want you to be able to read in comfort. And we want you to be able to take it to meetings and put it to work. On a phone, the interface will condense to a single column, and the menu will reduce to an icon you can open when needed. Try it!