Carl Dickson

We all dream of winning it big. If you want your business to win it big, there is something you need to master that’s more important that finding big leads. You have to create an organization that can do things bigger than yourself. What separates a large proposal from a small proposal is not the value or the size of the project. It’s the number of people involved in preparing the proposal. A proposal with one author is a straightforward production. A proposal with multiple contributors is a challenge in herding cats. A small business struggling to get proposals out the door while doing a hundred other things might not have time to think about esoteric subjects like process. But unless your proposals can be larger than a single person, you’re thinking small. The real problem is that you’re creating a culture that’s small. You’re creating an organization that does things by assigning someone to it. The capabilities of your organization are limited by the skills of that person and the number of people you have. Growing requires taking someone away from what they are doing to start up the new work. It’s a zero sum game. It's a trap that most small businesses fall into, that limits their potential even after they've grown large. There is a better way. Stop thinking about individuals, and start thinking about roles. Stop defining quality as whether a person did it right enough and start defining quality as practices. When you do these two things, you create an organization and a culture that are bigger than any one person. Even if it’s just you. Think about how a larger business operates. They have defined roles and responsibilities, policies, and processes. But you’re not ready to create all of that. What you are ready to do is to create a scalable framework for those things. You can fill in the details regarding policies and process later. But first you need to start thinking about how you do things and not just what to do. You need to start thinking like a company that is something more than the individuals it employs. The reason this is important is that it sets your business development efforts up to have a win rate that is based on how you do things instead of personal preferences. It lays the expectation for how people work as a team before there are enough people to call it a team. See also: Dealing with adversity Eventually the person who finds the leads will be different from the person who chases and captures them. The person who captures the leads will be different from the person who produces the proposals. But the flow of information from one to the next is vital. If before you even have a proposal process you have an expectation that whoever handles the pre-RFP pursuit has to deliver the information needed to win the proposal, and the people preparing the proposal need to be able to articulate what they need to win the bid, you will create the right culture and framework even if today you are the one handling both the pre-RFP pursuit and the proposal. It’s all about expectation management. The expectations you set today will be a part of the organization for years after your circumstances change. Do you want those expectations to be small or large? Should they be based on individuals or should you manage expectations like a larger organization? And if you are a large organization, what are your expectations? Are you practicing expectation management or are you just a bunch of individuals following policies? If you set the expectation that people get things done, then you will create a herd of cats. But if you build expectation management into your organization, you will create an organization that coordinates its pursuits. You need this if you are going to pursue and win opportunities that are bigger than one person. When people practice expectation management, they perform as if they have processes, even when they don’t. Keep in mind that being arbitrary is the opposite of expectation management. When actions and decisions are unexpected, people react as individuals. It’s a culture destroyer. But more importantly, it’s a win rate destroyer. Arbitrary decisions in business development and proposals lead to the lowest common denominator. They lead to bids that are low risk and ordinary instead of exceptional bids that are the best your team could have brought to the table. And that reduces your win rate over time. No matter how gifted someone is at business development and proposals, you want an organization that is better still. To get there you have to stop thinking small. The first step in creating a culture that is larger than a collection of individuals is to start practicing expectation management.

Most training for proposal writers focuses on the mechanics of identifying what to write, and provides very little help for how to write it. I see a lot of well-trained proposal teams struggle with how to address things when they have a problem. I’ve also watched a lot of technical staff and proposal writers struggle with how to say things in writing. They may know that benefits are more important than features or they may know that writing proposals from the customer’s perspective is better than describing yourself. But when it comes time to put words on paper, they struggle. Even proposal writers fall in the habit of merely being descriptive instead of demonstrating what their proposal is the customer's best alternative. When I review proposals for companies I’m not just looking for the defects, I’m looking for how to better guide their proposal writers. I see proposal reviews as being as much about training and organizational development as they are about quality assurance. Recently I caught myself helping someone solve a proposal writing problem by subtly changing the nature of the problem, wording things so they would appeal to two different kinds of proposal evaluator, and resulting in something that added more value that what the competition might offer. The problem was really an opportunity in disguise. What made the moment special was that I was able to identify a couple of things that directly addressed how to write instead of just what to write. The purpose of this article is to share them with you. Proposal writers must be problem solvers See also: Great Proposals Proposal writing is not a creative exercise. Proposal writers use words to achieve specific goals. But what goals to achieve and how to accomplish them are the key. Proposal writing is really nothing more than problem solving. Deciding what to offer in a proposal is an exercise in trade-offs. How do you increase value without increasing the price? How do you deal with ambiguous or conflicting customer requirements? Figuring out which trade-offs to take is a problem you will continuously face in preparing your proposals. Proposal writing is about articulating a solution to problems or ways around them. It can be both the presentation and the solution to a problem. If you focus on presentation, you’ll be stuck about what to write when you are indecisive about how to solve the problem. But if you approach proposal writing as the way to solve the problem, you can formulate words that address the issues you are a facing. When you need to, a proposal writer can be ambiguous, use examples instead of precision, make assumptions, or redefine the problem. Proposal writers can also provide options or describe the benefits of a solution. One of my favorite strategies is to turn a weakness or a problem into your greatest strength. Proposal writers can do that with words. Words can describe the solution. But sometimes words are the solution. A proposal writer can define the problem, put it in context, and turn the resolution of the problem into an advantage if they turn proposal writing into problem solving. In many ways, how you address the trade-offs and solve the problems you face defines what you need to write. In the same way that you identify your strengths and plan how you want to present them, you should identify your problems and plan what you want to say to mitigate them or turn them into strengths. Your bid strategies are nothing but words. What bid strategies can beat your competition is a problem to solve. By approaching how you write proposals as a problem solving exercise, you can often come up with more effective words than if you simply describe your offering. What to write in your proposals is an academic problem. How to write proposals is a skill. Developing your ability to solve problems with words is a skill that takes practice to master. But it is also a skill that has applications far beyond the world of proposals. Great proposal writing requires match making Proposal writers bring things into alignment. Matching your strengths to the customer’s needs. Matching your offering to the evaluation criteria. Features must be matched with benefits so that they matter to the customer. It can also be about the contrasts, such as between you and your competition. But even that is really more about why you are a better match than about the differences between you and them. Every statement in your proposal should be a comparison, an alignment, and/or a reason why the customer should select you. Every. Single. One. This is because proposal writing is about putting things into context so the evaluator can make a decision. It is not enough to provide facts or the descriptions the customer asks for. Winning proposals requires those facts and descriptions to matter to the evaluator in a way that impacts their decision. To accomplish this, you need to match what you include in your proposal to what matters to the evaluator. Being a good match maker, who can pair the right elements in each sentence, such as what to offer something and why it matters is the foundation that great proposal writing is built upon. Instead of describing things in your proposal, you should match every fact, feature, or item you need to put in your proposal with why it matters and how that differentiates your offering. You should put everything in context. Everything you say in a proposal requires match making. Like solving problems in writing, being able to match things to the right context takes practice. You don’t want to pair a feature with just any benefit. You want to pair it with a benefit that aligns with the evaluation criteria. You want to match what you are proposing with why your proposal is the customer’s best alternative. Take two steps forward The best proposal writing is a combination of the two approaches. First you solve the problem or deal with the trade-off, and then you put the result in context. Bringing a problem into alignment with a solution or matching your approach to a trade-off to what matters about it turns the elements of your proposal into reasons why the customer should accept your proposal. This is what turns a proposal document into a winning document.

Proposal reviews typically result in dozens of comments from each reviewer. Multiply that by the size of your team, and it’s not unusual to have hundreds of comments. So not only do you invest time in preparing for the review and waiting for the participants to complete their review, you have to invest more time in processing all those comments. Most of the time you start off by eliminating all the comments that can’t be acted on. This is often a large percentage of what you’ve received. Then you drill down to the ones that require action. When you look back you think about how much effort was wasted, even if you acknowledge that some of the comments actually produced positive change. That’s why we keep having the proposal reviews and tolerate the inefficiency. But what if you could get rid of that inefficiency with just one simple change? And you don’t even have to change the steps in your process or workflow to implement it. See also: Making proposals simple To greatly improve your proposal reviews, all you need to do is ask for instructions instead of comments. When you ask for comments, you get observations. Nearly all of the observations, no matter how well meaning, will be things you can’t take action on. Observations of a proposal are too far removed from what to do about them to provide consistent value to proposal writers. Observations are what are at the core of proposal reviews that are not consistently effective. We are taught that observations have value, but the truth is that for proposal reviews, observations are counterproductive. If you want to make your reviews productive, you’ll turn observations into instructions. You’ll still get some instructions that won’t have enough information for you to take action on, but the percentage will greatly improve. And the overall number will go down as reviewers self-edit, not even submitting the “comments” that they can’t translate into instructions. An instruction like “Add more detail to this” may or may not be actionable. But it’s better than a comment like “This section is weak.” While it doesn’t guarantee success, by prohibiting observations and requiring instructions, you force the reviewers to think more productively. Only permitting instructions greatly facilitates processing the results after the review. You get fewer submissions, and the ones you get have a defined action. You don’t have to put time into figuring out what action to take. That’s it. I told you it was a simple change. But I know all you proposal specialists are overachievers, so here’s the advanced version. If you have implemented Proposal Content Planning like we recommend in our MustWin Process, and if your comments are a result of reviewing your Content Plans, then the instructions can be added directly to the Content Plans. You can set up headings or use a different color for instructions from reviews. But they go right in the document. You don’t have to collate “comments,” figure out what to do, and then somehow get them in the document. The reviewers put their instructions in the Content Plan. Afterwards, you can review their additions, tweak wording, and remove any that are contradictory. But it will go much, much faster. And there are no extra steps after you are done reading what the reviewers had to say. As a side-effect, making your reviews about creating instructions will train your organization to think in terms of crafting better instructions. Your review process becomes a guidance process. The proposal process becomes about planning instead of correction. That’s much better than a review process that devolves into observations and trains your organization to do exactly what? You might not want to answer that question…

Persuasion is Part Differentiation If you are not different, the customer won’t have a reason to select you. If you don’t point out the things that differentiate your offering, then all the evaluator has to consider is the price. Everything can be differentiated, even when the customer forces everyone to bid the exact same thing. Differentiation is how you make your bid special. See also: Great Proposals Persuasion is Part Positioning How will your proposal compare against the competition? Will it be stronger, faster, cheaper, better, more credible, more trustworthy, less risky, more technical, or something else? It’s not enough to have a strong proposal — you need to help the evaluators understand how your proposal relates to the competitive environment, the customer’s objectives, the requirements of the opportunity, and any alternatives they might be considering or things that might impact the project. Positioning is about defining the relationships. Even if your proposal is not competing against other proposals, it will still be compared to other alternatives, approaches, or solutions. You should position your proposal amongst these alternatives to frame the discussion, instead of letting it happen randomly. Persuasion is Part Motivation An evaluator can get all the answers they need and still not accept your proposal. Accepting a proposal means effort. It means spending money. It means justifying things to your boss. It means taking action. It means change. The evaluator needs to be motivated to accept your proposal. Maybe your reasons will motivate them. Or maybe you’ll make them an offer they can’t refuse. In addition to anticipating the questions the evaluator needs answered, you should also anticipate what they have to do to accept your proposal and what it will take to motivate them to do it. Persuasion is Part Anticipation The most important thing you can do to win your proposal is to anticipate how the evaluator will reach their decision. Finding this out will require research. Sometimes you can just ask them. But sometimes what people tell you and how they actually reach a decision are two different things. Researching their decision making history and trends can help. If the evaluation is a formal process, then understanding and anticipating it can help you optimize your proposal to win the evaluation. Sometimes you have to guess. However, make sure your guess is based as much as possible on the evaluator’s perspective, instead of your own. Not all evaluators are the same. Different people have different priorities. For example, consider this list: Risk Cost Time Speed Policy Customer satisfaction Public welfare Competitive positioning Thoroughness Formality Innovation Quality Reputation Politics Career Personal goals Corporate goals If you ask people to rank them by priority, you’ll find that everyone will put them in a different sequence. If you ask them to write them down or tell you their priorities, you’ll also find a difference between what they say and what they actually do. It’s human nature. You must accept it and dig a little deeper if you want to be able to anticipate how they will make their decision. If you want to win, you should build every aspect of your proposal around how the evaluator will reach their decision. The problem is that you have to find that out before you can build your proposal around it. Your ability to anticipate is one of the most important factors in writing a successful proposal. It is also why if you wait until an RFP comes out, you are already at a disadvantage, because you have a very limited ability to anticipate the customer. Persuasion is Part Strategy What are your corporate strategies? How does this pursuit align with them? How does that impact what you should do and say in the proposal? What is your customer relationship strategy? What are your offering strategies? What are your competitive strategies? What are your proposal strategies? Once you know what you intend to do to win, then you need be able to translate that into the things you need to say in order to win. If you jump into proposal writing without thinking through your strategies, or if you try to develop those strategies by writing about them, you’ll be at a disadvantage to competitors who did their strategic homework. Persuasion is Part Value Proposition Value is always a consideration for the customer, because the price is always more than just a number. Is the price reliable? What does it include or exclude? What are the short term and long term implications? When are their discounts? What could change? What is the most probable price really going to be? Your value proposition is more than just a strength or justification for your pricing. A value proposition is really an explanation of what the price really means. A value proposition is also a definition of what matters. If a customer is not persuaded to award to your higher price when it is also a better value, it just means that you don’t understand what the customer really values. It means you don’t understand what really matters to the customer. Ultimately the customer decides what to value, so if you haven’t validated your value proposition with the customer, you are at risk of being wrong. Persuasion is Part What Matters In addition to differentiation and positioning, customers care about what matters. Even when they don’t know what matters. By explaining what matters, you show insight and add value. You also align what you are offering with what matters. And that matters. Persuasion is Part Copy Writing and Presentation A lot of people make the mistake of thinking about how they want to present their proposal first. They worry about how it will look. Or they jump head first into writing as if all it takes are the right words to hypnotize the evaluator into doing whatever you want. Unfortunately, persuasion in writing is different than persuasion in person. And the decision process behind selecting a proposal and making an award is different from other kinds of decisions. Before you are ready to think about copy writing and presentation for a proposal, you need to have thought through everything identified in this article so that you have the right inputs. Effective copy gets attention and sets the stage. A good presentation will create the right impression. But without the right differentiation, strategies, positioning, value proposition, and methods for motivation copy writing has nothing to be persuasive about. Once you’ve done your homework, copy writing and presentation are about effectively delivering your message to the proposal evaluator. You can appeal on an emotional level or on a rational one. Or even both. What is going to work depends on who the evaluator is and what the evaluator’s expectations are. This brings us back to anticipation. You must anticipate what matters most to the evaluator, how they go about making decisions, and what they expect to see in a proposal. Will a fancy proposal impress them or offend them? Will copy based on fear motivate them or make them oppositional? Do they need to see all the technical details or will their eyes glaze over? Ultimately, all of the aspects of persuasion are integrated. Their effectiveness depends on your ability to anticipate so that none are left out or weak. That’s why we believe in having just enough of a structured approach to prompt you to think through everything. When only the best proposal wins, it’s usually how well thought through you are that determines whether you are able to push past writing a good proposal and deliver a proposal that’s great.

When the customer receives your proposal, what will they think? Nearly all the proposals I review are written about the company submitting the proposal. Is that what the customer wants to see? I can’t tell you how many hours I’ve spent discussing whether proposals should use words like “will” or “ensure.” Does the customer even notice? Are there things that matter more to the customer? The trick to figuring out how to say things in your proposal is to be able to see your proposal like your customer sees it. The following questions will help guide you through looking at various aspects of proposal writing. While first impressions count, try going deeper. Ponder each question. Not all customers are the same. So a question might have more than one answer. Knowing what to say in your proposals depends on knowing the answers for that particular proposal to that particular customer. It’s worth pondering. When you are the customer: See also: Customer perspective Do you read the first sentence, or start in the middle? If you read the first sentence and it says something perfunctory that’s not useful to you, how do you react? Do you care which vendor wins? Do you always have a preference? How strong is that preference? Do you feel any loyalty to your current vendors? What does it take for you to make a switch? What does a stranger have to do for you to give them a chance? Do you read the proposal cover to cover? Do you read it in order? What do you see that annoys or offends you? Do you notice or care about typos? Do you care enough for it to impact your selection? Do you care about when the vendor was founded or who owns the company? What do you care about? What's the difference in writing between something being believable and not being believable? What makes you roll your eyes? Do you accept what they say or do you seek proof? How much detail satisfies you? At what point does it become overwhelming or get skipped? What do you seek out to read? What do you ignore? How do you separate the vendors? How do you react when vendors don't follow directions? How do you justify your preferences to your boss? What impresses you more, a vendor's qualifications or what they're going to do for you? What will you pay more for? If you have to point score and fill out evaluation forms, do you figure out who you want and then score them, or do you let the scoring do the selecting? When you don't know the technical subject matter, how does that impact whose proposal you like more? Do you look for words, features, results, differences, details, proof, price, trustworthiness, or something else? Do any particular words like “will” or “ensure” bother you or do you not even notice them? Are most of the proposals you receive written better or worse than the documents produced inside your own organization? What puts you to sleep? What wakes you up? When a vendor truly understands you, what did they write that made that happen? When a vendor claims a bunch of experience, does that impress you or does it take something else? Do you try to imagine what the vendor is going to be like to work with over the life of the project, or do you just pick the best of what's in front of you? Is it different when you are helping someone else make a selection than it is when you are picking a vendor for yourself? What does it take for a vendor to prove they've fixed a problem? After answering by pretending to be the customer making the decision, what did you learn that might apply to your next customer? How should that impact what you put in writing when you are preparing your next proposal? The way we make decisions in writing is different from how we make other decisions. How we read a proposal is also different from the way we read other documents. The best way to understand how to win a proposal is to understand how the written word impacts the evaluator. And the best way to figure that out is to understand, empathize with, and see things from the customer’s perspective when they are reading what you put on paper. Can you break out of old habits like describing yourself? Can you write things from the evaluator’s perspective instead of your own? Winning proposals isn't about what you think you should say about yourself. Winning proposals anticipate what the customer wants to see. To win your proposals, being able to read a proposal like your customer is a more important skill than being able to write with style. Style is not the icing on the cake. It’s more like the sprinkles on top of the icing. You can make a great cake without any sprinkles. A proposal can win if the customer sees what they want, and doesn't notice or overlooks the rough spots. It’s not even about substance over style. It’s about what the reader wants to have instead of what the chef wants to make. The words you put in your proposal should be based on what you think the reader wants to see instead of what you think sounds impressive. Let your competitors sound impressive to themselves. It’s better to win than it is to brag. The way to write winning proposals is to write them from the customer's perspective instead of your own.

There is a clear line. If your company crosses it before it has institutionalized a winning business development process and culture, it may never be able to recover. Most businesses drive right off the cliff because they are more concerned with keeping the car going than where they are steering. The problem starts when companies are in their startup mode. Everyone is wearing multiple hats and figuring out things as they do them. They don’t have the capacity do something extra like formalize their business development processes. I talked with one company that went from 40 people, to 80 people, and next year will be at 300 people. Another company I worked with went from 20 people, to 40, and then 200. This kind of growth is not unusual. Once a company is established and proven, they start to land larger contracts. Instead of growing neatly and incrementally, they grow in massive spurts. However, what really matters is not their total head count it’s how many people in how many locations are supporting business development. What triggers the trap is when they go from just 2-3 people in one location involved in business development to 5-10 people at multiple locations involved in business development. Instead of making it up as they go along, they now need coordination and a workflow that supports developing an information advantage. The Small Busines Growth Trap is fully sprung when they open other locations. That is the point at which they lose control without ever realizing it. While impressed with their growth, they are about to spoil their future. If they don’t already have an integrated approach to business development, what they end up with is different groups with different priorities, agendas, and approaches. What they grow into is a group of dispersed staff. Each new person brings different skills, capability, and experience. In the absence of any other direction, each person does things the best way they know how. Since most are quite good (that’s why they got hired), the company continues to grow. But even just a year later, as the company evolves, precedents are set and their corporate culture for business development becomes based on groups who have developed their own ways of doing things. They become a collection of business development groups instead of one integrated company. The Small Business Growth Trap becomes harder and harder to escape as time passes on. Ultimately it limits the potential of the company because their business development and proposal functions are not coordinated. Each territory does things their own way, and it’s impossible to get everyone on the same page. Some groups do a good job and some groups don’t. The company marches on, never realizing how much bigger and better it could have been. Until that fateful year of expansion, the trap can be avoided. But once you are in it, you get sucked in like quicksand. Once the trap has sprung: See also: Small business Changing business development procedures will be disruptive and could impact the company’s continued growth. Processes that are not fully documented cannot spread ("I know how to do it" is not sufficient for others to follow). It costs far more in time and training to implement a standard process. The business units or operating groups are now large enough to be small companies of their own, with sufficient power and control to resist a process roll-out. Anything less than a top-level mandate to implement a standard process will probably fail. This is the Small Business Growth Trap. The key to avoiding it is going beyond having a way of doing things and having enough of a process so others can follow it when no one else is there to tell them what to do. While training helps individuals perform better, it will not give you a process. Training can be part of implementation, but only if it’s tailored to your particular process needs. A big part of winning bids as a company is knowing what information people need and how to get it to them so that it results in a winning proposal. For people to do this, they have to know what is expected of them. That is what you want from a business development process. Here are some simple tricks we’ve discovered that will help you avoid the Small Business Growth Trap: Focus on roles instead of positions or people. Don’t build your process or culture around your superstars. In the early stages, it’s common for one person to do it all. Then when someone else is hired, they split things up according to their strengths. If you keep doing this, everything will be defined by individuals, and the Small Business Growth Trap will consume you when you end up with more than one group, each doing it their own way. You’ll also be vulnerable to turnover. Instead, you should focus on what needs to be done and define the roles that need to be played. If one person plays all the roles at the beginning, that’s fine (assuming they can keep up with it all). But as more people are added, they should fill roles and not just split up duties according to individual desires. What needs to be done to win is independent of who is doing the work. Defining the roles, even if people wear multiple hats, goes a long way towards setting expectations regarding who should do what. Focus on information instead of steps. Don’t build a process based on a flow chart. It will break in practice and people will ignore it or “fill in the blanks,” resulting in people doing things differently. Instead, focus on what information you need to prepare a winning proposal, and trace it back to the beginning. You can actually define your entire process as a series of questions. As each new person becomes involved, they’ll need answers in order to take things further. You can refine the questions and answers over time, so it’s easy to implement. Checklists are better than steps because things don’t always happen in sequence. If you set them up to provide guidance to the people creating as well as the reviewers, they’ll also help keep everyone on the same page. Focus on three phases. There are three main points in time when you need everyone on the same page regarding what information is needed to win, what to do with it, and who is responsible for what. The first is the pre-RFP phase. Then there is the transition from pre-RFP into the proposal. Then the proposal phase. Too much structure at the beginning is a burden. But a little bit of structure is a big help. Put it in writing. If you can’t send it to someone you’ve never met at another location and have them be able to follow it, then you don’t have a process. You just have a way of doing things. You don’t need a set of process documentation that addresses every little thing. But you do need just enough to keep everyone on the same page. If you do things at the level described here, your entire process could be described in 10 pages. Maybe five to start with. Use those key pages to keep everyone on the same page. Require those pages to be updated with every process change. To avoid the Small Business Growth Trap, you need one document so short it can almost be memorized, that defines how your company wins. It should explain who gathers what information and who does what to it to result in a winning proposal. Avoid orphans. Be careful about what people have to do to follow the process. Avoid creating plans, reports, and forms that have a single use and are then ignored. The way you store and present information should make it easy for the other participants to make use of it. That means instead of a report or presentation, provide what will be needed for the next step in the process. Keep it scalable. If you focus on finding and assessing information that relates to what it will take to win, then it should be applicable to all proposals. People change. Deadlines change. RFPs force change. But what you need to do to win remains the same. If you focus on that and define roles functionally, then you have something that adapts to circumstances while still establishing the standards and expectations you need to set across your company as it grows if you are going to keep everyone on the same page, have a fully and continuously integrated effort to win new business, and achieve your company's full potential. Recognize why it’s important. It’s not about increasing the company’s revenue, although I’m sure the owners who employ you appreciate that. It’s important because it’s how your company creates new jobs, opportunities to promote its employees, and the finances to permit salary increases. With each contract, your company locks in its prices and revenue, usually for years at a time. Without new contracts, those finances will usually not expand. In fact, they may shrink due to inflation and cost creep. Business development is not a necessary evil, it’s the only way to reward the people who make up the company. Each new bid is also an opportunity to redefine the future of the company, what it will become, and how it does things. So doing it well by perfecting how you work like a team is important enough for everyone to put some effort into. Cheat. Buy it off the shelf and then customize it instead of creating everything from scratch. A subscription to PropLIBRARY gives you a scalable and fully documented process library that you can put to work immediately. It puts you in the position of being able to say “this is how we do things” before people starting coming up with their own ways, and without having to take the time to create it yourself. It will make life easier and increase your win rate now. But more importantly it can also enable your company to avoid the Small Business Growth Trap. But only if you act before you grow to the point where the trap is sprung. If you are already past that point, it can be a rallying point to bring together the groups, factions, and territories, to literally get everyone back on the same page. If you are still a small business, the future success of your business is riding on whether you can avoid the Growth Trap. If you do not avoid it, you will find it increasingly difficult to implement the best practices for pursuing and winning business. You may never be able to get everyone on the same page and will struggle with getting people to follow any process you try to implement. You will never reach your full potential. We’ve seen this play out many times at many companies. The more decentralized a company is, the harder it becomes. But even in a highly centralized authoritarian company, people will find reasons to make exceptions or opportunities to interpret how to implement the new mandates. Proposal specialists often complain that “people won’t follow the process.” What they usually don’t realize is that the company fell into the Small Business Growth Trap, maybe years ago. If the trap is already sprung, you need three things to overcome it: An executive mandate. One with teeth and stamina from the highest level. You don’t need permission from the top, you need participation at the top. Speed. You need to announce that “this is how we’re doing things now” and not “we’re going to standardize as soon as it’s ready.” You can have stakeholder participation in the tailoring and application of the process. But if you don’t go straight into implementation, you’ll get diluted through delays and passive/aggressive implementation resistance. The ability to change the company’s culture. Some executives have it. Some don’t. Without it, you can’t become a company with business development fully integrated into its soul. You can see why it’s so much easier to build it in from the beginning and avoid the trap altogether.

When people use the term proposal manager they often mean different things. When people use the title proposal manager they often give it to staff with varying capabilities. And even more variation in the level of authority. What one company expects from a proposal manager can be very different from what another company expects. When people think of a proposal manager as the person ultimately responsible for delivering the proposal, they sometimes make the mistake of rolling up all the possible roles and responsibilities and assume the proposal manager should fill the gaps. Different sized companies often have different expectations, based on how many proposal specialists they may or may not have. There are also different sizes of proposals that greatly affect the roles that people need to play. In some companies, the proposal manager can be knowledgeable about all the content that goes into their proposals. In other companies, they can’t. Then there’s how centralized or decentralized a company is. And how consensus driven or authoritarian the culture is. This is a problem... See also: Proposal Management The result of all this is that in some companies, proposal managers write. In others they don’t. In some companies, the proposal manager figures out the bid strategies and in others they don’t. In some companies the proposal manager formats and produces the proposal. In others there’s a whole department that handles that. In some companies, the proposal manager tells the sales and operations staff what to do to win the proposal, while in other companies the sales and/or operations staff tell the proposal manager what to produce. In some companies, the proposal manager manages staff. In other companies the proposal “manager” is on their own. Letting the proposal manager's role get defined by who’s in the role and what gaps you have is not very strategic. Instead, you should define the role by how you want to win. A little self-assessment... At your company: Should the proposal manager be part of the sales function, or is he or she administrative support to the sales function? Should the proposal manager have responsibility for your win rate and will he or she have sufficient authority to impact it? Is the proposal manager responsible for win strategies and messaging, or will someone else be responsible for that? Is the proposal manager supposed to figure out what to offer, or will someone else be responsible for that? Does the proposal manager play a role in deciding whether to bid, or is the proposal manager stuck with someone else’s decision? Is the proposal manager responsible for filling gaps in proposal staffing, or will someone else be responsible for that? Who defines the sales and proposal processes? Do you want a leader who will decide the direction things should go in, or a manager who will accomplish what they are assigned with maximum efficiency? Who will manage volume and capacity issues, especially where it impacts win rate? These questions are trickier than they appear. How you answer will have a big impact on what the proposal manager does, or does not, do to contribute to winning. It will affect how people look at your proposals. It also impacts what others at your company do. Instead of answering these questions with the status quo based on who’s available, trying thinking through how your company should approach winning. Focus on what your sales process should be, how your company develops customer awareness and opportunity insight, and how that should get into the document. In larger companies, designing the offering, developing the win strategies, and formatting and producing the document are performed by people other than the proposal manager. Even in smaller companies, there will be more proposal stakeholders than you might think. If a proposal manager is a manager, then a key part of the job is winning proposals by working through other people. When we provide coaching and training to companies, we focus on how to win and not just how to get a proposal out the door. We walk companies through answering questions like those above so they can understand all the implications and take the approach that's right for their particular business. The right approach depends on your market, customers, the nature of your offering, sales volume, company size, resources, and more. But it all comes down to implementing a process that improves your win rate, while executing it with solid coordination and issue management. Proposal management can really be thought of simply as problem solving. This means you must fill the role with someone who can solve the problems and support their efforts to do so. When people use a term like proposal manager to mean different things, or when they use it as a title for the stuckee who "does their proposals" regardless of their experience or actual role, the term becomes meaningless. It makes far more sense to ignore the title and focus on how you want to organize the effort to win new business. Your ability to give people raises, hire new staff, promote people, develop your capabilities, extend your reach, compete, thrive, and simply continue to exist as a company depends on winning new business. If that business requires winning proposals, you might want to think through whether your proposal manager really is a proposal manager, and what you really need them to be.

Where you start depends on who you are, or more accurately the role you play. People look at proposals differently depending on their role, and their contribution to winning is different as well. If you don’t start at the right place for the role you play, you risk leaving a gap that will decrease your company’s ability to achieve its full potential. Let’s take a look so you can see how this plays out… See also: Improving win rates If you are the top dog, it is vital that you create a culture that treats decisions about pursuits and proposals as investment decisions. The top dog has different titles at different companies. But you know you are the top dog if you have authority over the finance group. If you provide leadership and direction to the finance group, you can teach your organization not to treat business development and proposal costs as expenses, but rather as investments. Bad investments get cut. Good investments are maximized. The reason this is vital is that the key metric is your company's win rate. If you allow a culture that treats winning business as an expense, it will be cut even if that means a reduction in win rate. A reduction in win rate will lower the overhead pool that funds business and proposal development, creating pressure to lower expenses again, resulting in an even lower win rate that can send your company into a death spiral. However, if instead you treat pursuit costs as investments, then you manage their costs according to what will produce the greatest return on investment. If you are the head of business development or capture, then improving proposals starts by identifying what it will take to win them, and delivering the information that a proposal team needs to write a proposal based on what it will take to win. This is different from what most companies put into their “capture plans.” Success requires you to anticipate and discover the answers to the questions your proposal writers will have when they try to combine the response to the requirements with what matters to the customer. You may have to restructure your commission system if it emphasizes leads because if your sales close with a proposal, then the role of sales is not complete until the proposal is won. If you are a proposal director, in charge of overseeing how proposals are done, then improving proposals starts by managing the hand-off from sales/marketing/business development to the proposal and integrating that with the review process. You can achieve this by informing those involved in the pre-RFP pursuit about the questions the proposal writers will need answers to after the RFP is released. You can't write a proposal about what matters to the customer unless you know what matters to the customer. You won’t be able to get what matters to the customer unless those who face the customer bring it to you. They won’t bring it to you unless they know you need it. In addition to smoothing the transition, you can also make improvements by changing how your company defines and assesses proposal quality. If you are a proposal manager, in charge of producing proposals, then improving proposals starts by being able to articulate what information you need to write a winning proposal, and flowing that information into a plan for writing the proposal before any writing actually begins. It will help if you become a teacher. You should not expect those who must bring information to you to know what information you need or how to get it. They may need you to teach them and show them how that information impacts the document, long before the proposal has even started. Your success depends on them, so making improvements in your company’s proposals means making improvements in their performance as well as your own. If you are a production manager, in charge of formatting and completing the proposal document, then improving proposals starts by getting involved earlier in the process and not by simply trying to mandate deadlines or style sheet compliance. If you want to add value, you need to move beyond formatting and produce information. You need to create the process tools that make getting information into the proposal and through the review process easy. The more you do to help contributors complete their jobs, the more they will be able to meet the deadlines that you need to do your job. The common thread in each of these is information. Winning in writing is about discovering what it will take to win and flowing that information to the document needed to close the sale. It requires an integrated approach. If everyone is not on the same page regarding roles and information requirements, then no matter what you do in your sandbox, it will never reach its full potential. While improving your proposals starts with defining your role, you won’t get very far until you’ve defined everyone else’s role and the flow of information between all of you. A subscription to PropLIBRARY can help you define those roles as well as well as get everyone on the same page and guide people through what they need to do to fulfill them. Or for something less comprehensive but quicker to implement, our Master Proposal Startup Information Checklist identifies the questions that drive the flow of information and turn it into something checklist simple. Enjoy!

What if I told you that on a 50-page proposal for services provided worldwide, due in just 7 days, we scheduled not one but two major reviews, and that we had the Red Team draft ready in less than 36 hours with only three writers... Want to know how we pulled that off and delivered an outstanding proposal? See also: Content Planning Box We started by using the Proposal Content Planning methodology we've been recommending and refining for two decades. The size and complexity of this proposal has convinced me once and for all that proposal writing goes faster and more reliably with the right approach to planning before you write. Planning did not take time away from writing, it accelerated the writing. Without the Content Plan, what we needed to accomplish would have been nearly impossible. Nobody believed we could be ready for the Red Team in 36 hours. And yet, what we turned in for review was in better shape than some drafts I've seen that had three weeks to prepare. Why we waited 24 hours before we started writing For the first 24 hours, we thought about what needs to go in the proposal and how to present it. We outlined and created a document shell. We dropped in placeholders, reminders, questions, details, and instructions for the writers. We did this at the bullet level, and sometimes didn't even use complete sentences. But we accounted for everything. We summarized strategies and approaches. We identified graphics and described them in text. What we created was a description of the proposal instead of a proposal. Another way to look at it is that we created a set of specifications for the document. This baseline defined what the proposal should be. We believe that all proposals should have written quality criteria, and that they should be given to the writers before they start writing and used by the reviewers when the draft is ready. What we did was to combine proposal content planning with defining proposal quality criteria. In effect, the content plan became the quality criteria. Why we waited a little longer still The very next day, we reviewed the plan. We needed to ensure the strategies and approaches were valid and that if we created the proposal according to the plan, it would result in the proposal that everyone wanted. We had disagreements about approaches. We used the Content Plan to put them on the table for decision. The compromises and decisions regarding the ways to do and say things went into the plan. We literally got everyone on the same page. Instead of hiding from disagreements, we enthusiastically sought them out so we could put them behind us and proceed in a straight line. This alone was a huge time saver. Instead of waiting for a draft, arguing over commas, and making inadequate changes that only became known when the next draft was produced, we presented, decided, and wrote it. Once. What happened when we finally started writing The writing took one 8-hour day and one 16-hour day. That's 50 pages created in 72 hours of writing. We knew exactly what we had to address and how much space we had to address it. The 50 pages only required 23 pages of narrative after you subtract graphics and tables. We intentionally used a lot of these and planned what would go in them to minimize the amount of narrative. In reality, the writing was half writing and half graphics and tables completion. For the narrative half, we not only knew what to say, but how to say it based on our strategies. The Content Plan also helped us treat the writing as a process of elimination. But the main ways it accelerated the writing was by eliminating guesswork, reducing the need for rewriting, and visually showing writers how much to write. How this approach improved the Red Team review It also changed the nature of the Red Team review. Because we had validated strategies and approaches, they focused more on the quality of the text. They identified additional details to make it stronger and put us in touch with new subject matter experts for specific items. The Content Plan approach not only made things faster, it also produced a much better proposal than anyone expected under the circumstances. Read this before you try it at home... Have caution. It's counterintuitive. An extra review, less time to write, and more work and structure for proposal reviewers may take some getting used to. There may be resistance from nervous writers. Retraining and executive trust will definitely be required. But this is now the only way I want to do proposals. Maybe we'll get to do one together one day.

Do templates make proposal creation easier, result in better quality, or destroy your chances of winning? First, let’s make a distinction between templates for formatting vs. templates for content. This article is about using templates for content, organization, or reusing previous proposals. Whether it makes sense to use a proposal template depends primarily on: The type of offering. If you are proposing a unique or engineered solution, you probably can’t use a template or reuse content and still be competitive. If you are proposing a product or a commoditized service, you may be able to employ reuse material effectively, but only if your customers' concerns are also consistent. When you recycle proposal content, the odds are that you will end up with a proposal that is not written from the current customer’s perspective. Even when you propose the exact same thing to two different customers, the description of what it will produce, deliver, or achieve should be different. The consistency of RFPs. If your RFPs are very consistent, you may be able to use reuse material effectively. If your proposals don’t have a written RFP, then whether you can effectively employ reuse material will depend on the consistency of your customers’ concerns and evaluation processes. The same offering could lead to increased efficiency, better performance, or improved quality. But which does this customer find compelling? Everything you say about your offering needs to be put into the right context. It’s how much that context changes from one proposal to the next that impacts whether using a proposal template will help or hurt. 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: Templates and reuse works best when you are offering the same services/products on every bid and the RFP is the same each time. Templates and reuse require time-consuming edits when you offer different services/products on every bid and the RFP is different each time. In between these are two conditions where templates and reuse may or may not be a good solution: See also: Reuse 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. In addition, the following concerns can also impact whether or not using a template will be a savior or destroyer of your proposal. 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 it. 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 reuse 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 reuse 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 size of the proposal and your profit margin. It makes no sense to invest in winning if you do but don’t make enough money to cover the cost of the proposal. While we might argue that if this is the case you shouldn’t bid, it is possible to profitably sell a commodity with razor thin margins at high volume. If you are in this category then you have no choice but to automate. Then the question becomes, how can you automate while still producing a competitive proposal? It is important to remember that there is a difference between being similar and being the same. Most of your offerings and most of your RFPs will be similar. They may be about the same things. But unless they ask for exactly the same things, in the same order, using the same terminology, and evaluate them against the same terminology, the response will have to be different. The amount of that difference is what determines whether templates or reuse helps or hurts. If you are seeking proposal templates to “make proposals easier,” keep in mind that proposals are an investment. If you underinvest, you reduce your return on investment. At any established company, your win rate matters more than the cost of your proposals. If you manage your finances by focusing on proposals as a cost, then the reduction in win rate may end up costing you far more than any savings. The reverse is true. If you invest in creating more competitive proposals, the increase in win rate can generate a return far larger than that investment. Do the math. Compare what a change of just a few percent in your win rate returns, compared to the size of what you spend producing proposals. For each $10 million in proposals you submit, a 1% change in win rate is $100 thousand. To get a 10% or more increase in win rate, you need to go from writing good proposals to writing great proposals. To do that, you need to write your proposals from the customer’s perspective. Proposal templates are about standardization. The customer’s perspective is not standardized. You will never get a great proposal from a template. So maybe the real question that determines whether you should use a proposal template or recycle your proposal content is whether you can win with a cheap proposal that’s not great. And if you are thinking about building your company’s proposal process around templates, you might also ask whether you want to base your company’s whole approach to winning new business on cheap proposals that are not great? Do the win rate math and then decide.

Here are 8 simple things a non-specialist can do to dramatically improve their proposal writing. Use this list to go through what you have written sentence by sentence. Doing so can transform your proposal writing into something compelling and persuasive and significantly improve your chances of winning: See also: Winning Is it written to achieve the highest score based on the evaluation criteria? If you are writing a proposal in response to an RFP that has written evaluation criteria, this is the most important thing for you to do. You should study the evaluation criteria and make sure that what you have written will get the highest score. Use the terminology in the evaluation criteria as closely as possible. No matter how important you think something is, if it’s not addressed in the evaluation criteria, it won’t earn you any points. To each point, you have to put what you are writing in the context of the evaluation criteria. You should also format and say things that can easily be copied and pasted onto the customer’s evaluation forms to make it easy for them to justify their score. How quickly can the evaluator find what they need to prove RFP compliance? If you are not compliant with every requirement, your proposal may not even get evaluated. When there are lots of proposals submitted, the easiest way to get out of reading them all is to disqualify as many as possible based on non-compliance. Functional compliance is not enough. There must be a visual match between what you have written, and what the evaluator sees in the RFP. Does it include all of the keywords from the RFP? You must use the RFP’s terminology instead of your own, no matter how strongly you prefer to use certain terms. In fact, you should use all of the keywords from the RFP. The evaluator will be looking at the RFP and then looking at what you wrote to see where you have addressed what’s in the RFP. When they do that, they’ll be skimming for the keywords. You should make them easy to find. Does it answer all the questions the customer might have? An easy way to ensure that you answer the customer’s questions is to address “who,” “what,” “where,” “how,” “when,” and “why” in your response. Look at what you have written and ask yourself questions that start with those words. See if you can’t add detail to your response by providing answers to all of them. Does every sentence pass the “So what?” test? Have you written descriptive statements, cited qualifications, or made unsubstantiated claims in any sentence without explaining what matters and why? It is not enough to state your qualifications; you need to explain what matters about them and how the customer will benefit. The evaluator is often more interested in why something you said matters than the statement itself. Never assume that the value of a statement is obvious. Is what you are proposing merely compliant with the RFP? Everyone is responding to the same RFP. Any serious competitors will also be compliant. If your proposal is merely compliant then you are competing solely on price and vulnerable to someone with a better proposal. Going beyond RFP compliance does not have to mean increasing your price. It can also mean being more credible and trustworthy in your proposal or showing that your offering better aligns with what the customer wants. Does it demonstrate to the evaluator why what you are proposing is their best alternative? The customer is considering a purchase and has multiple alternatives to choose from, sometimes including doing nothing. Does your proposal help the customer to realize why it is their best alternative? This means you need to understand what they really want, which may or may not actually be found in the RFP. It also means you have to know what their alternatives are, the trade-offs that are involved, and the customer’s preferences among them. Winning a proposal is not about being the best you that you can be. It’s about being the customer’s best alternative. Is it written from the customer's perspective and not simply a description of yourself? If every sentence starts with your company’s name, there’s a good chance that you have written about yourself and not about what matters to the evaluator. When you talk with a sales person, do you want to hear them talk all about why they are the best or do you want to hear them talk about what the offering will do for you and how you will benefit from it? Look at every sentence and make sure that every feature, attribute, or piece of information you provide is put into the customer’s context. Out of the hundreds of proposals I've reviewed, I've never seen one that didn't fail at least two of these, and most fail four or more. That doesn't make them bad proposals, just ordinary. But what it really does is create an opportunity to beat your competitors by writing a great proposal instead of an ordinary one. If you need help with that, just let me know…

Differentiation is vital. And yet, sometimes people really struggle to find differentiators. For example, when the RFP tells you exactly what to bid, how many to bid, how to structure your pricing, and what the terms and conditions must be, it seems like there isn’t a lot of room to differentiate your offering. But the truth is, you’re just not trying hard enough. You can always differentiate. Here are four approaches to differentiation you can consider when you're struggling: See also: Differentiation Differentiate what your brand represents. Seth Godin posted that great brands are about what they represent and not about what they are. In proposals, we talk about having themes, a message, or a story. But really what we’re doing is establishing a brand. By telling a story that represents something, we give the customer an opportunity to associate with something larger than ourselves or the procurement. This really matters to some people and is why brands often associate with charities and causes. You can also go beyond answering the customer’s questions and provide something that the customer wants to be a part of. To do this, you have to have a real vision of what the procurement is going to do for the customer and paint a picture that is so vivid they can see themselves in it. The challenge with trying to represent something is that it has to be meaningful. You can’t do it by going through the motions. You can’t paint a picture if you have no vision. Most people try to take the personality out of their business correspondence. They worry that the reader may not like something. But in order to represent something the customer wants to be a part of, you’ll have to inject personality into your proposal. You’ll stand a much greater chance of winning because it has personality than you will of losing because it has personality. In fact, since the odds are that none of your competitors’ proposals will have any personality at all, you can count on getting more attention simply because yours does. Differentiate how you deliver. The customer might be getting the same thing, but if you have a better way of delivering it, you can be the customer’s best alternative. Can you deliver it faster, in more quantity, in less quantity, in better packaging, with more reliability, or in any other way that’s better? When you can’t differentiate what you offer, try differentiating how you will deliver it. Differentiate through results. If one proposal promises to deliver something, and another credibly promises to achieve the customer’s goals by delivering the same something, the second proposal will appear to deliver far more value. This will be true even though they both deliver the exact same offering. This isn’t about delivering the sizzle instead of the steak, it’s about focusing on delivering nutrition. To differentiate through results, you have to know what results the customer cares about, and credibly link what you will do or deliver to achieving those results. Even though everyone will deliver the same offering that will lead to the same results, your proposal will appear more insightful, offer more value, show more understanding, and better correspond to what the customer actually needs. Differentiate through trustworthiness. Trustworthiness is not achieved through claims. In fact, unsubstantiated claims work against trustworthiness. Trustworthiness is best demonstrated through results and honesty about the issues and tradeoffs. Since customers will only buy from people they trust, differentiating through trustworthiness can be very effective. If everyone proposes the same offering, the customer may very well pick the one who is the most trustworthy. They will often pick trustworthy over lowest cost. It takes more than just a credible, effective approach for delivery to appear trustworthy. You must address contingencies, risks, trade-offs, and why you made the decisions you made. Everything can be differentiated. If you can’t find any differentiators for your proposal, you aren’t trying hard enough. Maybe you’ve assumed that because everyone will propose the same thing, that everything else will be the same. Maybe you’ve assumed that since other people could say the same thing, it’s not a differentiator even though it becomes one when they don’t say it. Maybe you’re focused on the offering, when other things that also matter to the customer. Or maybe you are focused on the tangible aspects instead of things that aren’t tangible, but still matter. You can always be different. If you aren't different, then who needs you? One of the things I love to demonstrate when doing proposal training is that it is entirely possible to differentiate yourself through better proposal writing alone. I prefer to differentiate through having a better offering, but sometimes the RFP does not permit it. To differentiate through proposal writing, you have to recognize that even when the offers are pretty much the same, there are things that still matter. Talking about what matters, when nobody else does, it a great way to be different. It’s the kind of difference that makes you the best selection.

Proposal win themes should articulate why you are the customer's best alternative, and do that from the customer's perspective. If you just think of them as the key messages or benefits, your win themes will tend to get watered down into what you think makes your company good instead of what the customer needs to realize in order for you to win. What makes proposal win themes so hard to write is that people show up unprepared to articulate why they are the customer's best alternative. When you bid an opportunity simply because you discover that the client is accepting proposals from anyone and you decide to give it a shot, you start from zero when trying to articulate why the customer should select you. It is even more difficult when the RFP tells you what to propose. When everyone is bidding the same thing, it becomes more price sensitive and people are afraid to go beyond the minimum needed to fulfill the requirements. You are left with no clear way to differentiate yourself from the competition and no competitive advantage. See also: Themes Sometimes this doesn’t show up until people try to write their proposal win themes. When you decide to bid before you can articulate what it will take to win, it’s hard to figure out what to say in order to win. All you have to say is that you can deliver what the customer has asked for and that you have experience. But your competitors will say the same things, and they will say it better if they are better informed. When you lack bid strategies, positioning, differentiation, and customer insight, all you can really do is talk about yourself and hope no one is better. If you do have proposal win themes they will tend to be claims, usually unsubstantiated. They will be about you instead of being about the customer or written from the customer’s perspective. They won’t help the customer determine that you are the best alternative, no matter how much you want to win or how big and full of bold claims you make them. It will feel like you’re struggling with writing the proposal, and you may conclude that proposal writing is hard or that you need to find better proposal writers. But the problem is not with proposal writing at all. The problem with your proposal themes is not poor proposal writing A good bid/no bid decision reflects your win strategies. A bad bid/no bid decision leads to bidding without a competitive advantage. If you are: Struggling to identify your win strategies Having trouble identifying win themes to emphasize in your proposal Unable to differentiate yourself from the competition Hopeful instead of confident The real problem may be what you are bidding instead of how you are writing about it. You should examine your bid/no bid system instead of just treating the symptoms. When you sit down to write a proposal that aligns with your strengths, differentiators, customer insights, and your company's strategic plans, then your value proposition and competitive positioning flow naturally. Instead of trying to discover some elusive proposal win themes, you just have to articulate the alignment that’s already there. That’s a much more solvable problem, and the themes that result are more effective and authentic. This is how a good bid/no bid system results in a higher win rate. It's not simply because being more selective means you only bid opportunities that you have a better shot at winning. It's because the selection process points you to the win strategies that will enable you to write proposals with a much higher win probability, and because you know how to go beyond claims of greatness and prove why you are the customer's best alternative. Winning proposals consistently isn't about somehow finding a clever way to present yourself so that you stand out. Consistently winning proposals comes from having a story to tell that the customer wants to be a part of. That story will position you against your competition, include your win strategies, and show insight about the customer's needs. If you can't say these things verbally before you start your proposal, they won't somehow appear as a result of proposal writing. When you only bid opportunities that relate to your corporate strategies and where you have a competitive advantage, you start the proposal already knowing what story you need to tell. Then the proposal effort becomes about making your story stronger and not about trying to figure out a story to tell. If you can't articulate what makes you the customer's best alternative, you can’t write a winning proposal and therefore you shouldn’t bid. But more importantly, if you can't articulate why you are the customer's best alternative in a way that's compelling, it’s probably because you have no positioning or differentiation. If your only reasons for bidding are because you can do the work or "have experience," that's a bad sign. You shouldn’t bid if your only bid strategy is figuring out a clever way to make it sound like you’re not ordinary. That simply isn't competitive. If you are not ordinary, writing proposal win themes should be easy. If they aren’t, it’s a no bid indicator. Don't wait until you get in the middle of the proposal to realize it. But if you do, take it as an indicator that you haven't done your pre-proposal homework. You haven't shown up prepared to win.

Writing an RFP is harder than writing a proposal. If you are a proposal writer and have never written an RFP, especially for something you need created or developed, you should try it some time. It is a great way to improve your ability to see things from the customer’s perspective. Even if you can clearly express what you want, doing so in a way that someone else won’t misinterpret is challenging. And most RFP writers are not experts, either in articulating what they want or in writing RFPs. They tend to word things poorly and get lost in the complexity of their own needs. If you’ve tried writing a complex RFP, you’d understand. Unfortunately, the result is that even though proposal writers have to follow the RFP precisely, the RFP is fallible. If it says something that’s clearly wrong, it can be fixed. But most of the problems people have responding to RFPs are when it’s hard to tell, like when the RFP requirements are ambiguous, open to interpretation, convoluted, or just a little… strange. Issues like that make you scratch your head and wonder why someone put it in the RFP that way. It’s easy to psych yourself out and develop conspiracy theories related to what they are really trying to do based on the assumption that they said it that way on purpose. The odds are more likely that it was just poorly worded. But the problem with conspiracy theories is that no matter how far-fetched, they could be true… If you are a proposal writer, you can’t just leave it alone. Understanding why the customer wrote the requirements the way they did helps you understand their motives. Understanding their motives is critical to winning in writing, because that is how you not only respond to the requirements, but fulfill their unwritten needs. So take a look at this list of possible reasons why the customer wrote something the way they did: See also: Customer perspective They had to They want to keep things the same They want something different They didn’t know what else to say They are afraid They are ambitious They were lazy They are cheap They want what they want They don’t want to be tied down They aren’t an expert in what they need to buy but have to write the RFP anyway Someone else suggested it They misinterpreted what you suggested They forgot They didn’t know how to quantify it They didn’t want it to limit them in the future The Powers That Be don’t trust their own people They don’t agree They have a deadline They've been burned They already know who they want to win They don’t want to keep the incumbent They want new ideas They are resistant to change It was in the RFP they recycled Bad copy and paste They changed their mind Their needs changed but they forgot to update the document They didn't realize they contradicted themselves They're short sighted They haven't figured it out yet Their priorities aren't what you think they should be They can’t predict the future They know more than you think they do How many of these could explain what you are seeing in the RFP? How many of these represent issues that you could have helped the customer with? Too bad once it's in the RFP it's probably too late. You need more information than just what's in the RFP. But if you know why they did what they did, you can strategize a way to work around it. Or better yet, you can address the requirements in a way that fulfills what their real motivation is. If you don't know the customer well enough to understand their motivations before the RFP is released, all you can do is guess. But as you can see from the list above, it will be easy to guess wrong. And you should assume that at least one of your competitors won't have to guess. Wouldn't you like to be the one making RFP suggestions and confuse your competitors instead?

Is it the statement of work? The evaluation criteria? The pricing model? Those are all important, but if you want to win there is something about an RFP that is even more important. The problem is that it’s not even in the RFP itself. Anyone can write a proposal that responds to what it says in the RFP, and certainly your competitors can do so. But when you try to write a great proposal, you’ll quickly start asking questions about the RFP, and you won’t find those answers in the document. In order to write a great proposal, you need to know more than just what the customer says in the RFP. You need to know why they said it that way. The most important part of an RFP is the motivation of the customer. The reasons why they put what they did in the RFP are more important than what they put in the RFP. Why did they go to all that work to produce the RFP? See also: Compliance matrix So what motivates the customer? It could be goal attainment, compliance, laziness, fulfillment of an agenda, a desire to change, a desire to keep things the same, fear, ambition, cost control, greed, status, fashion, or some other reason. Each requirement in the RFP was put there in order to achieve something. To satisfy what the customer really wants, you need to know what motivated them. When you respond to an RFP, it’s not enough to give them what they asked for; you need to give them what they asked for in a way that fulfills their motivations. If you just write to what it says in the RFP, you are not writing to their motivations. The company that does the best job of writing to the customer’s motivations has the best chance of winning. This is for two reasons: The RFP may not be an accurate reflection of their motivations Fulfilling their motivations is more important than fulfilling the specifications contained in the RFP If you can’t or don’t write to the customer’s motivations, you are bidding at a disadvantage. This is a nice way of saying that the deck is stacked against you and unless your competitors are total slackers you are probably going to lose. That’s not what we like to call a “win strategy.” The only problem is figuring out their motivation, as opposed to what they said in the RFP. This is where that whole “customer intimacy” thing becomes important. But if you can’t achieve real customer intimacy, sometimes you can make some good guesses based on the types of motivations you expect someone from that kind of organization, culture, and environment might have. A great proposal focuses on delivering results and not simply fulfilling requirements. But which results? In Proposal 101 level training, you learn that everything you write in a proposal should provide a benefit to the customer. But which benefit? The same exact feature could increase responsiveness, mitigate risks, lower costs, improve quality, improve the user experience, and increase stakeholder satisfaction. So which should you write about? A smart proposal writer will turn to the evaluation criteria in the RFP and make sure that the benefits correlate with how your proposal will be scored. But if you really want to win, the benefits you deliver will fulfill the motivations of the evaluator and the people who wrote the RFP. Whenever you see an RFP that asks you to describe your understanding of the requirements, they are crying out for you to show how you will fulfill the motivations behind those requirements. They went to all that effort to write an RFP and are planning to read a bunch of proposals and conduct an evaluation. Why? It’s more than simply to buy something. There’s a reason behind it. The company that writes to the reasons behind the RFP is the company that understands the customer. The company that fulfills those reasons is the one who will deliver what the customer really wants. If you want the customer to find what you say in the proposal to be compelling, write to their motivations. Discovering those motivations and structuring your proposal around how you will address them is how you have what we like to call “win strategies.”

Improving your win rate has the potential to double your revenue from the exact same number of leads. But improving your win rate is easier said than done. Most of the things that will have the greatest impact occur before you even start the proposal. Here are 14 ways to get into position to win so that you can increase your win rate: See also: Improving win rates Gain an information advantage. Everyone has the same RFP. The more you know about what matters to the customer and about the opportunity and competitive environment, the more you can create a proposal that matters more than those of your competitors. Differentiate from the competition. Positioning is about explaining why the differences about you and your offering matter. Even when the RFP forces everyone to bid the exact same thing, you can still differentiate on things like how, why, and trustworthiness. Disrupt. Part of getting into position to win can be getting into a position your competitors can't match, by influencing the selection of contract vehicle, terms and conditions, requirements, business models, definitions, etc. Prepare to write. You can't write a proposal optimized to win against an RFP until you have the RFP in hand. But you can prepare to write by improving your ability to articulate what matters about the customer, offering, and competitive environment. When the RFP is released, you will be in position not only to write about how you will fulfill the requirements, but how and why your approach matters. Prepare your offering. You should never figure out what to offer by writing a narrative about it. You should design your offering separately from writing about it. If you don't want that to impact the time you have to write the proposal, you should do as much offering design as you can before the RFP is released. Answer who, what, where, how, when and why. Take some time to think through all the questions now, so that you can get the answers you need before the writing starts. Put extra effort into being able to explain "why." Understand what it will take to win. If your explanation of what it will take to win is generic, you aren't in position to win. If your win strategies are based on your strengths and not based on what it will take to win you are vulnerable. If you can't articulate it, you can't write it. It is not enough to have information, know how your offering is differentiated, or know what matters. You must be able to articulate. If you can't explain what it will take to win, why the customer should select you, and what the customer's perspective is before you start writing, you can't incorporate those things into your response to the RFP's requirements. Turn strategies into action items. Your existing strengths are not strategies. What you are going to do about them and what you are going to do to develop new ones are strategies. Getting into position to win requires action. Be able to write from the customer's perspective. You can't write a proposal from the customer's perspective if you can't see things from the customer's point of view. Doing this requires a combination of information about the customer and the ability to write from their perspective. If your proposal consists exclusively of descriptions of yourself and your offering, it is not written from the customer's perspective. To get into position to win, you need to obtain customer insight and the ability to write from their perspective instead of your own. Price to win. Price always matters. But how much? Discovering what the price to win will be and what you can do to improve your pricing will help you get into position to win. Turn trade-offs into advantages. Proposals are full of trade-offs. Trade-offs can be a good thing when properly explained. Anticipating the trade-offs and becoming able to explain them can become a demonstration of insight that itself becomes a reason why the customer should select you. Get real about your value proposition. What is your value proposition, does the customer agree with it, and does it reflect the right cost/value trade-offs? Is it real? Become the best alternative. The customer has a choice to make. That choice could be is among competitors, insourcing vs. outsourcing, between doing what you recommend and doing nothing, or something else. What makes you the best alternative? What do you have to do to become it? And what do you need to say so they realize it? Anyone can win a single proposal from sheer luck. The trick is winning them all. And if you can't win them all, then just how high can you get your win rate? It takes a combination of preparation, positioning, and follow-through to turn it into a winning proposal. What we find with the companies that bring us in as consultants is that the same people you have now, putting in the same level of effort, can usually perform at a higher level if given the right direction. A lot of what we end up doing is showing people how to raise the bar. Our experience shows us that little things can have a huge impact on competitiveness. If you want to maximize your chances of winning, get in touch and let's have a conversation about what can be done.

Is working on a proposal a necessary evil or an opportunity? Is it an assignment you have to complete to keep someone else happy or is it a chance to bring meaning to your work? Is it a chance to add to the corporate coffers or is it a chance to advance your career and expand the salary pool? Is it something you have to do to get a customer, or is it an opportunity to define a new relationship? Proposals have deadlines. This means everything that needs to be done needs to be assigned to someone accountable for completing it on time. By definition, these assignments are things that people have to do. And by accepting that definition, you suck the motivation right out of the people you need engaged in winning. If you frame a proposal as something that people have to do, then people will do the minimum that they have to. There is no meaning in their work beyond fulfilling requirements. People will measure success by completion. The proposal is just a step towards getting the work, and even if it wins, will likely be ignored by those doing the work because it is irrelevant to what they do. Think about that last sentence. Most proposals are irrelevant to what people actually do. See also: Organizational development But a proposal is much more than a deadline. A proposal is a chance to define your relationship with the customer and the nature of what people will spend their time doing. A proposal is a chance to define what job opportunities will be created, and what those jobs will be like. A proposal is a chance to make positions more than just jobs. A proposal is a chance to bring meaning to those jobs. A proposal is a chance to be relevant. A proposal is a chance to matter. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that if a proposal is required, you get to have a chance to matter. Most fail to seize that opportunity. It doesn’t even register as an opportunity when you see the proposal as something you have to do. A great proposal is written from the customer’s perspective instead of your own. An ordinary proposal is a description of what you will do and why you are qualified to do it. A great proposal will be about what matters to the customer. When you frame the proposal as something you get to do instead of something you have to do, it increases your chances of winning. If your proposal matters to the customer more than any other alternative, they will accept your proposal. Creating a proposal that matters to the customer starts by creating a proposal that matters. Your chances of the proposal mattering to the customer are much greater when you think it should and try to make it so than when you just fulfill the requirements because you have to. Do you get to work on something meaningful, or do you have to do something meaningless? Which will appeal to the customer? How do you create a proposal that matters? Step one is to find your passion for what matters about the customer and the nature of what needs to be done. The second step is to say what matters and why with passion. It helps to have a stake in the outcome. When you will be the one doing the work if the proposal wins, then wouldn’t you rather have defined a project with meaning and a proposal that remains relevant after the project starts? But even if you’re creating a proposal for a project that someone else will have to work on, wouldn’t you rather gift them with something relevant and meaningful, instead of something that will be ignored? Is the proposal a way that you get to pay it forward, or is it just something you have to do? Proposals can be challenging. They can be exhausting. Is there anything meaningful that we do that isn’t challenging and exhausting? Deadline pressures can warp people. People who respond by constricting what they do to the minimum to ensure they meet their deadline can’t create a great proposal, and can’t win against a competitor who isn’t also constricted. When you get to bring meaning to a proposal that matters, you get to win.

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The primary missions of business development, capture management, and proposal management are all very different. And yet, they share the same goal: winning proposals. Unfortunately, the way they are normally practiced is as a series of hand-offs, with each contributing towards the goal of submitting a winning proposal. They can be so much more, when they aren't trying to be islands unto themselves. Working together, they add up to more than the sum of the parts: See also: Capture Management Business development is the identification of solutions that address customer needs creating business opportunities. As part of the sales process, the business development function identifies a portfolio of qualified leads for the company to pursue. Business development managers identify, qualify, advocate, and track leads. They focus on gathering intelligence and building relationships. As a result, the business development phase is mostly about relationship marketing and gaining an information advantage about the customer and opportunity, while reporting on lead tracking. Business development hands off to capture management when it’s time to move beyond lead identification and qualification into pursuit. Then business development prospects for more leads while capture management provides a dedicated focus on closing the same with a win. Capture management is a dedicated focus on maximizing the probability of winning a particular business pursuit by leveraging resources, relationships, and processes. Capture Managers develop understanding, figure out what to offer, create strategies, identify resources, and make decisions. Capture management is all about what to offer and presenting it in a winning proposal. But figuring out how to capture the lead requires knowledge and skills in marketing, corporate strategy, proposal development, finance, pricing, contracts, project management, human resources, and basically everything else. Capture management may very well be the most difficult job in a company, partly because very few people have experience in everything needed, and partly because they have to sell internally within the company just as much as they have to sell to the customer. Capture management hands off to proposal management when the RFP is released and it's time to put it all in writing. A good capture manager will involve proposal management before the RFP is released so that they are better prepared to win the proposal. Proposal management is the implementation and oversight of the process of closing a sale by producing a written document. Winning proposals consistently requires implementing a successful proposal management process. Proposal management oversees the implementation of the process, but depends on the input delivered by capture management to position the content of the proposal. To be successful, the proposal manager and capture manager must form a close partnership. Without someone filling the role of capture manager, a proposal manager often has to fill voids that go well beyond the scope of proposal management. If the partnership is not effective, then the odds of winning go way down. Having each focus on their own role exclusively is not the best way to build toward achieving the common goal of winning. Instead of roles and hand-offs, what you really need is an integrated effort. Unfortunately when: Business development tracks the leads but doesn’t have much to contribute to the proposal beyond broad generalizations, it’s barely even part of closing the sale for the leads it identified. Capture management figures out what to offer by writing about it, fails to identify what it will take to win, or is unable to articulate strategies that differentiate, it sets the stage for a proposal effort that can do little more than make an on-time submission, with winning a secondary concern. Proposal management fails to define what information is needed from business development and capture management, how that information should flow into a plan for the proposal that defines what is to be written before writing starts, or how what it will take to win becomes criteria for reviewing the quality of the proposal produced, they set themselves up as document producers and not winners. Shifting from isolated roles to an integrated effort to win To make the shift from isolated roles to an integrated effort to win, each must contribute to and be involved in closing the sale. When the sale closes with a proposal, business development, capture management, and proposal management must each contribute to winning the proposal. Contributing to the proposal does not necessarily mean taking on writing assignments. What it really means is that each must deliver information that will support writing a winning proposal. Achieving this requires the right culture as much as it does the right business development, capture, and proposal management training. What separates a good proposal from a great proposal is how well it reflects the customer’s perspective instead of merely describing the company submitting the proposal. That means that instead of simply being a description of your qualifications and approach, everything in the proposal should be about what the customer cares the most about. This is typically what they will get and what matters about it. When you sit down to write, you want to be in the position of being able to describe yourself and your approaches in the context of why they matter to the customer, and not just why you think they matter. During business development, you should be actively seeking answers to what matters to the customer and what it will take to win. During the stages of the capture management process, you should be designing an offering that reflects what matters to the customer. When you do this, then during proposal writing you will be able to describe your response to the RFP requirements from the customer’s perspective and build a proposal around what it will take to win. Business development will not reliably provide the right information required to do this in the proposal phase, without some help from proposal management. The capture management process will not reliably design an offering around what matters to the customer, without some insight about the customer from business development and some help incorporating positioning into the offering design. Proposal management has to reach out and help both business development and capture management understand what they need at the moment of planning and writing, so they can help go beyond compliance and create a great proposal that is written from the customer’s perspective. If you give them generalizations, you will get generalizations.

I love starting off our consulting engagements by doing a pipeline assessment because it quantifies the reality of things and gives us both a better understanding of the true impact of the improvements we make together. It clarifies goals, budgets, and how to allocate resources. But the best part is that everything we do can be compared to a set of expectations designed to produce a measurable return on investment. But there are limits to what a pipeline assessment can tell you. This article is based on what we've learned by doing pipeline assessments for our customers. Most people want something concise, clear, practical, and quantifiable. Those who want something quantifiable usually respond to how our spreadsheet model makes it all about the numbers, makes it more like science than art, and opens up insights. While we love to talk about best practice philosophy those who just want the facts can see the exact numbers that drive your business. These often deviate from what you might expect from industry rules of thumb. We’re not trying to convince you that the spreadsheet model we use for pipeline assessments will cure everything that ails you. But we do think it’s pretty cool, and the more we use it in our customer engagements, the more we learn. Here’s some of what we can share to help clarify exactly what a pipeline assessment can and can’t do: See also: Assessing and filling your business opportunity pipeline Win rates. A pipeline assessment doesn’t tell you what your win rate is, unless you load it with historical data. That’s not a bad thing to do, but most companies don’t have good records of past submissions! Usually we start with an estimate and refine it with reality as we collect data moving forward. But knowing what your win rate is, while important, isn’t really the goal. It’s seeing what the relationship is between your win rate, the number of leads you need to chase, and the actual revenue you end up with. A spreadsheet model can tell you what the impact of a change in your win rate will be, but it won’t tell you what your win rate should be. But what it’s really good for is doing “what if” analysis. What if your win rate goes up (or down)? How does that impact the number of leads you need, proposals you have to submit, or your revenue? From that you can set targets for what you’d like your win rate to be. Bid/No bid decisions. A pipeline spreadsheet model isn’t going to tell you what bids you should or shouldn’t pursue. It won’t even tell you what percentage you should reject. But it will clearly show if you are out of balance, and either bidding everything or dropping too many bids because you’re registering unqualified leads. We actually set targets for the number of bids we expect to drop, and measure performance against it to ensure that qualification is taking place. However, I’ve never seen a company yet that could tell me with accuracy how many bids they considered in the past but didn’t pursue at each stage. This is another example of where we start with guesses and refine them over time. Benchmarks. A lot of people assume the place to start is with industry benchmarks, comparing your company to others. In service contracting this is usually a mistake. Never mind that this data is company sensitive and not available; even if it was available, it wouldn’t be applicable. No two services companies have the same combination of customers, offering, positioning, strategic goals, accounting systems, BD process, proposal process, internal resource allocation, etc. It does you no good to compare to someone else’s win rate when you don’t know if their strategic goals are, for example, to expand into new customers or maximize an existing customer relationship (ditto for markets and core capabilities), or whether they do most of their businesses through teaming or not. Differences like that do not average out. What a spreadsheet model will do is make visible your performance against the benchmarks that matter --- your own. You can separate metrics based on strategic issues like whether you are the incumbent or not. You can see when your metrics change over time, whether good or bad. You can see the impact of decisions you make. Building these metrics into your spreadsheet model will make it unique. It’s one of the reasons why every time we implement it, we heavily customize it. How many people do you need? This one is fun. A pipeline assessment with the right analysis can show you a whole new numerical way to look at how much effort should go into each phase of your pursuits. But it can’t tell you things like how productive or effective your people are or what subject matters you need to cover. The big thing it can’t tell you is when RFPs will be released or how many will come out at the same time. And off-the-shelf it can’t tell you how your company accounts for people’s time or how it approaches budgeting. But it can give you a numerical baseline you probably don’t have right now. And it can show disconnects between budgets and targets. If your budget won’t support going after the number of leads you need to hit your revenue goals, you’ve got a problem that is better dealt with sooner rather than later. It’s not the model that matters. It won’t make decisions for you, tell you what your strategies should be, or make people do the right things. But it will provide answers to key questions, if you know the right questions to ask. It will enable you to replace your assumptions with real hard data over time. It will help you set more rational targets. And it will help you make better decisions by enabling you to do “what if” analyses that will show the impact of decisions and resource allocation. But perhaps the most important thing it can do is give you a common basis to discuss opinions about decisions and resources that are probably more objective than how those conversations currently go. If it helps your company do a better job of getting right with reality, then it’s well worth the effort.

How do you get good at doing proposals? Where do you start? What should you focus on? You won’t get good at proposals simply by doing a lot of them. You might get more efficient, but being more efficient at submitting ordinary proposals is not the goal. Proposals are an investment that are expected to achieve a return. To maximize your investment and improve the win rate that has such a huge impact on your return, we’ve identified six simple, specific, and highly leveraged things to focus on. Here are five simple “yes’ or “no” questions for you to answer. If you answer “no” to any of them, then that is what you need to work on. See also: ROI Do you build your proposals around what it takes to win? To do this, you have to be able to answer what it will take to win. You have to do your homework before the proposal starts. Then you have to structure your proposal effort around what it will take to win and measure quality against it. Most people give it lip service, but don’t actually build their proposals around it. Do you separate designing your offering from writing the proposal? This is a clear line that if you cross it greatly increases your risk of proposal disaster. If you design your offering by writing a narrative about it, then every change will spawn a re-write cycle that only ends when you submit the proposal you have instead of the proposal you wanted it to be. Neither design nor engineering should be performed in writing. Once you can describe what you are going to offer and have validated that, then you are ready to describe it in writing. If you have learned what it will take to win, you can write about it in context and from the customer’s perspective. Do you plan and validate your content before writing it? It takes more than an outline to plan what should go into your proposal. It takes more than a compliance matrix to plan the construction of a proposal built around what it will take to win. And once you’ve got it all figured out, you need to validate it before you jump into writing. The good news is that when you do, the writing goes much faster and produces better results. Here’s something we wrote that explains without any defined scope, they may be worse than no having any reviews at all. You should start by defining what a quality proposal is, and then create quality criteria based on it. When you do it right, you’ll have traceability from your reviews back to what it will take to win. If the reviewers of the draft proposal think it’s their job to figure out what it will take to win, you’ve got a problem --- you’re addressing it way too late in the process. Do you prioritize your efforts? Why do so many proposal kickoff meetings address writing style? With so much to talk about at that stage having a much larger impact on whether you win or lose, and so little time, how does that make the list? There is a time and place to address writing style. In fact, there is a time and place to address everything related to the proposal. It helps to understand your priorities so you can focus on first things first. I like to think about it as being similar to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, applied to proposals. Do you raise the bar on a regular basis? Most companies work on their proposal process and training once every few years. They put it in place, and think they are done. Until the next time. Instead, try implementing your process continuously over time. Identify a set of principles and standards like those above, establish a baseline, and then every few proposals raise the bar. That planning before writing thing that everyone struggles with? Start off simple and once you’ve got expectations set and everyone able to achieve something basic, raise the bar. If you overload people at the beginning, your process improvements will fail. But the right process will survive in the real world. And over time, you can turn it into a science. When we work with our consulting customers, this is what we help our customers achieve. We introduce these techniques, often on a live proposal. Then we raise the bar. We not only make their submissions, but we help them develop their organization's ability to win future proposals. Getting a proposal submitted is easy. Winning them all is hard. If you treat proposals as an investment, then to maximize your long term ROI, you need to stop doing proposals in insolation, and instead continuously improve your win rate by raising your standards. But it all starts with getting the right foundation in place. If it’s not there, your win rate will be hit or miss. Mostly miss. What most people do to improve their proposal efforts is also hit or miss, mostly miss, because they focus on the most recent pain. The list above is about setting the stage to win and not about treating pain or symptoms. Becoming healthy takes more effort than swallowing pills, but it’s how smart people invest to maximize results and ROI.

Sometimes you know you have an opportunity coming up and you want to get a head start on the proposal. Unfortunately, what a lot of people do to prepare for the proposal actually does more harm than good. So here are 3 things people do to prepare for an upcoming proposal that are counterproductive, 3 ways to prepare that can help you win, and 3 that can go either way. 3 Ways to prepare for a proposal that are counterproductive See also: Pre-RFP Pursuit Writing the proposal in advance. If you write the proposal without the requirements, keywords, and evaluation criteria from the proposal, how can you create a proposal designed to demonstrate compliance, and write it so that it's optimized to win? Preparing for the proposal does not mean writing. It means doing things that will make the writing go better and faster. Instead of assuming that there are sections of your proposal that are routine and won't change, try spending the time thinking about how to differentiate in those sections so that they are better than what your competitors will offer. Staging re-use material. If you make it easy to recycle your past proposals, which are not optimized to win the new proposal, there is a huge danger that people will start from those files instead of from what it will take to win. You might think what you are doing is research that will make the proposal go faster, but what you are probably doing is creating a path of least resistance that people will take instead of thinking through what it will take to win. Identifying reuse material is not the best place to start to get ready for a new proposal. Discovering and articulating what it will take to win is far more productive, and actually speeds the proposal up more. Preparing win strategies and themes that are all about you. When they don’t have the RFP, people are even more likely to focus “on their strengths” and begin defining their win strategies in terms of themselves. This makes it more likely that the proposal will describe the vendor instead of being written from the customer’s perspective. 3 Ways to prepare for a proposal that will help you win Discovering the points you want to make. What matters about what you plan to offer? What matters to the customer? What differentiates you? What is your value proposition? Winning requires not only writing a compliant proposal, but also addressing the RFP requirements in a way that matters to the customer. While you may not be able to itemize and address the requirements without the RFP, you can anticipate many of the points you’d like to make and perfect your ability to articulate them before the RFP is released. Then when you have the RFP, you combine your RFP responses with those points to create a proposal that goes beyond compliance and truly matters to the customer. Designing your offering. What approaches are you going to take? What staff will you bid? What configuration of products or services? What will the logistics be? What is your concept of operations? What issues will you face and what will you do about them? These are things you must be able to articulate before you start writing. If you try to figure them out by writing about them, you’re just asking for a disaster because each change in what you offer will spawn a re-write cycle that ends with submitting the proposal you have instead of the proposal you wanted. The more you can do before the RFP is released to figure out what you are going to offer, the better your chances of being able to articulate and validate your offering design before the deadline clock forces you to start writing about it. Designing your offering ahead of time means that your proposal starts with a gap analysis against the requirements instead of starting from scratch. Articulating your positioning. You should position everything against everything. Explicitly. Your company against each competitor. Your offering design against all alternatives. Your offering against the requirements. Your preferences against the customer’s preferences against your competitors' preferences. Trade-offs against each other. Price against value. Risk against reward. Etc. The better you can articulate your positioning, the more likely your proposal is to stand out. It will stand out because it’s clear why your offering is the alternative for the customer to fulfill their needs and achieve goals. Without the positioning, that would just be an unsubstantiated claim. Positioning isn't just for marketing. Positioning answers "Why?" and sometimes "Why?" matters as much, if not more, than what you are offering when it comes to getting selected. Positioning is where you demonstrate your insight, judgment, and trustworthiness. 3 Things people to do prepare for a proposal that can go either way “Engaging” the proposal manager. The success of this depends on how you define a “proposal manager” and how much time they can put into a pre-RFP proposal. Does your proposal manager help craft the message (very helpful pre-RFP) or just process the document workflow (can’t really fully engage until there is a document)? If your proposal managers are overloaded, they’ll most likely focus on the RFPs that are out and have deadlines rather than give much attention to something that will be coming out in an uncertain future. It’s not counterproductive to assign the proposal manager early, but in a lot of organizations the proposal manager can’t really do much until the RFP comes out. However, you need someone to lead the effort to craft the messaging in the way that is recommended above. It doesn’t matter whether that person is called a sales, capture, or proposal manager. A better title for what you need is a pursuit strategist. When no one else does it or knows how to do it, it often falls on the proposal manager. If the proposal manager crafts the message at your organization, then you might want to make sure they have the capacity (and budget) to fully engage before the RFP is released. Sending out data calls. Charts that show staffing counts, locations, or projects relevant to the statement of work can all be very beneficial to include in your proposal. Even when you don't use the data directly, it can often be turned into soundbites or proof statements. The data you need may also change based on the specifics of what’s in the RFP. But there is definite value in starting that research before the RFP is released because aggregating the data also can take a lot of work. When it comes to the statement of work, you stick to functional or high level terminology before the RFP is released. Simply having the data sources you'll need lined up can be a big help later. Drafting graphics. Doing graphics early can help you visualize your offering. But like text or data calls, a change in the RFP can result in a lot of wasted effort. Even if the RFP doesn’t change significantly, you can end up with a proposal that is not optimized to win. But a lot depends on which aspects you attempt to visualize. While procedures and solution details may be risky, graphics that deal with relationships may not be impacted by most RFP changes or be easy to update. You can prepare for the proposal by preparing graphics that demonstrate or help visualize the things that matter and the relationships between them, and use that to drive what you say in the proposal when the final RFP is released. Once you know what you're going to offer, the points you want to make, and how you should position things, writing will go much more quickly and the result will have a higher win probability. This is a much better way to approach your proposal than to write it in advance, recycling past proposal or boilerplate text, or preparing the same-old same-old theme statements that are all about you and don't even pass the "So what?" test. The key takeaway here is that the things that are best to do to prepare for a proposal do not involve proposal writing directly. They involve making proposal writing easier and more effective. They involve working through how you want to say things and how you're going to articulate your messages. While the final words that you put on paper may have to wait until you have the RFP, it's never too early to start figuring out how you're going to prepare a proposal that's not only better than the RFP, but better than anything your competitors have to offer. Once the RFP hits the street, people tend to become completely focused on responding to it in the limited time available, and may not take the time they should to ponder "secondary" issues like what it will take to win.

The RFP is just one source of requirements that drive what you should offer in your proposal. If all you do is design an offering that responds to what is in the RFP, it will be at a competitive disadvantage compared to a proposal submitted by someone with a deeper understanding of the customer and their requirements. To prepare the winning offer, in addition to the RFP, you need to consider: See also: Offering Design What matters to the customer? The customer will make their selection not only on what “meets their needs” but also on how they will be impacted or will benefit or perceive how your offering aligns with what they value. The requirements that show up in the RFP are only part of what matters to them. And it is incredibly difficult to read an RFP and discern what matters the most to the customer. You may think that your offering is technically superior, but if it does not matter to the customer it is an inferior offering. You may think that you have diligently followed the RFP, but if someone else better understands what matters to the customer, they will prefer the way they follow the RFP. To avoid this, treat what matters to the customer as requirements that drive the design of your offering. Discover what matters to the customer. And when you write about fulfilling the RFP requirements in order to achieve compliance, make sure you address how your approach to doing that will achieve more of what matters to the customer. What matters about what you are proposing? If there are aspects of your offering that are important or will benefit the customer, they should be emphasized. This is separate from or in addition to how you present what you are offering. Your offering should focus on what matters. At every trade-off, you will make decisions for reasons that matter. Keep track of those reasons. Your proposal should provide the reasons why you are the customer's best alternative. Those reasons will depend on the combination of what matters about what you are offering with what matters to the customer. Successful proposal writing requires more than just describing what you propose. Successful proposal writing is compelling because it matters. How much consensus does the customer have or need? Never treat the customer like they are a person. They are many people with many influences. They are stakeholders with different agendas. What matters to one may not matter to another. This makes it tricky to understand them and their requirements, especially if you only have one source at the customer. Don't assume you know "the customer" when you only know one person at the customer. Also, keep in mind that the proposal evaluators and decision makers are ultimately the opinions that have the most impact on whether or not you win. The RFP had multiple authors. Sometimes interpreting the RFP requires knowing who participated in writing it. If you simply read the RFP, you may be missing part of the story. What are the habits and preferences of the customer? Deciding what to offer in your proposal requires making many trade-off decisions. The customer’s preferences should be a factor in deciding which trade-offs to take. When trying to interpret what's in the RFP or how it will be evaluated, it helps to understand the customer's procurement and evaluation habits. How does your value proposition resonate with the customer? Just because you are impressed with your value proposition, that doesn't mean the customer perceives the value the same way you do. For example, you might be offering long-term value to a short-term focused customer. First make sure that your value proposition actually represents value and not some ambiguous unquantifiable advantages. Second, test your value proposition with the customer before you stake your proposal on it. It helps to understand what the customer values and what their priorities are before you try to substantiate your claim to representing the "best value" for the customer. How should you balance value and price? Will the customer select you over a lower priced competitor if you offer a greater value? Usually. Maybe. It depends on whether the customer perceives enough value to justify the difference. What you think about it is irrelevant. Note that the closer what you sell is to a commodity, the more important price becomes. The further you get from being a commodity, the more important value becomes. Striking the right balance for this customer with this procurement is critical for winning your proposal. What is your competitive positioning? What you offer in your proposal needs to be differentiated in a positive way from your competitors. Winning requires being the best alternative the customer to choose from. No matter how you claim to be better, the customer will focus on the differences and weigh them according to their preferences and values. Positioning your differentiators in alignment with the customer’s preferences and values is key to showing why you are the best alternative. If you don't know the customer's preferences and values when you start the proposal, all you can do is guess at how to differentiate your offering. These are things that the RFP usually won’t tell you. But separate from what you say in your proposal, they are all things you need to know to design the best offering. Think of them as things that need to be considered as part of conducting a requirements assessment. Engineering without a full understanding of the requirements results in bad engineering. Often the difference between creating a good proposal and creating a great proposal has nothing to do with how well you write it, and everything to do with how well you do your homework before you start writing. The same is true for figuring out what to offer. Your ability to design the winning offering depends on just how far your understanding of the requirements goes beyond the RFP, before the RFP is even issued.

Separating how you figure out what to offer from writing about it is critical to avoid endless draft cycles that only end when you run out of time and you submit the proposal you have instead of the proposal you want. But you still have the problem of how to design your offering. Designing your offering is an engineering problem. And the engineering approach depends on the nature of what you offer. There is no single engineering methodology that is best for all. But there are some things that they all have in common. Knowing what they are gives you the ability to start designing your offering early, while ensuring that what you come up with will be what you need to win the proposal. The items below are a combination of inputs and goals that should be a part of your offering design approach: See also: Differentiation The process and criteria that drive their decision. In an RFP this is usually described as the evaluation criteria. Sometimes this is detailed and formal, and other times it isn’t. Behind what it says in the RFP are interpretations and implementation procedures. Sometimes there is one decision maker, sometimes a consensus, and sometimes there are influencers. You top goal should be to design your offering to achieve the best evaluation. This requires treating the evaluation criteria as input requirements. Compliance with the customer’s specifications, typically found in the RFP. If your offering is not compliant with the RFP, you may have no chance of winning. And yet RFP compliance is not enough to win. RFP compliance is the baseline or starting point for a company serious about winning. If your offering is not designed to be fully RFP compliant, you’re not even in the game. Compliance with other directives the customer must comply with. They sometimes forget and leave these out of the RFP, but they matter to the customer. A lot. Technical issues and solutions. Will your offering actually do or deliver what it is supposed to? Management issues and solutions. An offering design should reflect more than just the technical details. Do you have the right organization, procedures, allocation of resources, and oversight to do or deliver those technical details? The easier the technical details are to achieve, the more important the management details become. The more complex the project logistics become, the more important the management details become. What matters to the customer? The customer will make their selection not only on what’s in the RFP, but also on how they will be impacted or will benefit or perceive how your offering aligns with what they value. If you are competing with other proposals that all comply with the RFP, but yours reflects things that matter to the customer more than the others, you have a distinct competitive advantage. What matters about what they are buying? The customer may not be experts in what they are buying. They may not know which features are important. By showing insight into what features matter, you also show that you matter. Trade-offs. All proposals are full of trade-offs. Your offering design should anticipate and decide how you will approach them. When companies second guess their offering, it often revolves around the trade-offs. Getting that out of the way so you can move forward with confidence will help you maintain a focus on winning instead of redesigning your offering during proposal development. Differentiators. Customers often make their selections based on what they perceive the differences between the offers to be. Your offering design should specifically call out those differences that are advantages. Designing differentiation into your offering is critical for winning. The reasons why. When the RFP requires all vendors to offer the same thing, they base their decision on other things like the way you will prepare or deliver your offering or whether they can trust you to deliver as promised. The reasons why you do things you do and made the decisions the way you did helps to establish your credibility, insight, and judgment. When everybody offers the same thing, addressing the reasons “why” can make your proposal the better value, even if you are offering the exact same thing. Whether it is compatible with the price to win and your profitability goals. Did your engineers come up with a Chevy or a Cadillac? Does it match the customer’s budget? Will it be competitive? If you wait until the end of the proposal to find out, you could be in for a nasty surprise that you don’t have time to correct. Designing to the right budget should be done at the beginning and validated before you start describing your offering in writing. How it supports your pricing strategies. It’s not enough to just hit the right number. You may also need to reflect the right pricing strategies. For example, do you want to focus on long term or short term costs? How do you want the pricing to scale with volume? What customer behaviors do you want to incentivize? Does what you plan to offer support your business unit’s strategies? What are the strategic goals of your business unit? What capabilities, technologies, territories, customer relationships, or staffing are you trying to develop? How does the design of your offering support that? What results will your offering produce for the customer? From the customer’s perspective, the best offering is often the offering that produces the best results and not necessarily the one with the best features. Beyond complying with the RFP, your offering design should specifically address and maximize the results it will produce for the customer. Why is your offering credible and why should the customer trust that you can deliver as promised? Why should the customer believe that your offer will do what you say it will do for the customer, or that you can deliver it? An offering design that is not credible cannot win. Believing in yourself does not make it credible. You need to be able to prove the credibility of your offering design. Performance risks, customer risks, scope creep, supplier risks, economic risks, staffing risks, and all the other risks. All customers care about risk. Some more than others. All offerings come with risk. Some more than others. The design of your offering will have a risk profile. If it is well designed, those risks will match the customer’s preferences. Matching the customer’s risk expectations should also be an offering design input requirement. The result of an offering design for a proposal is not just functionality, it’s a value proposition. You not only want to know what your value proposition is before you start writing, you want to validate that the customer perceives that value the same way you do. By making sure your offering design incorporates the considerations above, you provide the information you need to articulate your value proposition. Doing this separately from writing the proposal gives you a chance to change or perfect your offering before it’s tangled up in a narrative, where even small changes can be extremely disruptive to the proposal effort. It also sets you up to write a proposal that is focused on delivering your value proposition instead of one that is desperately focused on trying to discover a value proposition before you run out of time.