Carl Dickson

It’s a mistake to have the same person providing proposal management and proposal writing. Not only will it increase your failure rate, but it will also decrease your company’s ability to write great proposals. No matter how many times people say this, you still see companies thinking they can get away with having the proposal manager write small proposal sections. Here are the risks: See also: Proposal Management Stand-up and progress meetings. If I’m the proposal manager and I take on a writing assignment, then instead of monitoring progress, surfacing issues, checking other people’s work, and providing them input to help them do better, I’m trying to complete my writing assignment before the next status meeting, just like everyone else. That status meeting ends up becoming about issue discovery instead of resolution. And in fact, you routinely see standu-p meetings conducted as if their only purpose is to have people self-reporting issues as a safety net because the proposal manager isn’t able to talk to each person every day. Driving win strategies into the document. If the person responsible for proposal management is writing, they are not helping the people who are not proposal specialists implement the techniques that drive win strategies into the document. If they aren’t doing that, how is it supposed to happen? How do you build a proposal around your win strategies if they haven’t been articulated before they get to the writers? Do you tell writers what win strategies apply to their sections or do you expect the writers to just figure it out? Preventing people from making it up as they go along. Who is going to put the time required into figuring out how to structure the content, how to allocate the win strategies to the document, and what points should be made throughout the document? If you say “everybody” what you will really get is “nobody.” Proposal writing is a structured process. Remove the structure and what you get is a herd of cats making it up as they go along. When this happens, the proposal review process tends to become a way of trying to define what the inconsistent proposal should be instead of a tool for double checking that nothing got missed. And when this happens, it’s often because proposal management and proposal writing were combined instead of being kept separate. Preventing the proposal manager from making up the process as they go along. What evidence is there that you actually have a proposal process? Is it written down? Is it more than a chart? What checklists, quality criteria, guidance, and tools are provided for every step? If your process definition is lacking, it’s because the proposal management function is putting its attention elsewhere. Defining proposal quality criteria. Who is going to define proposal quality criteria and when? Will it be done before proposal writing starts so that it guides the proposal writers, or will it come after the draft review? Or not at all? If you do define proposal quality, who is going to oversee how it gets applied to the proposal? Proposal content planning. One of the responsibilities of proposal management is to plan what the proposal should become instead of letting that happen by chance. But once you have a plan for the proposal content, who is going to make sure it gets implemented? Waiting until there is a draft to discover that a section is off-track is a great way to ruin a proposal. Once the proposal content plan is complete, do you want proposal management providing oversight, or off on their own being one of the writers? Proposal reviews. The main reason that most companies have highly subjective and ineffective proposal reviews is that there is no dedicated review management function. In the absence of having review team leadership, the role of proposal management needs to fill the void. When proposal management and writing are combined, the proposal manager tends to assign some people to the review and let them figure it out. Wouldn’t you rather have quality criteria defined, a structured process like Proposal Quality Validation for performing the review, and training provided to the review team? How are you going to get that if the proposal manager is spending their time leading up to the review writing? Subcontractors and teaming partners. It is a law of nature that subcontractors will always be late with their proposal assignments, and what they turn in will have problems. When you are bidding as a team and your teammates are contributing to the proposal, the need for oversight goes up. You might think you’ve made things easier by finding a sub who can contribute, but managing subs on a proposal is more work than managing your own staff. Don’t water your proposal management down with writing assignments when you need them providing extra oversight and coordination. Flying solo. When the entire proposal is prepared by a single person, the proposal management process tends to become a highly personal and informal thing. Maybe that’s okay. But just because someone can do a proposal on their own, doesn’t mean they rustle up a herd of cats using the same techniques. In fact, attempting to do so typically results in people making things up as they go along. To prepare proposals bigger than a single person requires guidance, coordination, oversight, and quality assurance. All of those are weakened when proposal management and proposal writing are performed by the same individual. The real driver for what the proposal manager should take on is the number of people involved in the proposal. If the proposal effort only requires one proposal specialist and one or two subject matter experts, maybe you can get away with the proposal manager doing some writing. Quality will take a small hit, but maybe it’s survivable. Maybe it has to be on a small proposal. But once you get to three or more contributors or proposals with teammates, the risk skyrockets. But the real problem isn’t writing, it’s attention. Who is going to give attention to these things? And what will happen if these things don’t get enough attention?

1) Is what you’re offering really the best? See also: Content Planning Box Having the best people is not good enough. You need the best people with the best processes. But even having the best people and best processes isn’t even good enough. You need the best people and the best processes supported by the best: Quality assurance Tools Executive oversight Issue resolution Resource allocation Communication Oh, and you need them to have the best impact on the stakeholders and deliver the best results. If you merely propose the most qualified people and don’t demonstrate the rest, your proposal will be vulnerable to someone who is more competitive. Claiming it is not enough. If you "already do these things" you may need to formalize your processes to make what you do tangible in your proposal. To design quality into your proposal you must think through how all these impact what you need to say in your proposal before you start writing it. Can you show how your approaches to these things reinforce each other to provide a better solution for the customer? Will your approach deliver more of what the customer wants than anyone else’s proposal? To design quality into your proposal, what you write must be based on a winning design. If you write your proposal in hopes of discovering what it will take to win, you’ll never find it. Design your offering based on what it will take to win and then design your proposal around it. 2) Do you have more insight than anyone else? Is what you’re proposing based on better ideas? Have you applied your awareness about the customer to creating a better offering? Do you see opportunities to more reliably achieve better results than anyone else? Do you have the kind of ideas that make the customer want to do business with you? Instead of claiming understanding, are you demonstrating understanding by offering something that will deliver more of what the customer really wants than anyone else? Or are you merely responding to the same requirements that everyone else is responding to, and hoping to be just little bit better? To design quality into your proposal, show insight in every paragraph. Show insight in what you choose. Show insight in why you do the things you do. Show insight in how you will deliver. And show insight about what the customer will get as a result. 3) Are you delivering what the evaluator needs to see to do their job? If you are writing in hope of saying things the evaluator will like, you are not designing quality into your proposal. You are fishing and hoping for a bite. To design quality into your proposal, before you type the first word you should understand how the evaluator will do their job. Will they divide the proposal into sections? How will they approach establishing RFP compliance? How will they score it? What will they be looking for? What will they consider a strength? Or a weakness? Do they care about you or just the offering? What are their concerns? To design quality into your proposal, build it around the evaluation. Help them do their job by giving them the information they need to conclude that you are their best alternative. What you want to say about yourself is irrelevant to them. 4) What makes you so special? Are your approaches more than the same “best practices” everyone proposes? Why should the customer care about what you are proposing? Why should they care about your company? What is it they do care about? To design quality into your proposal you should build it around the things they care about. To win, they must care more about your proposal than anyone else’s proposal. This starts with giving them a difference to care about. What differentiates your proposal? What will turn your proposal into the one they compare all the others to? To design quality into your proposal, you need answers to questions like these. But you will only have limited information. Focus on what matters about what you do know. Simply responding to the RFP is not enough to be competitive. What is the process for designing quality into your proposals? It really just comes down to not trying to think things through by writing about them. This only ensures that you figure it all out after the proposal is written, when there isn’t enough time to do anything about what you’ve learned. Half of having a proposal process is simply thinking things through before you write. The method you choose for this hardly matters. But we recommend Proposal Content Planning because it’s got the flexibility you need to survive the messy real world of proposals. It amounts to a minimally structured approach to identify the ingredients that should go into your proposal before you write it, including not only what you should write about but also how you should present it. Doing this is actually more important than reviewing the draft proposal on the back end, even though that’s what amateurs obsess over.

Better proposals require becoming a better company. The question “How can your company do proposals better?” starts by asking “How can your company do the things you write about better?" and that in turn becomes "How can you be a better company?" Want a better management plan? Start by determining what better management would look like. Ask yourself what you have to do to deliver that. Then become that kind of company. Want a better technical approach? Start by determining what a better offer might be and what you have to turn yourself into to in order to deliver it. Want better pricing? Quit asking how you can shave another nickel and ask what you can do to disrupt how performance is accomplished. Then become an insightful company like that. At all levels. Every day we encounter friction. Problems that are easy to ignore or put off until tomorrow to solve, but ultimately that wears us down. If we take the path of least resistance today and are able to get by and pay our bills, we can create a nice little comfort zone for ourselves. While it lasts. But changing that would risk today’s comfort. And so it becomes easier to look for neat, tidy, and low-risk incremental improvements that don’t rock the boat. People have their jobs and it is work. But steady work. If that’s where you want to stay, you can stop reading here. Doing things better starts with articulating how. Proposals are a great place to start becoming better because they require you to articulate how you are going to do things better than your competitors. Maintaining a high win rate requires constant evolution. Better proposals come from becoming the solution and not just going through the motions See also: Organizational Development A company that defines itself by how it is now, is not thinking about what else it could be. Instead of thinking about what they could become, they just want to be more. The proposals they create simply describe themselves as they are. However, a company that defines itself by what it wants to become, writes proposals based on how they can be better. They win more and are far more likely to become something great. This is why companies end up submitting proposals written from their own perspective instead of the customer’s perspective. They write about what they can do, what their qualifications are, what their approaches will be. Companies focused on becoming what the market needs or what will help their customer write about what problems they will solve, how their qualifications result in better deliverables, and how customers will benefit from their approaches. While this wording sounds subtle, in the proposals I review the difference is striking and has a major impact on their success. The problem runs deeper than simply whether a company is focused on evolving, changing, and becoming better. It impacts staff as well. Are the people working on your proposals empowered to change the company in order to win? Sure that might need to be discussed first, but do they spend their time thinking about better approaches, or do they spend their time living within a structure they can’t change, typically focused exclusively on RFP compliance? Do your staff see their mission as doing proposals or as winning proposals? This is the stuff that culture is made of It starts with how the company hires its staff. Does it hire people to do a task and lighten everybody’s load? Or does it hire staff to make the company better? Is it hiring proposal staff to enable the company to do more proposals? Or is it hiring staff to help the company become what it needs to be to win its proposals? This is the stuff that culture is made of. Is the role of executives to run the company or to transform the company? Are they incentivized to become a little more of what they are, but to stay in their comfort zone? Or are they incentivized to make the changes needed to disrupt the competition? If you are an executive reading this, what kind of company are you creating? This is the stuff that culture is made of. Transforming your proposals can transform your company, but only if you let it A company that describes itself, is what it is. But a company that is not satisfied with being what it is now and wants to evolve writes proposals that redefine the limitations. Proposals can be the tail that wags the dog. They can change people, processes, tools, and even policy. They can change priorities. They can change how people interact. But this is only true for companies that don’t ignore their own proposals. Staff working on proposal can be change agents. But only if they are allowed. If they’ve never been allowed, they won’t even know how. It will take a lot of encouragement. And it will only succeed if the staff who perform the work if you win don’t ignore what it said in the proposal. Writing proposals from the customer’s perspective is not simply about getting the customer to like you more. Writing proposals from the customer’s perspective is the first step in gaining insight about what you need to become. So who are you? And more importantly, who will you be tomorrow?

I’ve seen way too many proposals produced by experienced people that were thoroughly ordinary. In my worldview this means they sucked so bad it was embarrassing, because ordinary isn’t competitive. When your job is cranking out proposals at high volume under adverse circumstances, people tend to give up polishing them. If people do this long enough, they sometimes stop trying. But they continue to reliably crank out acceptably adequate ordinary proposals that they try really hard to make good. But the reality is they are full of bad habits that pass all the reviews and are easy to beat. Having lots of experience with proposals like that does not make someone a great proposal writer. The problem is that instead of looking at trying to do better as polishing or something that comes at the end and is easy to skip, we should be designing the proposal to win from the beginning so that it’s the clear winner, even if it doesn’t get polished. But when you don't control the win strategies, don't have adequate input, and are struggling just to make the deadline, or are pigeonholed into back-end production, that doesn't even get considered or is treated like it's someone else's job. The list below shows the difference between focusing on completion and focusing on winning. The thing that I find striking about it is what it implies about the things that need to be done before the writing even starts, how the proposal function should be organized, and how to create the culture needed to win consistently. If you look carefully, you’ll see the core principles behind the pre-proposal and proposal processes behind the differences. See also: Great Proposals Doing a proposal means responding to what they asked for. Winning a proposal means offering a response that the customer thinks is better than all the others. Doing a proposal means offering something based on the best practices. Winning a proposal means offering something that will beat the competitors who merely propose the best practices. Doing a proposal means complying with the RFP requirements. Winning a proposal means applying your compliance with the RFP requirements to achieve more of the customer's goals than anyone else. Doing a proposal means proving you are qualified. Winning a proposal means proving that your qualifications will provide superior results. Doing a proposal means making claims about your company and your offering. Winning a proposal means writing proof points to demonstrate instead of claiming. Doing a proposal means declaring your intentions and promising to do great things. Winning a proposal means delivering results and deleting the promises. Doing a proposal means saying you understand the customer and what they want. Winning a proposal means proving you understand the customer by offering the results they want delivered in the way they want. Doing a proposal means talking around the subject to sound like you know it. Winning a proposal means giving the evaluators what they need to see without distractions. Doing a proposal means following the instructions in the RFP. Winning a proposal means showing the evaluators what they need to decide you are their best alternative and to give you the highest score. Doing a proposal means stating your case. Winning a proposal means passing the “So what?” test. Doing a proposal means telling your story. Winning a proposal means telling a story about the customer that happens to have you playing a starring role. Doing a proposal means carefully crafting the outline before you start writing. Winning a proposal means identifying the points to be made and how to present them in every section and subsection. Doing a proposal means carefully reviewing the draft proposal. Winning a proposal means validating the proposal against written quality criteria based on what the proposal needs to be. Doing a proposal means carefully producing the final copy without defects. Winning a proposal means prioritizing your efforts based on what it will take to win. Doing a proposal means making the most of what you know about the customer, opportunity, and competitive environment. Winning a proposal means developing an information advantage and using it to show more insight than anyone else. Doing a proposal means getting the writing started so you have enough time to do all the revisions you’ll need to turn it into something good before you run out of time. Winning a proposal means discovering what it will take to win, figuring out what to write about, and how to present it all before you start so that the very first draft reflects it all and you can improve from there. Doing a proposal means writing it all out in text because you don’t think you have time to prepare graphics or consider yourself an artist. Winning a proposal means figuring out which parts of the proposal are potential graphics before you start writing so that you can build the proposal around them. Doing a proposal means trying hard to write something that wins. Winning a proposal means winning before you start to write. Is your company focused on doing proposals or on winning proposals?

Here is a list of all the features you can use in the MustWin Now Pre-Proposal Capture tool and how to use them. They can be combined with the other tools in many different, creative ways to help you with your proposals. If you want to explore you can use this list to make sure you know how it works. If you find something isn't self explanatory or confusing, just let us know and we'll walk you through it. To work through the script, select an RFP. Which one hardly matters. Since the goal is to try every feature without impacting a real pursuit, think of this as training and remove the pursuit you create by following the script when you are done. Pre-Proposal Capture This tool is for collecting information about a wide range of topics. It is intended to guide intelligence gathering during the pre-RFP phase of pursuit. It is especially useful when combined with the win strategy tool because it enables you to drive your insights into the proposal. It is based on completing question and answer forms. # Feature Instructions 1 Go to the Pre-Proposal Capture Q&A Tool On the main dashboard for your pursuit, the list of tools available is in the column on the left. Click on a tool to go to it. Some tools have prerequisites. For example, it doesn't make sense to enter the Cross-Reference Tool if you haven't imported the RFP yet. Find the Pre-Proposal Capture Q&A Tool and click on it. 2 Add a new form to the pursuit Under the "More questions you can add to this pursuit tab" in the left sidebar, click the "+" icon to the right of the name of the form you want to be used for on this pursuit. Then, select the people that you want to assign to the form and click "Continue". If you have not been assigned a form, you won't be able to contribute to answering the questions. For now, just assign it to yourself. 3 Complete a pursuit form On the left sidebar under "Assigned to you", you will see which forms you should be working on. Click on any of them, type your answers into the text boxes and click "Save." The goal is not to answer every question, but to answer those you can. A useless or obvious answer doesn't help anyone. But it's okay for training purposes. 4 See the forms with unanswered questions Select the green "Show me.." button and select "Unanswered questions". Now you can see and work on the forms that haven't yet been completed. Click "all questions" to go back to seeing all of them. 5 Expand/collapse the category of forms To choose which types of forms you can see at any time, click the banner with the arrow. You can focus on "Assigned to you," "More questions you can add to this pursuit," and "Pursuits you are assigned to". 6 Edit a Q&A form Choose any form from the left sidebar. Then click on the "Form Actions" dropdown menu and select "Edit form". This enables you to tailor the questions and guidance on the forms. For example, you might have customer or pursuit-specific questions you'd like to add. Only Configuration Managers can change the Q&A Forms. 7 Delete a form Choose any form from the left sidebar. Then click on the "Form Actions" dropdown menu and select "Delete form." Now this form will no longer appear. 8 Hide a form Choose any form from the left sidebar. Then click on the "Form Actions" dropdown menu and select "Hide form". This enables you to hide the form from your users without deleting it. 9 Save a form as a System Form Choose any form from the left sidebar. Then click on the "Form Actions" dropdown menu and select "Save as System Form". This is used to (…) 10 Change the form assignments Choose any form from the left sidebar. Then click on the "Form Actions" dropdown menu and select "Form assignments." This is used to edit who can edit/complete the form.

Here is a list of all the features you can use in the MustWin Now Proposal Input tool and how to use them. They can be combined with the other tools in many different, creative ways to help you with your proposals. If you want to explore you can use this list to make sure you know how it works. If you find something isn't self explanatory or confusing, just let us know and we'll walk you through it. To work through the script, select an RFP. Which one hardly matters. Since the goal is to try every feature without impacting a real pursuit, think of this as training and remove the pursuit you create by following the script when you are done. Proposal Input Forms This tool is for quickly assessing what you know at the start of the proposal effort to inform proposal writing. It is similar to the Pre-Proposal Capture Forms tools, only its intended to aggregate what you know instead of guiding research. The two can be used separately or together. Proposal Input Forms can also be combined with the win strategy tool to enable you to drive your strategies into the proposal. # Feature Instructions 1 Work on one of the Proposal Input Forms Proposal Input Forms work exactly the same as the Pre-Proposal Capture Q&A Forms. The lists of questions and the purpose are what's different. Instead of prompting research, the goal of the Proposal Input Forms is to assess what you know that can be used in the proposal. To try using the Proposal Input Forms Tool, follow the same script provided for the Pre-Proposal Capture Q&A Tool.

If you ever find yourself competing against me, please use these themes! I want you to use these themes because they are easy to beat. They basically promise the minimum. They demonstrate insecurity, lack of insight, and zero initiative. They sound like the claims people expect to hear made in bad commercials. They get ignored. They will never increase your evaluation score. They usually find their way into proposals when the writers haven’t received any better input and have to make something up on their own. So if you and I are ever working on competing proposals, I would love it if you use these themes. Because I won’t… See also: Themes We have the capability to fulfill all of the requirements. I have the capability to run 50 yards. Does that mean I should be in the Olympics? Even when the customer asks about your capabilities, that’s not what they really want to know. They only ask to weed out people who aren’t qualified so they don’t have to evaluate those proposals. Out of the ones that are remaining, the ones that all meet the minimum qualifications, they can take your capability as a given and instead want to know if you can deliver as promised and if you have more value to offer than any other alternative. In my proposal, I will deliver results because of my capabilities and deliver options because of them that go beyond the requirements. I’ll make sure our proposal is qualified and compliant, but that’s not what I’ll focus on. You can focus on merely being capable of fulfilling the requirements all you want. Our proposal is fully compliant with all requirements of the RFP. Compliance is critically important. It’s how you get a chance to compete. It is not how you win. Everyone who makes the cut will also be fully compliant. Featuring compliance is a bit like saying you’re willing to do the minimum. I’m going to focus on differentiation and adding value. Above the minimum. Way above it. As far above it as I can drive it. We are the industry leader. Most of the proposals the customer evaluates will make this same claim. And none of those claims matter one bit. I doubt a single customer anywhere has cited “they are the industry leader” on a proposal evaluation form. Hardly any customers reading that believe you, unless it’s so true it doesn’t need to be said. This means that what most of your customers learn from this theme is that you are not trustworthy. Please use it when competing against me. I’ll find something of substance to say. We are highly experienced. Everyone who is a competitor will be sufficiently experienced. The number of years beyond sufficiency is hardly worth mentioning. Amongst those sufficiently experienced enough to be worthy of consideration by the customer, experience does not matter. Unless you make it matter. What is it about your experience that makes you a better selection than someone else who is also sufficiently experienced? That may be a difficult case to make. But unless you can make it, featuring your experience will not be enough to win. If I decide that experience is a differentiator at that stage of evaluation, it will be on how the customer will be impacted by my experience. And it will matter. We understand. “We understand the work.” “We understand you.” “We understand the importance of [fill in the blank].” The only problem is you haven’t actually said you’ll deliver anything of value to the customer. And you haven’t proven anything. All of your competitors will be able to make similar claims of understanding, and most probably will. Saying that you understand because you are experienced won’t help either. Because they will be similarly experienced. Understanding is best proven and not claimed. When I want to show understanding, it will be by delivering the results the customer wants, delivered the way the customer wants them delivered. Take one of your past proposals and count how many times these claims were used. These five claims seem like they matter. They sound good enough to pass many internal proposal reviews. But if you use these themes you will not be competitive. Because everyone who is competitive will be able to make these claims. You need something better to win. While you focus on claims like these, your competitors will be focusing on things that matter more.

Submitting low quality proposals and making it up in volume is a bad strategy. A better strategy is to target doing the least costly things that return the most revenue. When it comes to proposals, the things that generate the most revenue may not be what you think they are. A key lesson for companies that depend on proposals See also: Successful process implementation Preparing a proposal can be costly. But preparing a winning proposal returns a large amount of revenue. The problem is that not every proposal wins. When you increase your win rate, you gain revenue without additional cost. If you produce 5 proposals in order to win one, and you make improvements so that you only need to produce 4 proposals to win one, you will increase your company’s revenue 25% on average (the increase from a 20% win rate to a 25% win rate). That 25% increase in revenue will come without producing any extra proposals. The only cost will be what it will take to improve your chances of winning. That will be much, much lower than the 25% increase in revenue it returns. Maximizing your proposal return on investment Is there any other way to increase your revenue by 25% with a lower investment? If so, do that too. But still focus on improving your win rate. The flip side of this is that by under-resourcing proposals and cutting costs in a way that impacts your win rate, you could be losing 25% of your future revenue. Test it. Track it. Measure it. If you aren’t tracking how the things you do and the decisions you make impact your win rate, you’re really not trying hard enough to maximize your return on investment. How do you improve your win rate? There are lots of little things you can do. But instead of focusing on techniques, it’s better to start by focusing on strategy. Your win rate depends on the customer giving you the best score. Your proposal must be constructed to maximize this score. Your proposal must present what the customer wants to see in such a way that they can give it a top score, rather than presenting what you want to say about yourself. This in turn makes the entire proposal process about discovering what the customer wants to see and then building your proposal around that. Your revenue depends on getting both sides of the last item right: Discovering what the customer wants to see requires insight that comes from making contact, doing your research, and developing empathy for the evaluator. Building your proposal around what the customer wants to see requires developing a content plan for your proposal that positions your strengths in a way that supports the customer’s needs and preferences. So how do you achieve these things? You've come to the right place! We've been writing about how to discover what it will take to win for decades. We've spent a similar amount of time writing about how to refactor and reengineer your proposal process. And all along we've focused on maximizing win rates and return on investment. Signs that you're doing it all wrong If your proposals are very descriptive and procedural they tend to be all about you and what you do, instead of being about the customer. Search your proposals for the word "will" and you'll see what I mean. If your proposals are based exclusively on the RFP, they don't show any real insight into the customer, their environment, stakeholders, or their concerns. How can you expect the customer to accept your proposal if you don't talk about what the customer is trying to achieve or anything beyond doing what they asked for? If you don't position your proposal in any particular way other than as competent, then all you are doing is competing on price. If you don't provide input to the proposal team that includes insights about what matters regarding the customer, opportunity, and competitive environment, then no matter how they try, you'll end up with a mediocre proposal. You can expect to lose more proposals than you win. Probably a lot more. Maybe you can get by like that, but you won't prosper to your full potential. You won't maximize your ROI. Proposal cost and benefits The cost of doing what it will take to win is less than what your business loses through not doing it or minimizing the effort you put into your proposals. Discovering what the customer wants to see in your proposals before you write them is one of the lowest cost things you can do to maximize your revenue. If you are going to be in the business of bidding competitively proposals, then be in the business of preparing proposals that better reflect what the customer wants to see than those of your competitors. Being in the business of preparing low-cost proposals based only on what’s in the RFP and saying great things about yourself will not turn you into a competitive company. Or maximize your revenue. No matter how many you submit. You can’t make up for mediocre proposals by doing them in volume. Keeping proposal costs low so you can do more of them will actually increase your costs and lower your ROI because you’ll be paying to lose more often. Your competitors will submit fewer proposals and end up with more revenue. And you’ll be left desperately searching for more RFPs to bid, as long as you try to make up for it in volume.

A simple guide to what to write about in your proposals. Good things to write about in your proposals See also: Proposal writing These are the things the customer is looking for, the things they want to see. Instead of talking around them, make a point related to them at the start of each paragraph. Explanations and reasons “why.” The reasons why you do things show more insight and depth of understanding than a claim about what you do or how great you are. Proofs. Proof points can be evaluated as strengths. Things that are unproven are often just noise. Details. Providing details can earn confidence and show that you know what to do. It’s not the claim of having a process that matters. It’s the steps. It’s not the claim of being qualified that counts. It’s the details. Differentiators. You must be different in order to be better. Customers often evaluate by looking for the differences between your proposal and the others. Visuals. Seeing is believing and an illustration is easier to process than a bunch of text. Replace as much text as you can with visuals. Bad things to write about in your proposals The evaluator doesn’t want to read your proposal. So filling your proposal with things that sound good to you but don’t actually help the evaluator assess your proposal may make you feel good, but it won’t help you win. In fact, it may hurt your credibility and do more to lower your score than raise it. No matter how beneficial it sounds or how pleased with yourself you are for writing it. Claims. Look carefully at what you just wrote. What did you claim? If you claimed anything without an explanation or proof, consider deleting it. Unsubstantiated claims are not likely to be evaluated as a strength. And because they hurt your credibility, they are more likely to hurt your score than raise it. Descriptions. Descriptions may inform, but they do not show insight. Sometimes they are really just claims. Don’t let the RFP fool you by asking you to “describe” your approaches. What the customer really needs to know is whether you are credible and whether your approaches address their concerns and will deliver the results they are looking for. Beliefs, commitment, intentions, or values. Not only will these never get scored as strengths, but they can take something that might have been a strength and water it down. Instead of being committed to something, just do it. Talking around the point. Instead of building their proposals around the points they want to make, stating those points, and then substantiating them, many people talk around the subject until they find a point and don’t make it until the last sentence. The customer may have skipped to the next paragraph by then because you weren’t saying anything they could evaluate. Get straight to the point you want to make in the very first sentence, and then substantiate it. Anything that does not pass the “So what?” test. After each sentence ask “So what?” If the sentence doesn’t pass the test, it needs to be deleted or fixed. Every single sentence in a proposal needs to pass the “So what?” test. If it doesn’t, then either delete the sentence or fix it. Plus some things you can skip writing about in your proposals These subjects are important. But you can’t simply make claims about them. Focus on what you do about them and not claiming the word. Compliance. Your claims about it or your intention to deliver it simply do not matter. The customer will be the judge of compliance. The things you do to achieve it, on the other hand, do matter. "We will comply with everything in the RFP" will not score highly (or at all). Proving that all requirements will be fulfilled, checked, and double-checked will improve your chances greatly. Strengths. You don’t need to tell the customer your strengths. You do need to prove that you have them and what the impact will be. Proof can earn you recognition. Customers pay attention to proof statements. Claims about your strengths are often ignored. And when they earn you an eye roll, they do more harm than good. Your understanding. Your claim about understanding or description of the customer or project do not demonstrate understanding. You are not helping the customer perform their evaluation by telling them things they already know. Besides, understanding needs to be demonstrated and that’s best done through results. If your approach delivers the right results, in the right way, and addresses their concerns, then it’s obvious that you understand. Show your insights and the reasons why you do the things you do. That is how the customer can see you understand what you are doing.

When the customer asks you to describe your experience, what should you write about it? Should you describe the work you did? Should you describe the results you achieved? Should you talk about something else? It turns out that when the customer asks for your experience, they could be could be asking for many different things. Past performance See also: Themes Past performance is something different from corporate experience. Past performance is a reference check to discover whether the customer was happy with your performance, with some additional information requested so they can determine if it is relevant to them. They often define relevance as size, scope, and complexity. So was it comparable in size, were the type and extent of the work similar, and was it just as complicated or difficult as what they need? They are not interested in your claims of greatness. It’s a reference check and they’ll check that for themselves. They do want to know whether the reference is for a project that is similar to theirs. Sometimes customers ask for experience as a proof of capability. They know that companies will say anything about their capabilities to win a proposal. So a request for past performance is a reference check. And while, as they say in the stock market, “Past performance is no guarantee of future results,” it does demonstrate that at least you’ve done it before and presumably are capable of doing it again. It’s a more reliable indicator than a vendor’s claim of capability. Corporate experience Corporate experience is more broad than a reference check. It can be anything from a citation or anecdote, to a project description. Corporate experience opens up the discussion to projects that don’t have to be exact matches. Corporate experience can be meaningful if it demonstrates you have relevant resources, capabilities beyond what they’ve asked for, coverage of their requirements, or other beneficial considerations. When the customer asks for your corporate experience with no further explanation, take a look at the evaluation criteria in the RFP and see what they are focusing on. Is it results? Is it relevance? Or knowledge, resources, staffing, innovation, or something else? What one customer might care about regarding your experience may be different from what the next customer cares about. Be very, very careful reusing your project descriptions. When they ask about the experience of your staff, they are asking for whether they’ve ever done what they’ll be doing on the new project. They could be looking for proof of capability. Or they could be looking for insights and lessons learned. They could be looking for how they work and not just what they’ve done before. They could be trying to gauge whether they’ll speak the same language and what they’ll be like to work with. If they ask for a resume, they might be looking for something specific. So don’t assume that they just want a work history. Making the evaluation objective Customers struggle with comparing apples to apples and with justifying their decisions. So they frequently ask for things that are easy to evaluate, even though they have other concerns. For example, they might ask for your years of experience. That's nice, objective, and easy to evaluate. Unfortunately, it's also nearly meaningless. Just because the company did a project, doesn't mean that anyone involved in it will be involved in the new project. It doesn't mean that any of the policies, procedures, or information assets developed from the old project will transfer or even be relevant to the new project. So give them what they asked for. And do it well. But also address what they are really concerned about and what really matters to them. Focus on getting the top score You should always write about your experience so that the new customer will give you the best score. If you talk about the things you did but the new customer is more concerned with your ability to overcome the challenges and risks, you won’t get the best score. And vice versa. Just don’t assume that writing about experience is cut and dry — even if the RFP makes it seem so. If you think you know what "experience" is, there’s a good chance the customer is concerned about something else. So drop your preconceptions and discover what the customer is really looking for when they use the word “experience.”

How should you position your experience to get the best score? You may need to position things differently in different sections of the proposal where experience is relevant. Make sure you thoroughly tailor any experience write-ups you might be reusing to match the way you will be positioning it. You can’t be all things to all people. What matters about your corporate experience to the new customer? Don’t try to position against all of these that sound beneficial. Carefully select the ones that will have the most impact on the proposal evaluation and tailor your write-ups around them. Examples of ways to position your corporate experience: Capabilities. Capabilities are easily claimed but difficult to prove. Customers often turn to experience as a proof point for capability. When this is the case, write about your experience as proof of your ability to do the things required by the RFP. Innovation. How do you prove your claim that you will be innovative? One way to do that is through past examples of things you did that were innovative. Responsiveness. If the customer is concerned about responsiveness, then a demonstration is better than a claim. Show that you’ve been responsive in the past. Size. Is your experience relevant? Can you show past projects that were comparable in size to the new project? Scope. Is your experience relevant? Can you show that your past projects covered the same range of work, skills, locations, or other scope attributes? Complexity. Is your experience relevant? How did the difficulty and complexity of your past projects relate to what the RFP requires? Coverage of the SOW. Can you show that you have done everything required by the RFP? Achievement. What did you accomplish that’s noteworthy and relevant to the new RFP? Accomplishments trump claims. Proven approaches. Can you show that you have implemented all of the approaches that you are proposing, and that they have been proven under similar conditions? Resources. Do you have sufficient depth and breadth? Do you have enough depth of resources to cover all contingencies and to deploy them quickly when needed? Do you have breadth of resources to cover every type that might be required? Proof. What claims in your proposal can you use experience to prove? Can you make the proof itemized, quantified, or evidence-based? Customer satisfaction. Was the customer happy with your performance? Would they do business with you again? Did they ask for more? Did they see a positive return on their investment? Did they say nice things about you that you can cite as testimonials? Risk mitigation. Everyone claims to be the low risk provider. What does your experience demonstrate about your ability to mitigate risks? Challenges. Every project has challenges. Have you overcome challenges like the ones the new customer is concerned about? Sometimes how you handle challenges matters more than how you handle the day-to-day routine. Examples from your experience can carry more weight than claims about your ability to meet the challenges. Surges. Everyone says they can handle the peak workloads. But that’s just talk. What kind of surges have you handled in the past? Quality. Everyone says they will deliver the highest quality. Can you prove the quality of your past work? Speed. Can you deliver quickly enough? Can you meet the deadlines? Is your project schedule real or a work of fiction? What is your past track record? Make sure you provide details and don’t just claim you have a great track record of on-time delivery. Exceeding the specifications. How many times have you written that you will “meet or exceed” the specifications in the RFP? How many times did you prove it? If you have actually done it, then you should consider featuring that in your project descriptions. Formalization and maturity. If your new customer is looking for the kind of expertise that helps the customer formalize and improve the maturity of their processes, helps them reduce chaos, improves repeatability, traceability, and all that process goodness, then instead of simply describing the tasks you performed on previous contracts, consider describing how you introduced more formal and mature processes and the benefits they brought to your previous customers. Executive oversight. I’ve seen a lot of proposals say that some high-level executive will be personally responsible for customer satisfaction or similar words. Quite often the customer may only interact with that executive once or twice a year. If that level of responsiveness will matter to your new customer, then show how actively involved your executives have been in the past and what a difference it made. Improvements. Sometimes a customer needs to make improvements or turn things around. The work you’ve done that brought benefits to previous customers can often be positioned as similar improvements. You might even be able to position the improvements as change management. Solutions. There is a big difference between services to operate or maintain something and services needed to solve a specific problem. This is true even though many projects contain elements of both. Because of this many projects could be positioned as either one. Stakeholders. Some contracts benefit the customer’s stakeholders more directly than they do the customer. And sometimes there are a number of stakeholders who interact with a project. Make sure you are positioning your experience to focus on the right parties. Foundation building. If the customer is preparing for the future, they may see value in experience that shows you built a foundation for your previous customers and how it benefited them. Flexibility and adaptation. Sometimes the customer isn’t sure what will happen over the life of the contract. And even though there will be a contract with pricing based on the requirements in the RFP, they may desire flexibility. Flexibility is easy to promise, but challenging to deliver. Examples from your past can help you substantiate that you really are flexible. Claims that you will partner with the customer and work collaboratively are similar. Staffing. I have seen a lot of proposals promise that a company will fully staff the project on-time because it has dedicated recruiters. But how reliable is that? If on-time staffing is important to your new customer, consider citing examples of how quickly you’ve staffed previous contracts. The same applies to retaining the incumbent contractor’s staff or retention in general. Lies, damn, lies, and statistics. What can you quantify? What can you aggregate across all your projects? Or your entire team? If you can’t roll up the numbers and show statistics, then cherry pick the numbers or provide anecdotes. Sometimes a single example is more credible than all your claims. Tools. If specific tools are important to the customer or critical to the success of the project, instead of organizing your experience by the tasks performed, consider organizing it by the tools you used and the benefits that resulted from how you used them. Budget. Every customer is concerned about cost overruns. Some projects are particularly susceptible to them. Saying you won’t go over budget just won’t cut it. Showing examples from your past projects where you’ve come in under budget is a lot more credible. A few more considerations Consider showing your experience in a table or matrix. Projects in rows and SOW requirements as columns. Or projects in columns and skills as rows. You can use dots or colored backgrounds at the intersections to show coverage, depth, or breadth. You can also add dates or quantities. A matrix makes for a great introduction or summary of your experience. Consider using the examples above for competitive positioning. All of the examples above can be used to show why you are better than your competitors, and not just for positioning your experience. They are even potential ways to differentiate your proposal. This is because it's really a list of things the customer might care about. Everything in a proposal should be positioned against things that the customer cares about. You want to submit the proposal that the customer cares about the most, because it best reflects the things that matter to them. Make sure the previous customer agrees. It is entirely possible when writing positioning copy to turn something minor into the primary focus. If there is even the potential for a reference check, make sure that the previous customer agrees with how you have characterized your experience. If there is any disagreement, no matter how defensible you think your claims are, it could damage your chances with the new customer. Positioning your experience should be about perspective and not completely changing the nature of what you did.

What goes through the customer’s head while they’re evaluating your proposal? In addition to all of the distractions like what time they have to pick the kids up from school today or what they’d like to do after work, the customer has a lot to consider when deciding whether to accept your proposal. Even if the evaluation is conducted formally by a robot, with forms and detailed procedures, they will still consider the big picture. But what’s in that picture? The customer will consider your approaches, qualifications, and pricing. But they will also consider: See also: Information Advantage Is it enough? Big enough, small enough, cheap enough, expensive enough, fast enough? Their own environment The risks they face Whether they can trust you Their preferred approach or solution How much confidence they have in your proposed offering What the future will be like if they accept your proposal Their aspirations for the future Their disappointments Their questions Things they’d like to try Things they’d like to avoid Whether you speak the same language they do (and nationality might have nothing to do with it) What they’ll have to do if they accept your proposal Whether they want to work with you Things that have changed or are going to change Whether they want the kind of change you are proposing Pricing and financial considerations Contractual matters Rules and regulations Standards, measures, and specifications Conflicts for their attention The problems encountered with other vendors in the past External pressures Input from all of their stakeholders Timing Trends What they know. And what they don’t know. The path of least resistance Whether they could be making a mistake Whether there will be resistance to their decision Accountability What their organization needs What they as an individual prefer When a company that thought they had the opportunity wired loses, there’s a good chance it’s because they missed one of these. When someone tells you "they know" what the customer wants, ask them questions based on these. We rarely know the customer as well as we might claim. But the better way to look at it is as ways to get to know the customer. I mean really get to know them. Think of this list as discussion topics. When the customer sees you as an asset instead of a vendor and cares enough about you as a person to share their world, these are topics to explore. However you approach it, your win probability is determined by how well you know all the things the customer will consider during evaluation. The reason we use terminology like “discovering what it will take to win” and “building an information advantage” in the MustWin Process that is available to PropLIBRARY subscribers is that knowing more of these things than your competitors gives you a critical advantage over them. Of course, that’s only true if you: Convert the intelligence you gather into insights that will impact the proposal Use your insights to position what you offer in your proposal in ways that prove you are the customer’s best alternative Demonstrate to the customer that you are the most thought through vendor Add the most value Prove that getting to know each other is worth the investment you both made and point to the even greater things your continued partnership will achieve in the future The premium content PropLIBRARY subscribers gain access to shows you how to do all these things as well. Or you could just wait for the customer’s announcement, put effort into a proposal without any customer insights, and hope that today’s the day that all of your competitors' proposals will somehow be weaker than your proposal.

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Claims are lame. After having sat through countless debriefs, especially the ones where the customer evaluated based on strengths and weaknesses, I’ve realized some things that explain a lot about proposals: I have never seen a customer agree that any of the thousands of claims made in those proposals were a strength. The strengths cited by customers are almost always simple facts, like something you have or have done. The weaknesses they cited were usually things that weren’t said that the customer thought was important. It’s as if they didn’t even read your claims. It’s as if they only read your proof points. See also: Customer perspective That’s because the proof points are what they write down to justify giving you the award. They can’t take your claims to The Powers That Be and say they’re why they want to give you a contract. They need proof. That’s all they are looking for. Claims are statements of identity, self-descriptions, or self-assigned attributes. They are usually about your company or about what you are proposing. Any sentence starting with “We are…” is probably going to end with a claim. The worst claims are comparisons or statements of superiority, like “We are the industry leader in…” Or the dreaded “Our unique solution will…“ They often are slogans or sum up what you want people to believe about your company or solution. They are usually unsubstantiated and commonly used as introductions. Don’t. Just don’t. Don’t make claims. Don’t introduce yourself that way. It’s okay in commercials or in a brochure. It’s not okay in proposals. That’s because there is a difference between selling like you see in a commercial or in person, and selling in a proposal. Selling to an anonymous person who will make their purchase some uncertain day in the future is different than selling to a specific organization who is investing time to read the details and compare you to their other alternatives. Here is an example so you can see for yourself. Proposals get scored and not read. Claims get in the way of the things the evaluator can score. Claims detract. They hurt your credibility. From the evaluator’s perspective, they amount to saying a bunch of things that don’t matter instead of saying what does matter. As proud as you are of the things you claim, those claims are not going to increase your score, but they may reduce it. The details that prove your case, if they are also differentiators, are what add to your evaluation score. What about making a personal connection? If you drop all your claims, you can still show emotions, have charisma, and make a personal connection in your proposals. You do that by how you present your facts and proof points and not by making claims about customer satisfaction, commitment, understanding, or anything else. You can make an emotional connection by explaining why you do the things you do. The reasons why you do things demonstrates your understanding and intentions far better than claims of understanding or intentions. What about influencing the evaluator on a subconscious level? Most proposal evaluators don’t want to be there any more than most proposal writers do. What do you think they are concluding at a subconscious level if they have to read through a bunch of claims to find the details they can evaluate? Besides, why put effort into trying to “make an impression” or influence their subconscious when you could spend that effort focusing on the details they need to perform their evaluation? I think it’s the companies that don’t know how to prove their case that try to make nothing into something through some kind of subconscious influence. Trying to subconsciously influence the evaluator who has published their evaluation criteria and is required to follow it is demonstrating that you don’t listen and would rather try to talk yourself in the door than to do your homework. Besides, most claims will at best get an eye roll. I imagine the eye muscles of some proposal evaluators must get tired from all the claims they see. Try it. Read one of your past proposals, and every time you see a claim, roll your eyes. See how tired you get. What about branding? Branding takes on a different form in proposals. While in most places, branding can be described, in a proposal branding must be demonstrated. In a proposal, part of the evaluator’s job is to not take your word regarding who you say you are. Slogans will not hold up to that level of scrutiny. However, you can demonstrate your branding by how you position what you are offering the customer and how you deliver it. The reasons why you do the things you do can add up to what you’d normally claim in your branding, without ever making the claims. The proposal evaluators will assess what you will do, why you will do it, its relevance to them, and what it all adds up to. If you merely claim your branding, it will not be scored as a strength. But if you demonstrate your branding it can contribute to winning. What about making an impression? You have to at least be in second place before there is any hope of an impression making the difference in whether you win or lose. On the other hand, you can have a poorly formatted but well written proposal and still win. I’m not saying don’t try to make a good impression. But I am saying not to bother until after you’ve made your case. Proof points make your case. Once you’ve achieved the top score by proving your case, it’s nice to remove any doubts that might be lingering by having a polished presentation. A polished presentation can help demonstrate that you are the competent, quality minded company your proposal indicates. But a polished presentation can’t prove your competence or replace having a solid quality methodology. What should you do instead? Instead of making claims, make proof points. Proof points can turn your claims into strengths. For each claim you might be tempted to make, start over and make it a proof point. The need for the claim might even disappear. Do this in every section and every paragraph. Make a point that is proven in every one. Try it and see what it adds up to. Compare that to a past proposal that made a bunch of claims. Your customer’s proposal evaluators will silently thank you. In proposals, we talk a lot about making it easy for the proposal evaluators to do their job. We focus on structuring the proposal to put things where the evaluators expect to find them. But if you really want to make their jobs easier, give them the proof points they can score instead of a bunch of claims.

With government multiple award RFPs of huge value becoming routine, this is a good time to reflect on the customer and how the number of proposals they receive impacts how they make their selection decisions. What if they only get one proposal? If the customer only expects to get one proposal, or if that’s just the way it turns out, they approach the proposal with a few considerations: See also: Bid Strategies and Proposal Themes Does it meet their requirements? They have no other proposals to compare it to. So they compare it to themselves. Will it meet their needs? Can they do better? With no other proposals to compare it to, this is guesswork. Do they believe that they might find a better offer with some time and effort? Do they have the time to cancel and conduct another procurement? Should they cancel the procurement? Do they have rules that require more than one vendor response? What do they need to do to satisfy their procurement process when they only have one proposal? Do they need to go find someone else to bid? Will they consider the other bids or are they just to enable them to move forward with the one they really want? Winning when you are the only proposal is typically about showing them that you meet all of their requirements, do it effectively and competitively, and represent far more value than cost. It's only if the customer can get by without what they are procuring that you may also have to convince them to complete the procurement. What if they get several proposals? The first consideration if they have several proposals, is whether any fail the minimum requirements for consideration. If they do, and they follow “the rule of three,” they can consider the bid competitive and more easily move forward. But now they have to do a real evaluation and select one from amongst the alternatives. How do the bids compare to their evaluation criteria? Will they compare the bids to each other? Will they pick based on the differentiators? How will they handle any cost differences? This is the majority of procurements. It is why we focus on not merely being compliant and put so much focus on differentiation, relationship marketing, and developing an information advantage. You want to be the proposal they compare all the others to. Even if they don’t compare them, well-written differentiators are far more likely to register as strengths during evaluation. It also helps to be the company that they already know and trust, and not the ones that are unknown risks. But this is also where bad habits tend to set in. If you are compliant and there are only a few bids, you can win some of them just based on your qualifications, without putting a lot of effort into strategy or proposal writing. You won’t have the best win rate, but maybe you’ll get by and convince yourself that your bad habits “work” because you win one in five and are profitable. Some companies stay like this because they think it’s the best they can do in their circumstances and it becomes a comfort zone. The majority of companies are like this. It's easy to find a comfort zone and get distracted by everything else that goes into running your business. Comfortable and distracted, they don't realize that they aren't winning nearly as much as they could. Until something goes wrong. And then all those bad habits catch up with them. PropLIBRARY helps companies that want to be strategic and stay competitive. It contains so much information about win rates and return on investment and it shows how a little bit of effort can lead you to winning two to three out of five. The difference from one in five and three in five is huge and well worth the effort. PropLIBRARY shows how easy most companies are to beat. What if they get dozens of proposals? Now the customer can’t just read a few and compare. They need to be organized about it. The level of formality goes up. They need evaluation forms and scoring tables. They need excuses to throw some out to lighten the load. They need a team of evaluators. To win, you need to be compliant and not get thrown out. But compliance is not enough to win. You need differentiation. But you also need a scoring strategy. If your proposal is not intentionally optimized to maximize your score, your win rate will suffer. Having an existing relationship with the customer will give you some advantage, but the more bidders the more chances there are that someone new will score high enough to win. However, if you are to turn your relationship into an information advantage, you can also turn it into a potential scoring advantage. PropLIBRARY also contains dozens of articles to help you maximize your score. Winning a procurement like this usually involves focusing on the win strategies that separate your proposal from the pack and enable you to outscore the competition. It helps to have a solid proposal process that surfaces win strategies and focuses your team on getting the highest score and not just getting something submitted. What if they get hundreds of proposals? Now the customer needs an enterprise approach just to simply evaluate them all. They need to process the proposals and not read them. They will have a rubric for what they are looking for. How do you stand out from the pack? Ease of processing. If you're facing this kind of competition, don't put all of your effort into telling a story. Prepare your proposal for easy processing. Can the customer find what they are looking for? Have you anticipated what will make a difference and matter to the evaluators? If they are well organized, the RFP will provide their rubric. If not, you’ll need to guess it. The more narrative you have to supply, the more important it becomes to know how the rubric applies to the text. Once you know what they need to see in the text of your proposal, then you should ask yourself whether you buried it in a bunch of irrelevant self-gratifying noise. Or did you stick to RFP terminology and design your proposal to highlight the details they need to process your proposal quickly? Can they evaluate the text by processing it instead of reading it? Can you make it checklist-simple for them? Don’t expect to win based on claims. Expect to win on proof points. If each proposal makes dozens of claims and there are hundreds of proposals, the evaluator will gloss right over claims. Descriptions are almost as bad. Most descriptions, whether they are about your company, its approaches, or its experience, say very little that would actually impact the evaluation. Take any page from one of your past proposals, and highlight all the things you said that wouldn’t typically appear in the proposals of competitors responding to the same RFP, and aren’t just minor details or your grand aspirations. Everyone will be experienced. Everyone will have qualifications. Everyone will be compliant. The things that everyone claims will not get you the top score. But facts, numbers, examples, and details that matter and are succinctly highlighted get attention and are scored. You help the evaluator process your proposal by pointing out the details that are worth taking note of because they differentiate your proposal and make you worth selecting. The easier your proposal is to evaluate, the most like a checklist they can process, the more differentiated it is, the better your chances of winning. An example of this is the recruiting process. If you give them the typical sourcing, screening, selecting, and onboarding process, you’ll be just like everyone else. It probably won’t matter much if you’ve added more detail to each phase. With hundreds of proposals, they may not be drilling down to details like that. However, if you cite statistics and examples that demonstrate your ability to quickly hire and retain your staff under adverse circumstances, the numbers and details that make up your proof points will get noticed more than the same process noise everyone else will submit. If you hide the good stuff in the middle of paragraphs, they might never see it. But if you put things in tables, lists, or other visuals, or even just bold them, they stand a better chance of being seen. Just make sure they are not only worth being seen, but are also worth taking note of and awarding them evaluation points.

All proposals are competitive. Even if the RFP is completely wired to give the advantage to one preferred company and no one else bids, that company is competing against themselves. They can still blow it. And a naïve upstart can always come in and steal it away because they don’t know they can’t win. It may be rare, but it does happen. And customers are sometimes ready for something new. Which will the customer select? See also: Winning You should go into every proposal assuming it’s competitive and pushing to be better than you were yesterday. If everyone proposes the same best practices, who would the customer choose? You need to push past the same best practices so that what you propose is better than the “best” practices. What do you do that’s different from everybody else? And most importantly, why? The reasons why you do things differently are also the reasons why the customer should select you. Why is your approach better? Winning is competitive. Customers often select the winner based on what’s different about their proposals. They look for the differences and consider whether those differences make one vendor more attractive than the others. By highlighting the things that make your proposal different and the reasons why, you are halfway to articulating your differentiators and why you are the customer’s best alternative. The customer will compare your proposals to the other proposals It helps to do a competitive assessment, so you know who you are competitive against. After all, the customer is going to compare you to them. A competitive assessment will help you can position your strengths in contrast to their weaknesses. If you really do a good job of explaining yourself, you can turn their strengths into weaknesses. When you discuss why you chose the trade-offs that you did, there is nothing wrong with comparing the negative outcomes of selecting differently. And if a competitor happens to be taking a negative approach, that’s too bad for them. To do this, you need to know what your competitor’s strengths and weaknesses are in relation to the RFP requirements. You also need to know your own strengths and weaknesses. But most importantly, you will need to know why your strengths matter. It’s not enough to have a good approach, you need to explain why your good approach matters. Figuring out what to propose is full of trade-off decisions. Should you emphasize speed, performance, or cost? It helps greatly if you can make trade-off decisions that give you strength where your competitors are weak. It helps even more if you are sufficiently aware of the customer's preferences to choose the side of each trade-off that reflects the customer’s preferences. Why? But ultimately you’ll need to know why your approaches should get the top score. If you have the customer’s evaluation criteria, you need to describe your approach in ways that will maximize your score. A “best practice” that does not get the top score is a losing practice. The evaluation criteria are even more important than the SOW in determining what to offer. If you are figuring out your approaches based solely on the SOW and not on the evaluation criteria, your win probability will suffer. This is why winning competitive proposals has more do with the reasons “why” than the features you propose. Spend a little less time obsessing over your qualifications and the features of your approaches, and a little more on why those qualifications and features make what you are proposing the customer’s best alternative. After all, that’s what the customer is trying to figure out. The winner is usually the company who helps them with that the most.

Don’t start your proposal by thinking up everything that’s good about yourself that you should tell the customer. This can actually lead to bad proposal writing. Instead, start your proposal by think about what the customer needs to hear. But before you can do that, you have to know the customer. And before that, which person at the customer will be reading? Will it be the one receiving the services? The one who understands what is being procured? The one who runs the procurement process but isn’t involved with the services themselves? Will it be an executive? Or some other stakeholder? Will it be a junior staff member drafted into participating in the evaluation? What will their background and level of expertise be? What will their concerns be? Will they process your proposal like a robot, or read it like a human? You also need to determine what process they will follow to perform the evaluation and make their decision. Who will be involved? What will the level of formality be? If it is a government customer, then the process will be highly regulated. Your proposal may be scored instead of read. But whatever the process, it will be implemented by people. People who need certain information from you presented in a certain way in order to reach their decision. That’s where you should start your proposal. What do they need to see in your proposal in order to reach their decision? Keep in mind this happens in a competitive context. They need to see: See also: Great Proposals That the RFP instructions were followed That their performance requirements will be met What matters about what they are procuring and what they should consider That their goals will be accomplished by accepting your proposal The text that is relevant to the evaluation criteria so they can score it Proof that they can trust you to deliver on your promises What about your proposal makes it their best alternative That they can afford it and it’s worth any cost difference between your proposal and the others There are also some things they do not need to see: Unsubstantiated claims of uniqueness and greatness that make them roll their eyes, wish the evaluation was over, and damage your credibility. And cheesy slogans. Statements of “understanding” that don’t demonstrate any real understanding because they could have been copied from their website, even if paraphrased Any proposal writing that is not what they need to see that gets in the way of the things they do need to see. Also known as "fluff." Pages of proposal writing that are all about you, your qualifications, and what you will do, but are not about what the customer will get or how they will benefit from accepting your proposal Anything that fails the “So what?” test It’s not about you So forget about what you want to say in your proposal and instead help them evaluate your proposal and reach their decision. Make it easy for them. Format and present your proposal so they can find exactly what they are looking for. Drop all the noise that gets in the way. It’s not about your story Once you show the customer what they really need to see, you can focus on your message. Although you probably won’t have to, because it will already be there. If you give them what they need to see, not only will the attributes you would want some kind of “message” or “story” to deliver already be there, but they’ll already be in the right context for the customer to accept your proposal. The story that will be told will not be about you. Because you don’t matter. The story will be about the customer, what they will get by accepting your proposal, and why it’s their best alternative.

Early in my career, after a terrible proposal experience, I’d focus on improving the proposal process because that is what I had control over. I thought with the right procedures and enough dedication to them we could fix any problem. There are a couple of problems with that: The proposal process is not sequential. It is goal driven. You won’t be successful focusing exclusively on the steps. There is more to success than following procedures. Over time I discovered that what you should do to try to prevent a terrible proposal experience from recurring depends on the type of problem that caused it. Here are 5 things you can do based on the root cause: See also: Successful Process Implementation If you didn’t have the resources you needed, learn to speak the language of return on investment (ROI). Properly resourcing a proposal will return far more than the cost. Under resourcing a proposal will lose far more than it saves. This can be proven mathematically if you understand ROI and the math related to win rates. If you started at RFP release or got a late start, consider how you approach capture management. Being ready at RFP release requires a leader who can integrate every part of the company in the solutioning. This is what a capture manager does. Introducing capture management involves more than just hiring someone. Done properly it changes how a company goes about preparing to win a proposal. If assignments were late, consider all the possible reasons. It's not simply a matter of having better enforcement of deadlines. There are many reasons why proposal assignments don’t get done properly and there is no single answer for what to do about it. Cracking the code on effectively tasking and performing proposal assignments is critical to proposal success. If the proposal writers produced non-compliant or inadequate drafts, consider your approach to planning the proposal content. Did they have anything beyond the RFP to guide them? Did they have all the ingredients they needed? Did they know what they were supposed to prove? Did they know what context to put things in or how to position them? If they couldn’t answer these questions before they put pen to paper, they were destined to fail. Writing draft after draft until you run out of time is not a recipe for proposal success. Just a couple of hours spent on proposal content planning can have a huge impact on the outcome. If the proposal blew up during the review process, consider creating quality criteria to guide the review process. Doing this works best if you also address your approach to planning the proposal content before writing it. Can the proposal reviewers articulate what they should be looking for? If they can, why can’t they inform the writers before the writing starts? Proposal reviewers will rarely admit they don’t know what they are looking for, so instead involve them in the effort to create a set of proposal quality criteria for the proposal. They may be learning instead of contributing, but we don’t have to dwell on that. Let’s just be collaborative and involve the stakeholders to define quality in terms of what it will take to win this proposal. Once on paper, your proposal quality criteria can be used like a checklist to validate proposal quality by both writers and reviewers. What about training? Training helps with everything, but solves nothing. Training will make your future proposal experiences somewhat better, but will not eliminate the problems that lead to proposal tragedies, like resourcing, late starts, inadequate drafts, and disruptive reviews. The amount that training helps will depend on whether the training focuses on knowledge of the process and awareness, skills enhancement, or cultural issues. The wrong focus will reduce the effectiveness of the training. Don’t ignore culture The culture of the organization has a major impact on how people set their priorities. No amount of process or training can overcome a flawed culture that sets the wrong priorities. And while proposal management can influence the culture, at least as it relates to proposal development, cultural change requires executive leadership. Even if the executive leadership has ignored corporate culture in the past, good executive leadership will recognize the importance of creating a culture of growth. Achieving real change You can’t achieve real change without changing the culture. To change the culture you’ll need to retrain everybody, but this does not necessary mean doing it in the classroom. Real change rarely starts there unless it’s initiated at the executive level. Grassroots change happens by shifting the language people use to one based on ROI, introducing capture management, learning how to make assignments effective, figuring out how to plan your proposal before writing it, and defining proposal quality criteria. Focus on these things and you lay the foundation for cultural change when people recognize the need.

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First a little history: The first version of MustWin now came out two years ago. It started out as an R&D discovery that enabled us to turn Proposal Content Planning into a streamlined online activity. It opened our eyes to completely new ways of doing proposals long after we thought we knew what we were doing. The second version of MustWin Now then expanded the features to cover the entire process from lead identification through proposal writing. From it we learned how to design a platform that makes the process disappear for users so that they can just focus on doing what they need to do. We saw ways to reinforce that and that's what drove the third version. The new version of MustWin Now takes the previous toolset and adds a collaboration layer that addresses some of the key challenges people face when working together on proposals. MustWin Now is becoming a tool for managing the proposal effort, as well as a tool for driving your win strategies into the document. No, that’s not quite right. MustWin Now is Becoming a place to figure out what you need to do to win, how to work together on a document against a deadline, and how to drive all of your aspirations into your proposal. In addition to enabling you to make and track assignments and activity, it can be used to coordinate effort, collaborate on fulfilling assignments, schedule formal and informal reviews, ask questions, get help, and more. MustWin Now will track all these things so that you can see what has been done and what still needs to be done, much like an online whiteboard. Only it's a dynamic whiteboard that changes for each individual. If you want to focus only on your assignments, you can. If you want the big picture, you can see what's going on. If you want to approach things with a process of elimination, you can see just the things that are left to do. And for each thing that needs to be done, you can use the tools in MustWin Now to gather the information you need and figure out what to do with it to prepare a winning proposal. You can even use it to track and coordinate offline activity related to the proposal. It’s incredibly flexible and handles RFPs and proposals of just about any shape and size. For most users, they'll just do and interact. For proposal managers, they can shape the activity and the message. We like using what we built and that's a really good sign. How do you get your hands on it? All PropLIBRARY Subscribers will have access to MustWin Now. We’re going to give PropLIBRARY Subscribers a chance to get to know the new version by doing a simulated proposal. If you subscribe you'll be able to throw one of your RFPs at it and we'll walk you through all the new features. Got questions about the MustWin Now or want to participate in a simulated proposal with the new version? Click here to ask a question or get on the list to participate

It's true that the odds of winning a proposal when you have never even talked to the customer go down so much that it may not be worth bidding. But the fact is that sometimes companies win them, so let's look at when it's possible to win and what you can do to increase your chances. Occasionally, in some markets, no one gets to know the customer before they surprise the world with an RFP. It largely depends on the nature of what they are procuring. Bidding blind is not worth it. Except when it is. That’s a judgement call. It’s hard to be prosperous when the deck is stacked against you. When you bid a bunch of things with slim odds, it doesn’t increase your chances of winning anything. Each time you bid, the odds remain slim. If you have to write 20 proposals just to win one, it’s going to make proposals seem a lot more expensive than they should be. And you will be tempted to take shortcuts in proposal development that will lower your odds even further. Or fail to invest in doing things better. But sometimes you have reasons to bid even though you haven’t talked to the customer. And when that’s the case, you want to do it well and not hold back. I’ve won proposals for companies that had no prior relationship with the customer and hadn’t talked to them at all. Here are some of the things you can do to go from having a slim probability of winning to having a probability of winning that’s still slim but maybe a little bit better: See also: Dealing with Adversity Price always matters. How many times have you bought something from a new vendor simply because they had what you needed at a cheaper price? One strategy for winning a new customer is to intentionally undercut your competitors on price. But keep in mind that every proposal is a chance to ruin your past performance record. Winning a proposal but getting a bad reference can cost you more business than you might gain by winning this proposal. The secret to winning with a low price is to have incredibly low overhead. That’s easier to want than it is to achieve. Think about what it will take to get the customer to trust you more than the companies they already know. Even though the customer doesn't know you well enough to trust you, there's always the chance that the incumbent has lost the customer’s trust. Probably not, but what approaches can you offer that would make you more trustworthy than the incumbent they already know the limitations of? Think about what it would take for you to accept somebody else's proposal when you've never met them or never even talked to them. Then make sure that your proposal does all the things needed for you to be that company. Think about the specific things you can do to be more accountable and transparent. What can you to do make it impossible for things to go wrong? And if not impossible, then what you can do to catch and correct it immediately? You need your proposal to demonstrate that your approaches are so much more reliable that you are more worthy of your customer’s trust than the companies they already know. This is not easy, but it is sometimes possible. Can you get to know the customer after the award? While you are bidding without having any special insight into the customer or their requirements, you may be able to put in place a process for discovering their specific needs and applying what you learn to a specific plan of action that is more detailed and credible than any other proposal. A thorough discovery process that makes performance reliably traceable to requirements can be effective if the incumbent sleepwalks through their proposal and just says they’ll do things without explaining how or why. Prove everything you say. Don’t expect the customer to accept anything you say. You are a stranger coming in at the last minute with expectations of winning. Prove everything you say. Hopefully the other bidders will write an ordinary proposal full of unproven claims. Don’t claim you understand. Prove it. Don’t claim to be compliant. Prove it. Don’t claim to have the best solution. Prove it. Don’t claim to be qualified. Prove it. Prove everything. Align everything in the RFP. Show how your solution integrates the RFP instructions, performance requirements, and evaluation criteria. Use tables and illustrations to match everything they’ve asked for, and then match them to your key strengths. Achieving this will make you look more insightful and responsive to their needs than a competitor who doesn’t. Understand the difference between selling a commodity and selling a complex service or solution. If a commodity meets the specifications, the provider may not be that important to the customer. However, with complex services and solutions, the customer really needs to trust a vendor in order to accept them. Match your proposal strategies to the nature of what the customer is procuring. Profile the customer. You may not have met or talked to the customer, but you may be able to make educated guesses based on customers like them, the environment they operate in, their history, or their culture. Those guesses will have better odds of being right than if you avoid trying to write from the customer’s perspective because you’ve never met them. Do your homework better than companies who think they already know the customer. Put a ton of effort into writing from the customer’s perspective, and hope that those who do know the customer will get lazy and just write to the RFP. Study their stakeholders. If you can’t talk to the customer, talk to their stakeholders. Who do they serve? Who do they partner with? Who do they report to? How are those interactions? What issues do they face? How does this impact the customer’s needs and their decision-making processes? Gain insights. Use them to demonstrate that your proposal reflects a deep understanding of the customer’s environment. Talk to their exes. The customer may not be willing to talk to you. But what about people who used to work for the customer? Can you find any on LinkedIn or through networking? Can you hire them? Will they participate in your proposal as a consultant? Even if they can’t help you earn trust with the actual customer, can they help you gain the kind of insight into them that will enable your proposal to read like someone who’s not a stranger? Give them a path from where they are to where they need to go. Provide them with a change management solution that minimizes the impact of selecting a new vendor. Maybe even propose an approach that never mentions the scary word “change.” But do give them the path and make it look easy and reliable. If the incumbent offers continuity and the same great status quo, you can offer them a non-disruptive way to improve and meet their changing needs. Why would a customer that's not inclined to change, change anyway? Sometimes people and organizations change, even if they have to be dragged kicking and screaming to it. Why do they change? You may not have to convince the customer to change. You just have to provide them with an easy way to get their needs met. By understanding the reasons why they change, you can position your proposal to support what you hope they might already be thinking. “Hope” isn’t the best proposal strategy. But if it’s all you’ve got, do it well. Give the customer options. Demonstrate flexibility. Give them things to consider. Show that you are willing to consider the possibilities. Show that you are willing to adapt to their preferences. The incumbent might already know the customer’s preferences. Or they might not. Maybe they just did what they were told to do. Maybe you can discover a preference going unmet. Maybe. But it won’t happen unless you uncover and articulate it. It won’t just happen by them randomly seeing it in your proposal unless you intentionally put it there. Be responsive to their RFP and make no mistakes. Don’t screw up your proposal. Maybe the incumbent will screw up theirs. It’s not much of a strategy. But if you screw up your proposal you won’t even have that. Don’t: Kill your credibility with empty slogans, statements of understanding pasted from the customer’s website, unsubstantiated claims, or other such fluff. To win when the customer has never talked to you before you need pure substance. Ignore anything they’ve said in the RFP. All you know comes from the RFP. You need to show that you’ve paid attention and then added value. Simply submit a compliant proposal. The only reason the customer has to select you if you are merely compliant is the price. Unless you are doing everything it takes to have the lowest price, you need to give them some other reasons to select you, other than just your willingness to do what they asked for. Simply hoping to be a little better, a little better qualified, and somewhat more experienced than the others while claiming to be superior has very low odds of success. So either give them the lowest price or give them something demonstrably better. That something will be the reason they select you, so it has to be capable of unseating the incumbent and all your other competitors. Final thoughts There are reasons why the customer might not select a company it already knows. But you have to anticipate them and take a position in your proposal that helps the customer make that move. You can even make assumptions about why the customer might not select the incumbent and risk being wrong. Unlike the incumbent, you’ve got nothing to lose. And going from no chance of winning to the slimmest chance of winning is an improvement. But going from no chance of winning to the slimmest chance of winning habitually can actually destroy your company’s potential by replacing strategic growth with random wins. This approach will consume the resources you need for more strategic approaches. Whatever you choose to do, do it well. And if you bid opportunistically, don’t do it with ordinary proposals thrown together without much thought and minimal effort beyond simply responding to what they asked for in the RFP.

Some companies prepare their proposals like they are trying to ensure people are miserable. Some of them even take it as a point of pride that everyone hates working on proposals. If you make proposals easier, there will be less glory at the finish line. So maybe we’ve got it all wrong and need to avoid all that process-stuff. Instead let’s embrace making sure that everyone has a bad proposal experience. Here’s how: See also: Proposal Management Hand them an outline and tell them to start writing. This makes it almost a certainty that they will spend all of their time up until the deadline writing and rewriting while people grow increasingly unhappy and the pressure builds, until they finally submit the proposal that no one is really happy with. If it gets really bad, that’s when the blame games will start. So just let people start writing the proposal with just a blank sheet of paper, a heading, and a copy of the RFP. Don’t do this, even when they are begging to get started on the writing. One of the reasons we recommend Proposal Content Planning is that it scales so that you can manage the time available, but still add significant value even if you can only spare a minimal amount of time for planning before writing. Just a few instructions per section can make a difference! Don’t tell your proposal writers what the reviewers expect to see until the review. Reviews should be routine exercises that find zero defects but make some helpful suggestions about presentation. If this is not the case, you’ve done something wrong in how you set up the review, and not just in how you wrote the proposal. The proposal writers should know exactly what the reviewers will be looking for. And it shouldn’t be in vague terms like “a compliant solution with a compelling presentation.” How do writers objectively self-assess what’s compelling? Both the writers and reviewers should be working from the same set of quality criteria that works like a rubric. If kids in school can have rubrics, why not people working on proposals? The reason we recommend Proposal Quality Validation is because it provides them. Leave ambiguity regarding who is responsible for doing what and making which decisions. One of the biggest things that a proposal team can’t decide for itself is who is responsible for what. Who decides when to change the approach? Who decides which strategies are acceptable? Who decides how to word the theme statements? There are dozens of issues like these. The Proposal Manager is rarely the highest ranking person working on the proposal. As long as people remain cooperative, it’s all good. But when there are conflicts, it can be very destructive if people don’t have a way to get quick resolution. Power struggles, territories, and the ensuing passive/aggressiveness will ensure that everyone has a bad experience. Figure out what to propose by writing about it. What are your approaches? What should you offer? Writing narratives about them is the worst way to decide. It means you don’t validate your solution until you have a draft. And it means the only way to consider alternatives is to write draft after draft. Until you run out of time in a proposal death spiral. Proposal writing in search of an acceptable solution usually ends with a terrible deadline crunch, a proposal with a low probability of winning, and a group of people who hate working on proposals. This is why we recommend separating figuring out what to write from writing about it. Start writing before you can explain how you will win the proposal. If you can’t articulate how you are going to win, then you don’t know how you are going to win. You’re hoping you’ll figure that out through the act of writing. And that ensures endless rewriting cycles that almost never pay off. Don’t try to think by writing. You need this as input at the start of proposal writing so you know how to position things, can make your win strategies the point of every paragraph, and can write a narrative that substantiates the reasons why you should win. Figure out what to write by starting from a previous proposal. This is a different proposal sin. When instead of preparing a Proposal Content Plan and what you want to offer you try to take a shortcut by recycling a previous proposal, what you really get is a proposal written using terminology that doesn’t match the new RFP, points of emphasis that don’t match the new evaluation criteria, and a context that reflects the wrong customer concerns. People fall into this trap because they don’t realize that similar is not the same, and turning a similar narrative into what you need takes longer than writing something designed to match in the first place. You can take inspiration from boilerplate, but you shouldn’t use it as the starting point for writing. That is why we prefer using Proposal Recipes over reusing proposal text. Change the outline after the writing starts. One of the most disruptive things you can do to a proposal is change the outline after writing has started. You might not be able to properly fix the narrative because it was based on the previous organization and have to start over. Except that rarely happens and instead people end up submitting a patchwork proposal. This is why we recommend validating the outline before writing starts. Ignore the proposal until the end and then change everything to save it. Why do so many bad proposal experiences seem to involve a know-it-all who can’t be bothered to participate in the proposal effort until the last minute, when they declare it’s all wrong and needs them to save it? Give me a proposal professional over a last minute hero any day. Make supporting proposals obligatory instead of part of growth. Growth is the source of all opportunity in a company. Growth is both personal and corporate. Growth is the reason why people should want to work on proposals. People get to work on proposals. They shouldn’t have to work on proposals. Unless you're trying to create an environment based on compulsive drudgery. Move the goalposts. When you ask people to do something one way, you should forgive them if they think they’re done once they achieve that. If you ask them to do it again, but differently, you’ll probably feel some resistance start to kick in. Do that another time or two and you’ll probably see willing partners turn into people who are annoyed. Ignore their needs. They know what you need. You’ve assigned it to them. But what do they need? What do they need to remove their distractions and resolve their challenges? What do they need to be comfortable? What do they need to not feel overwhelmed? What do they need to understand it all? What do they need to have a great proposal experience?

Our tangible training programs are all based on exercises that create the tools you’ll need to be successful. Instead of just talking about process, we’ll create the checklists you can use to improve your process. Instead of focusing on steps and procedures, we’ll focus on goals and accomplishments. We’ll help you understand how to approach each topic, how to define success, and how to measure your progress toward achieving it. These are private sessions. Only staff from your company will participate. We will be able to discuss your specific circumstances, goals, and environment. We will tailor the course presentation and materials to be specific to your needs. This training is delivered remotely and is based on three 1.5-hour sessions. The exercises and course materials are based on our existing content library, but we will customize them as part of the course. The result will be checklists that are specific to your business, but enhanced through our content and training. Course sessions are scheduled at mutually convenient dates and times. The following four training topics are the most popular and all involve your participants creating and doing things of lasting value for your company. Course 1: Creating lead qualification and pursuit checklists This course provides business developers and capture managers with checklist-based guidance regarding what information to seek in order to maximize win probability. This is vital to improve beyond simply accepting what information you can find. It is an easy way to introduce some structure to the pre-RFP pursuit, without being burdensome. The checklists will help business developers and capture managers be more successful. They will also help executive sponsors to assess leads and the progress being made toward being ready to win at RFP release. Topics for Session 1: Introduction of course Topics: Checklists for lead qualification and determining what to offer Introduction of exercises [Participants complete exercises as a group and submit them 24 hours before next session] Topics for Session 2: Review of completed exercises Checklists for developing customer awareness, measuring customer intimacy, and competitive assessment and teaming Introduction of new exercises [Participants complete exercises as a group and submit them 24 hours before next session] Topics for Session 3: Review of completed exercises Feedback for finalization of checklists and implementation of process improvements At the end of the course you'll have tailored checklists as a tool that business developers and capture managers can use to make sure they aren't overlooking anything. You'll also have a tool executives can use to review and assess progress. As a result, your company will start more of its pursuits with an information advantage and improve its win rate. Course 2: Creating Proposal Input Forms This course will enable you to start your proposals with the information proposal writers need to be successful. Your team will learn how to quickly assess what proposal contributors know that could impact the way you write your proposal. This is vital to enable proposal writers to be capable of writing a great proposal. It will produce the forms your team needs to collect that input, enable more rapid proposal startups, improve your ability to plan before your write, and increase your win probability. Topics for Session 1: Introduction of the course Topics: How to create and use proposal input forms to gather input about your competitive environment, the incumbent contract, teaming, customer awareness and insights, and understanding the customer’s procurement process Introduction of exercises [Participants complete exercises as a group and submit them 24 hours before next session] Topics for Session 2: Review of completed exercises Topics: How to create and use proposal input forms to gather input about the opportunity, what you will be proposing, positioning, and win strategies Introduction of new exercises [Participants complete exercises as a group and submit them 24 hours before next session] Topics for Session 3: Review of completed exercises Feedback for finalization of forms and implementation of process improvements Course 3: Creating goal-driven proposal quality criteria checklists This course will produce a set of checklists that measure success during proposal development. The checklists will be based on the quality criteria that will define whether key goals have been achieved. They can be used to help proposal contributors to accomplish their goals or by proposal reviewers to determine whether the goals have been accomplished. They can even be used to define a goal-driven proposal process for companies that do not have one. Topics for Session 1: Introduction of course Topics: Quality criteria for proposal input, data calls, handoffs, outline, and compliance matrices Introduction of exercises [Participants complete exercises as a group and submit them 24 hours before next session] Topics for Session 2: Review of completed exercises Topics: Quality criteria for proposal content planning and improving proposal writing Introduction of new exercises [Participants complete exercises as a group and submit them 24 hours before next session] Topics for Session 3: Review of completed exercises Feedback for finalization of forms and implementation of process improvements Course 4: Proposal writing skills enhancement Send us up to 25 pages from one or more of your previous proposals. We’ll use them to select and tailor a set of exercises designed to prevent the problems we find from coming back in future proposals. Your team will practice identifying and fixing the problems. This can also be used as a train-the-trainer course, to provide a tool to key staff who can then use the technique to train others at your company. Topics for Session 1: Collaborative course planning session: Discuss findings from our review, the lesson plan for addressing the issues, and select the exercises we’ll use from the dozens we have to choose from [We tailor the selected exercises] Topics for Session 2: Introduction of course Discussion of the issues found in your company's proposals and how the exercises address them [Participants complete exercises as individuals and submit them 24 hours before next session] Topics for Session 3: Compare and contrast the exercises completed by participants so they can see things that worked well and things that didn’t Discuss the lessons learned related to completing the exercises, and how to better approach future proposals How to schedule your training Let's have a conversation to discuss your needs and how to move forward. Decide which of the courses you are interested in. You can take a single course or multiple courses. The courses are intended for a group at a single company. You can have as many participants as you want. You decide how to best balance whether having a small group or a large group will best meet your needs. If the group is large, we will cherry-pick which completed exercise answers we discuss. The three sessions can be scheduled over 3 weeks or 2 weeks. If we schedule all three in a single week, you risk people not being able to complete the exercises in between the sessions. The cost for the training described above is $2500 per course. After our discussion and dates are selected, we'll send you an invoice so you can pay online. If you need something specific, we can design a training program specific to your needs and give you a quote. We want our training to have the maximum impact possible. While each of the courses above involves a certain amount of customization, we regularly design complete tailored training programs for our customers. We can usually schedule your training within the next few weeks. For individuals who want to take these courses, we collapse the 3 sessions down to 2. You get all the attention and do all exercises. The cost is $1500 and comes with a $495 subscription to PropLIBRARY or credit for renewals. 

Sometimes it seems like the proposal schedule is a work of fiction or a plan that has failed before it has even begun. Sometimes you know the moment you give a proposal assignment that it will not be met. Sometimes you and the person getting the assignment both know it is going to be ignored and no one is going to enforce the deadline. When this happens routinely, it can make being a proposal manager discouraging and feel pointless. The trap you should avoid falling into is to assume that if only the deadlines were better enforced, it would all be better. There is more going on than mere deadline compliance. Many of the reasons that people miss their deadlines can be mitigated. It may not be hopeless. Here are some of the reasons why people miss their proposal writing assignment deadlines: See also: Proposal Management They don't have the information they need There is a disconnect between their expectations and yours Their current work wasn’t completed or delegated before they got the assignment They have competing priorities They need an uninterrupted block of time They need someone else's input They can't make the decisions required They're not sure what you want from them They're not interested in the proposal They have no incentive to focus on it They think it's a waste of effort They don't know how They are too important The RFP confuses them The assignment is too complicated and they are overwhelmed by it They don't understand the reader they should be writing for There are trade-offs, options, and considerations, and they don't know what to do about them They keep finding ways to make it better They can’t separate how they think things should be done from what the RFP asks for They don't know where to start No one has accounted for all of the ingredients that will go into their section They're trying to architect the solution while writing about it Many people need to have input and they don't know how to approach incorporating it They have a day job and the proposal isn’t it They don’t know the subject they’ve been asked to write about They’ve been given too much time to write it, got distracted, and ended up procrastinating Their assignment simply specified a proposal section and that’s not very inspiring They’re too busy looking for something previously written to write what’s needed now They don’t understand how much work needs to be done after they complete their assignment They see the deadline as a progress check and not a completion milestone They know there are holes they will be unable to fill, so what does a completion milestone even mean? They see their assignment as a best effort goal Nobody set any expectations for them regarding their involvement in the proposal prior to getting the assignment There is simply more that needs to be done to complete the assignments, than people assigned to do it Most of these are solvable problems for the proposal manager. But they aren’t solved by demanding that people meet their deadlines. They are solved by delivering the right information or guidance at the right time. And the failure to deliver that information is a proposal management process failure. Some of them are cultural and depend on how the organization has set expectations. But they point to possibilities that can help get assignments completed on time. Try asking yourself what can you do to: Prepare yourself and the writers before giving assignments Help people make sense of the RFP Help people balance their priorities Ensure the information and inputs people will need are there when they need them Surface and track impediments and issues slowing down the writing Eliminate distractions for contributors Accelerate the act of writing Accelerate figuring out what to offer Separate designing the offering from writing about it Give writers the information and guidance they need in addition to their assignments Ensure that all stakeholders have the same expectations Enable proposal authors to get it right on the first draft Prevent surprises during draft reviews Change the culture Explain the importance of growth and the impact on ROI Make their job easier Demonstrate the ROI of adequate resourcing Create an objective measure of success for what they are writing Why haven’t proposal managers already done these things? They probably have done some of them. But many of them are continuous efforts and not the kind of thing you only have to do once. It turns out that their reasons for not having done them are the same as the list of reasons above for why proposal writers miss their deadlines. So maybe a little empathy is called for. Instead of focusing your proposal management process on deadline pressure, try focusing it on the flow of information and guidance. Try focusing it on anticipating issues and helping each other. Deadline enforcement will be a constant struggle that you can’t win. Deadlines can always be met by sacrificing quality. Meeting deadlines requires a process and not an assignment. That process should be built around helping each other to win the proposal.

Going straight from sales to a proposal is problematical in a way that can lower your revenue. When a salesperson spends time working on a proposal, they are not finding and qualifying more leads. This can cause peaks and valleys in your growth. When the salesperson does not spend time working on the proposal, who is going to apply the customer, opportunity, and competitive insights discovered to winning the proposal? Without those insights, your win probability will suffer. Having a proposal manager will improve your ability to produce the document for submission and will increase your win probability. But without quality input, the proposal function can’t produce quality output. Capture management takes over from sales after a lead has been qualified. Sales finds and qualifies the leads. Capture management provides dedicated attention to pursuing the leads and brings the required inputs to the proposal in order to win. Capture management interacts with the entire company See also: Capture Management The capture management function is a lot more than just a sales facilitator. It is the sales closer. Capture management figures out what it will take to win and then integrates everything in the company in order to accomplish that. It takes companies from where everyone tries really hard to win but it isn't really part of their job to where the company has a dedicated focus on winning. Capture management works with technical staff to define the solution or offering. It works with pricing and technical staff to determine the price to win. It works with everyone who interacts with the customer to gain insight. It works with contracts to achieve compliance and on the representations, certifications, terms and conditions. It works with HR, Facilities, Finance, and potentially both accounts receivable and payable. Capture management works with everyone who can to contribute to the win. Capture management can be a change agent As a company, you have to decide what “works with” really means. And you have to decide how important is winning and all that “growth oriented culture” stuff and the financial impact of your win rate really is to you. Should the capture management function shape the solution/offering? Or merely ask someone technical to define the solution? Does the capture management function ask for cooperation, or does the capture management function define how the company should adapt to the customer? Does the capture manager have to ask nicely, beg, and cajole all of the people they have to work with in order to attempt to win? Or does the company serve its potential customers, and the capture manager represents them? Are you really a customer focused organization? Or do your silos determine how customer focused you are willing to be? These are high-level, executive philosophical questions. Do you want the silos to direct the company, or do you want the function that integrates everyone around growth strategies to direct the company? There’s room for collaboration, but these questions are worth consideration. They determine what experience and expertise you need in your capture managers, as well as what role they will play and what authority they should have. If you are just introducing capture management, answering these questions may require change. Introducing capture management gives you an opportunity to reconsider what you want your company to become, as opposed to simply adding to what you’ve already got. Introducing capture management is an opportunity to raise the bar on performance Introducing capture management is also an opportunity to add a little structure to how you do things. Introducing capture management means setting expectations that run in both directions with every part of the company. It means defining the inputs and outputs of each handoff and contribution. You don’t have to go all in on burdensome process detail. You can begin by simply discussing expectations, inputs, and outputs, and taking some notes. Introducing capture management makes your entire company perform better by raising the bar for everyone it touches. Which is everyone. Facilitating growth Introducing capture management will increase your win rate. Adding some structure will enable people, in all parts of the company, to perform at a level higher than they currently and informally do. Having that structure means that you have something to bring new people into and a way to support them already in place. It beats making it up as you go along every time. This means it's profitable to introduce capture management. It returns more than it costs. It orients the entire company toward growth. The ROI gift that keeps on giving By winning more of what you are already pursuing, capture management not only pays for itself and then some, it enables you to hire the people you need to do things right. This will also improve your win rate. Each improvement in your win rate will increase your ROI. It can lead to a virtuous cycle of ROI improvement. Unless It is possible to introduce capture management and fail. If you simply hire a “capture manager” and expect them to figure it all out, or if you start training capture managers without considering how you will change your company to maximize their impact, you’ll recreate the same problems you have now. Only you’ll have more people to retrain in the future. You should only implement capture management if you're ready to dedicate and focus attention on winning. If you're just going to dual-hat a project manager without training, don't expect to transform your company into a winning growth-machine. Capture management is not the sort of thing you can do half-way. Trying to do so may not even provide half of the potential return that implementing capture management can bring. Embrace the change When you realize that the way you are going from sales to proposals isn’t going to cut it anymore, it’s time to pause and reflect. What do you want your company to be like when it grows up and how do you want the various parts of your company to work together to accomplish that? It’s all fine and good to make it up as you go along when you’re small. But when do you stop doing that? When you are ready to transform your company, introducing capture management is a great place to start. The day you find yourself thinking about hiring a capture manager is the day to reconsider it all When you decide to go ahead and hire a capture manager, you should take advantage of the opportunity it represents. Use introducing capture management as a change agent. Use introducing capture management to stop defining roles by the person sitting the chair and start systematically defining roles by what needs to happen in order to win. Use introducing capture management to become a growth-oriented culture that involves everyone in the company in the opportunities that growth can bring. Use introducing capture management to stop making it all up as you go along, and actually have defined expectations, inputs, and outputs. Use introducing capture management not just to get some help by adding another person to the roster. Use introducing capture management to grow.