Carl Dickson

Most proposals are lost before the RFP is released. When you haven’t discovered what it will take to win and all you have to go by is what’s in the RFP, you are starting from a competitive disadvantage. You want to be the other company. The one that is starting from a competitive advantage. But even when you have staff “looking into it,” “researching it,” “chasing the lead,” “marketing the customer,” or whatever else you want to call it and doing it ahead of RFP release, most companies fail because their efforts don’t deliver what is needed to write a winning proposal. They try hard to gather what they think will be useful, but it turns out to be mostly disconnected from the proposal. The handoff from business development to the proposal often takes place in meetings. Sometimes there is no tangible handoff. It's all talk. With a very low signal to noise ratio. Sometimes you get slides from progress meetings. When you do have a dedicated capture effort, the handoff is often a report or a capture plan. Putting together a list of high-level theme statements that aren’t tied to anything that impacts the evaluation criteria and calling it a day is not going to help you win. Pre-RFP briefing slides and capture plans are usually not prepared for winning the proposal. They are prepared to justify the pursuit. That subtle distinction becomes important when you sit down to write the proposal. And while most capture plans address why we think we can win, they often skip how to build the proposal around it. Most business development and capture efforts amount to we think we can win and the proposal team will figure out how. In isolation. I know because I’ve parachuted in to try to rescue companies in this position way too many times. What’s missing? See also: Information Advantage The reasons most information gathered before the proposal starts never impacts the proposal are because: The information you gather before the RFP is released is not mapped to the proposal outline. When you don't do this, your message will tend to be at too high a level and it will leave gaps. You think you’ve identified hot buttons. But they amount to “the customer isn’t happy with quality” or “the customer likes us” and oh by the way, there is no section in the RFP to specifically address what you have, no evaluation criteria relevant to it, and the proposal team has no idea what to do about any of it. Should they make things up or ignore them? If it’s not tied to the outline, it’s not clear where to talk about it or what to say about it. You gather information but you don't provide instructions for proposal writers on what to say and do about it. Most companies assume that proposal writers can take some raw intel and win a proposal with it. If the proposal writers can find the right place to work it in and know why it matters, that might be true. But usually it’s just not that clear. That may explain why most companies have such a low win rate. They think they are trying really hard, and they are. They just aren’t working effectively. Without both of these, your win rate drops. Gathering information is not enough. It’s understandable how this happens There is no outline or evaluation criteria during the pre-RFP business development and capture phases. People have to gather intel and do their work without knowing what the outline will be. They have little control over what intel they’ll be able to find. Their mission is to prospect for that intel and not to work within the proposal structure that doesn’t even exist yet. But if they don’t roll their sleeves up and map their contributions to the outline after RFP release, then they haven’t completed what is needed from them to close the sale with a win. The people who have direct insight about the customer, opportunity, and competitive environment must explain how to use those insights and not assume that writers can take high-level ambiguous statements not specifically related to anything in the proposal and somehow create a winning proposal out of them. They must map their insights to specific proposal sections in the context of the evaluation criteria for their efforts to impact whether they win. It can be done Doing all this is not easy. I didn’t even realize how important it is until I built MustWin Now and integrated pre-RFP intelligence with the compliance matrix function. In MustWin Now customer, opportunity, and competitive insights are easy to gather in a useful form. With just a few clicks users convert the raw intel into instructions for proposal writers that explain what to say or do about the intel. Then, as soon as the RFP hits the street, the instructions get added to the compliance matrix. The result is that when writers first see their sections they not only see the RFP requirements, but they also see the intel that’s relevant to their section along with what they should do about it. It makes it look easy to create proposals based on effective, validated pre-RFP intel and win strategies. But try doing it manually. Try doing it on paper. It’s not so easy. It’s just necessary. You can and should manually convert your intel into instructions for proposal writers. You can and should manually map it all to the proposal as part of building your compliance matrix. You can and should create section plans for writers so that they know what they are supposed to write before they write it. But you probably won’t. Even though you already know you should. My favorite part about using MustWin Now is watching people just figure out their win strategies and incorporate them into their sections without realizing what a huge accomplishment it is. They probably don’t even realize that their competitors are struggling with it, trying really hard, and ultimately not being that effective. That sounds kind of negative. But look at their win rates…

Normally to get MustWin Now you have to get a subscription to PropLIBRARY and pay per user. We’ve come up with an alternative approach that will enable you to try it on a single proposal before committing to a subscription. Because we’re talking about a live proposal, we’re offering this with a concierge service. We have three goals... Make sure you have a great proposal experience even though you’re trying a new approach, while providing a safety net to ensure that introducing a new tool into a live proposal doesn’t cause problems Eliminate the learning curve and make sure that you get the most benefit out of using MustWin Now Show you how to maximize your win probability using MustWin Now We want you to decide to continue using MustWin Now to increase your win probability on all your future pursuits. Your access to MustWin Now will be limited to a single pursuit and will last until the proposal is submitted. We can start before the RFP is released, and you can use the Pursuit Capture Forms to prepare for the proposal. Your staff will be users of MustWin Now, and will: Answer the Pursuit Capture and Proposal Input Form questions Validate the compliance matrix and outline Contribute to and validate the proposal content plan Determine what to offer and how to price it Be responsible for reading and understanding all of the terms, conditions, and requirements in the RFP Write the proposal based on the plan Manage the entire proposal process So basically, your staff will be doing a proposal using MustWin Now, and we’ll be helping you get up to speed on how to best use it. What we’ll do to help you get up to speed using MustWin Now: Provide orientations for your stakeholders to provide training and guidance as needed Set the pursuit up for you in MustWin Now and configure all the options. Set up your users. You can have as many users as you need for your proposal. Enter the RFP into MustWin Now for you and build the draft compliance matrix and proposal outline. We’ll guide you through validating your compliance matrix. Provide advice and support to help you win that goes beyond just technical support. Assist with preparing and validating the proposal content plan. When proposal writing starts, we fade out. Unless you want to retain us as consultants. To do these things we’ll participate in up to 8 online meetings. This give us the flexibility to respond to your needs while setting expectations so we can deliver all this for a fixed price. The meetings may include orientations, strategy discussions, content planning sessions, reviews, etc. Typically we’ll do an orientation session for the pre-RFP pursuit, compliance matrix, and proposal content plan. You might want us to attend your kickoff meeting, brief reviewers or executives, etc. We’ll have working sessions with the staff completing the Pursuit Capture Forms, validating the compliance matrix, contributing to the proposal content plan, and validating that it’s ready for proposal writing. And we’ll have some tasks that we’ll do in between calls and meetings, like entering the RFP, user account management, working on the compliance matrix and proposal outline, and our own contributions to the Proposal Content Plan. How much does it cost? Because it's tied to using MustWin Now, we can do this for a simple fixed price of $2,500, including all the subscription-level access your team needs during the proposal. What comes after the proposal is submitted? If you continue to use PropLIBRARY after the proposal ends, you'll pay the low monthly cost based on the number of users and we’ll deduct the upfront portion of the cost. At 15 users, you’ll be getting $2,395 in up-front costs waived and only paying $215 per month for your users to continue having access to PropLIBRARY and MustWin Now. If you want even more support, we can provide it We do offer consulting services and can provide expertise or fill gaps to help finish your proposal. We’ll have to discuss the level of effort and how much it will cost. For example, we can: Participate in the review of the draft proposal. How many reviews? What is the scope of the review? Help write the proposal. Because we set up the compliance matrix and content plan, we'll have precise information about the size and complexity of what needs to be written and will need fewer hours than we'd normally estimate for this task. Ask for a quote. Manage and lead the proposal process. This usually requires a high level of effort. Let’s talk about it. How do we move forward? Let’s have a conversation so we can answer your questions and get to know each other. If you decide you want to move forward, we'll send an invoice through PropLIBRARY. When you pay it online, we can get started immediately. Use the calendar below to let us know when you'd like to talk about it. If you just have a quick question, click the green button and send it to us. A quick note for consultants… If you want to do something similar for your customers, with you providing the concierge services, click the button to set up a conversation and I'll explain how that can work.

I review a lot of proposals for companies, and one thing that I frequently see is that what they tell me about their customer, opportunity, and competitive insights didn’t make it onto paper. There are a few reasons for this. When you create a single list of “themes” for your proposal, they tend to be at too high of a level and they don’t map to the proposal outline. There are redundancies and gaps. They also don’t map to the RFP. So when people respond to the requirements, they don’t do it in the context of your themes. What they tend to do is write a merely compliant proposal and then go to the list and see where they can sprinkle in the too high-level themes. The result is that while you think you're pressing the customer’s “hot buttons,” the reality is they have little or no impact on your proposal score. But the worst part is that by watering down your insights into high level theme statements, you lose the insights. You talk about them for hours in meetings, but they never make it onto paper in the proposal where they can impact your win probability. You need to take action. You need to take action on your insights. All that intel you’ve spent so much time gathering… you need to take action on it or it is meaningless. First, you need to itemize your insights. What do you know that matters? What is your information advantage? Then for each insight, ask yourself, “What should the proposal writers do about it?” Should they use the insight to: See also: About MustWin Now Make a point in the proposal? Improve your evaluation score? Be the benefit or result of your approach? Subtly ghost the competition by positioning your offering against their weakness? Address unwritten requirements? Show a real depth of understanding by showing insight beyond what others know? Anticipate and mitigate customer concerns? Show that by selecting your proposal they will not only get RFP compliance, but will also get what your insight tells you they also want? Properly interpret customer terminology? Design a better offering? Provide guidance for making estimates, especially regarding any difference between RFP estimates and reality? Position what’s going to be written against something in addition to the RFP? You can’t count on any of these things happening if you don’t identify the actions to be taken based on your insights. A list of themes will not do this for you. A list of themes is merely putting the ball in the proposal writers' hands and hoping they’ll discover a play that you didn’t. To do this manually, you can create a matrix of insights and map it to proposal sections and RFP items like the evaluation criteria. You can do this in a spreadsheet. The way I prefer to do it is using MustWin Now. In MustWin Now, insights are gathered using Pursuit Capture Forms that: Provide questions that help contributors get to the insights on what they know about the customer, opportunity, and competitive environment Enable each insight to be quickly converted into instructions that proposal writers can take action on Enable those insights to be shown to proposal reviewers who can confirm that the design actions were taken and are effective This is how MustWin Now drives win strategies into the proposal to improve your chances of winning.

Put the RFP aside, just for a moment. Meditate or ponder on the following before you start typing. Ask yourself, "Why should the customer select my offering over their other alternatives." Reach beyond your company's experience and qualifications. Reach all the way to why the customer will be better off if they select you, and how what they will get will be superior if they select you. Consider what matters or should matter to the customer about what you are going to write about. See also: Great Proposals Now look at it through the lens of differentiation. What are the reasons why the customer should select you that no one else can offer? How will what the customer gets by selecting you be different and better than what anyone else can offer? Take all of that and consolidate it into the points you want to make. Everything you write should make a point. You don't want to write a pointless proposal. When you know what points you want to make you are ready to start organizing your proposal sections. In what sequence should you address your points? How should you group them? It’s time to go back to the RFP. Look at the instructions in the RFP before you look at the performance requirements. Build your organization around what the instructions ask for. Be very literal and use their words and headings. Figure out how to reorganize the points you want to make within the RFP's instructions. Do not get too attached to how you want to organize things. Organize them so that everything is where the customer expects to find them. And that will be where the RFP asks for them. Next look at the evaluation criteria in the RFP. What do they need to see for you to get the maximum score? Again, be very literal and use their words. Rewrite the points you want to make so that they maximize your score against the RFP. You want the customer to be able to easily give you the highest score because of the points you made. You want the customer to be able to find the evaluation criteria by keyword searching for them. Now look at the performance requirements in the RFP. Whatever you do, don't try to figure out your approaches by writing about them. Figure out your approaches first, and do it separately from proposal writing. The last thing to do before proposal writing is to bring it all together. Organize your responses to the performance requirements according to the points you want to make (which follow the instructions have you have optimized to score highly). Writing to fulfill the RFP requirements is good, but it is not good enough to win. To write a winning proposal, you must write your response to the performance requirements to prove the points that will persuade the customer that you are their best alternative and give you the highest score. This is your goal, and not merely describing your company or your offering. If you get to this point and are struggling, try looking at it in reverse. Each of your responses to the RFP performance requirements should make a point, and that point is not simply "here's what you asked for." That point should differentiate your offering and get to the heart of what the customer really wants. But it should also be worded to maximize your score against the RFP evaluation criteria. And it must be organized and presented to comply with the RFP instructions. Every time you are in doubt about what to write or find yourself struggling to edit something into what it needs to be, go back and reflect on what points you should be making. Focus on proving the points you need to make and the words will follow. Premium content exclusively for PropLIBRARY Subscribers: Online training courses in proposal writing: Fundamentals of proposal writing How to respond to an RFP with the right words How to create a compliance matrix Creating a Proposal Outline Premium content from the MustWin Process library: Introduction to proposal writing What to do when you receive a proposal assignment How contributors can help manage expectations during a proposal Setting priorities while writing How to go beyond RFP compliance A simple formula for proposal writing Proposal style and editorial issues Identifying graphics Inspiration for graphics Six things to do when you don’t have the input you need to write the winning proposal

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This module takes us from foundation-building into process building. It takes the pre-RFP pursuit from activities and relationship building into win strategy, message development, and positioning to close the sale with a winning proposal. From here on, you'll be reading the course materials not only to learn but also to identify things you'd like to discuss implementing. This module identifies different elements that bring structure to the pre-RFP pursuit, without forcing you into a particular structure by focusing on the flow of information. During this module we'll discuss how to structure collecting the information you need. Readiness Reviews are presented as an example of one way to identify the information needed and implement reviews to track the progress of information collection. We'll also introduce MustWin Now as an online approach to intelligence gathering. During our online meetings we'll discuss different approaches for the pre-RFP pursuit, as well as any current reviews your company already has. Along the way, this module discusses the roles that people play in pre-RFP pursuit and the transitions when one role hands off to another. Your company might define these roles differently, but likely faces similar transitions and hand-offs. In addition to progress tracking and oversight, a major reasons for having a pre-RFP pursuit process is to streamline these transitions. When reviewing these materials, take notes on transition issues you face and look to the materials for ideas to use in your process to resolve those issues, and discuss these issues during our online meetings. This module also provides reference materials to help you itemize the information needed from the pre-RFP phase. When reading these materials, focus on which information process participants need to close the sale with a winning proposal. If you think of items that are specific to your business lines or company, take notes so we can make sure your process addresses them.

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Companies start to embrace a proposal process when the number of people involved grows large enough to become difficult to coordinate. It would be better if they began to embrace process as soon as they start caring about their win rate. The MustWin Process on PropLIBRARY enables a team of people to work together to maximize the company’s win rate. That’s great, but what if there’s no team? What if you are the team? Then doesn’t a proposal process designed to support large teams become overkill? Are you really alone? Sure, you might be the last one to touch the proposal. You might be the only one producing it. But if you have stakeholders, you are not alone. If you need input, you are not really alone. If people depend on your output, you are not really alone. If you are not really alone, you need to coordinate with the others who are involved or impacted. And that coordination can become a need for a proposal process. Even if you are truly the only one working on proposals you still need to do things in a repeatable way that can be optimized, both for efficiency and for effectiveness. But your process needs do change in some key ways. See also: Process Implementation Instead of steps and procedures, build your proposal process around goals, reminders, and checklists. You don’t want to forget things, and it’s quicker to not have to figure things out every time. Sometimes checklists function as reminders, being lists of things you don’t want to forget, but sometimes reminders are simply that. And sometimes checklists are quality assurance or planning tools. You can accelerate thinking about your proposal by including things that aren’t always relevant but are worth considering on your checklists. When you’re under volume pressure and near your maximum capacity, sometimes it’s good to not have to remember and think through everything. Checklists can not only speed things up and improve quality, but they can also inspire you to create better proposals. You may not need written procedures for coordination, but you still need stakeholder reporting and communication. Instead of communicating to coordinate the production of many moving parts, you need to be prepared to communicate with the people who are impacted by what you do. Instead of thinking of it as “communication,” it may be better to think of it as expectation management. The best way to streamline communication is to build it in, make it automatic, and eliminate the need for communication as a separate or ad hoc activity. If people can see the status or automatically get updates, they won’t have to interrupt you to ask about things as often. Document the inputs you require and whether you got them. Don’t expect other people to just “do their jobs.” You must itemize the information you need or they may not reliably get it for you. Once you itemize the information you need, you can track whether you get it and correlate this with your company’s win rate. This can be used to help them realize the importance of getting the information to you. Quality validation is necessary to maximize win probability. On your own, it’s easier get by with informal quality assurance and you may not need a formal proposal review process. But you still need to check your own work. Being careful does not count as quality assurance, even if you’re really good at it. Knowing what you need to validate and turning that into quality criteria will help you ensure that everything gets validated. Using written quality criteria will not only increase the reliability of your efforts, but can also be turned into checklists to accelerate things. Even people on their own need a plan. However, the plans that people need when doing things themselves are different from the plans that a team needs to get everyone on the same page. Individuals often call their plan a “to do” list. Instead of making your “to do” lists an ad hoc batch of reminders, make them deliberately considered lists of items required to effectively perform the necessary tasks. “To do” lists can also be turned into checklists, and you can also save, reuse, and improve them over time. Your history is defined by the records you keep. Under deadline pressure, it would be understandable if you gave up on keeping orderly files that weren’t directly needed as part of your workflow. But you need to keep track of your history. Don’t keep records just for the sake of doing it. Keep records so that when you need to look back you’ll have the data you need. Evidence of win rate and ROI. If you want to be more than just a production resource, you must prove your value. If you want to prove your value, you must do it quantitatively. You must prove that you deliver a positive ROI. The good news is that this shouldn’t be too hard. If you are the only proposal resource and you increase your company’s win rate by as little as 1%, you will likely bring in more revenue than you get paid. Learn the mathematics of win rate calculations so you can prove this. And gather the data. At a 20% win rate, increasing you company’s win rate by 10% is the same as finding 50% more leads. What would your company be willing to invest to get 50% more leads? You need to be able to get past hypotheticals and talk real numbers. Otherwise, you risk being seen as just a production resource that the accounting system classifies as an expense. The truth is you should be treated like a profit center, with as much impact on the company’s bottom line as its best salesperson. But that won’t happen until you prove it. With numbers. Notice how much of The Process can become simple checklists when you’re on your own? Just don’t think of them all as checklists. Divide your checklists into categories like plan, act, communicate, and review. Then your checklists will align with your process needs. You will have a proposal process, but it will be the kind of process that is useful even when it’s just you. This approach also creates a foundation so that when things grow and the proposal function no longer is just you, you can easily provide guidance to the newcomers.

Companies generally start to embrace a proposal process when the number of people involved grows large enough to become difficult to coordinate. It would be better if they began to embrace a process as soon as they start caring about their win rate. The MustWin Process on PropLIBRARY enables a team of people to work together to maximize the company’s win rate. That’s great, but what if there’s no team? What if you are the team? Then doesn’t a proposal process designed to support large teams become overkill? Are you really alone? Sure, you might be the only one producing it. But if you have stakeholders, you are not alone. If you need input, you are not really alone. If people depend on your output, you are not really alone. If you are not really alone, you need to coordinate with the others who are involved or impacted. And that coordination indicates a need for a proposal process. Having a way of doing things is not the same as having a process, and people perform better when supported by a process instead of making it up as they go along. Even if you are truly the only one working on proposals you still need to do things in a repeatable way that can be optimized, both for efficiency and for effectiveness. But your process needs are different in some key ways. See also: Proposal Management Instead of steps and procedures, build your proposal process around goals, reminders, and checklists. You don’t want to forget things, and it’s quicker not having to figure things out every time. Sometimes checklists function as reminders, being lists of things you don’t want to forget, but sometimes reminders are simply that. And sometimes checklists are quality assurance or planning tools. You can accelerate thinking about your proposal including things that aren’t always relevant but are worth considering on your checklists. When you’re under volume pressure and near your maximum capacity, sometimes it’s good to not have to remember and think through everything. Checklists can not only speed things up and improve quality, but they can also inspire you to create better proposals. You may not need written procedures for coordination, but you do need stakeholder reporting and communication. Instead of ad hoc emails to coordinate the production of many moving parts, you need to be prepared to communicate with the people who are impacted by what you do. Instead of thinking of it as “communication,” it may be better to think of it as expectation management. The best way to streamline communication is to build it in, make it automatic, and eliminate the need for communication as a separate or ad hoc activity. If people can see the status or automatically get updates, they won’t have to interrupt you to ask about things as often. Document the inputs you require and whether you got them. Don’t expect other people to just “do their jobs.” You must itemize the information you need or they may not reliably get it for you. Once you itemize the information you need, you can track whether you get it and correlate this with your company’s win rate. This can be used to help them realize the importance of getting the information to you. Quality validation is necessary to maximize win probability. On your own, it’s easier to get by with informal quality assurance and you may not need a formal proposal review process. But you still need to check your own work. Being careful does not count as quality assurance, even if you’re really good at it. Knowing what you need to validate and turning that into quality criteria will help you ensure that everything gets validated. Using written quality criteria will not only increase the reliability of your efforts, but can also be turned into checklists to accelerate things. Even people on their own need a plan. However, the plans that people need when doing things themselves are different from the plans that a team needs to get everyone on the same page. Individuals often call their plan a “to do” list. Instead of making your “to do” lists an ad hoc batch of reminders, make them deliberately considered lists of items required to effectively perform the necessary tasks. “To do” lists can also be turned into checklists, and you can also save, reuse, and improve them over time. This form of reuse can have a bigger impact than trying to recycle proposal content. Your history is defined by the records you keep. Under deadline pressure, it would be understandable if you gave up on keeping orderly files that weren’t directly needed as part of your workflow. But you need to keep track of your history. Don’t keep records just for the sake of doing it. Keep records so that when you need to look back you’ll have the data you need. Evidence of win rate and ROI. If you want to be more than just a production resource, you must prove your value. If you want to prove your value, you must do it quantitatively. You must prove that you deliver a positive ROI. The good news is that this shouldn’t be too hard. If you are the only proposal resource and you increase your company’s win rate by as little as 1%, you will likely bring in more revenue than you get paid. Learn the mathematics of win rate calculations so you can prove this. And gather the data. At a 20% win rate, increasing your company’s win rate by 10% is the same as finding 50% more leads. What would your company be willing to invest to get 50% more leads? You need to be able to get past hypotheticals and talk real numbers. Otherwise, you risk being seen as just a production resource that the accounting system classifies as an expense. The truth is you should be treated like a profit center, with as much impact on the company’s bottom line as its best salesperson. But that won’t happen until you prove it. With numbers. Notice how much of The Process can become simple checklists when you’re on your own? Just don’t think of them all as checklists. Divide your checklists into categories like plan, act, communicate, and review. Then your checklists will align with your process needs. You will have a proposal process, but it will be the kind of process that is useful even when it’s just you. This approach also creates a foundation so that when things grow and the proposal function no longer is just you, you can easily provide guidance to the newcomers.

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This course divides the pre-RFP pursuit into these modules: Activities that occur during pre-RFP pursuit (this module) Bringing structure to the pre-RFP phase (next module) Preparing to transition from pre-RFP pursuit to the proposal Starting at RFP release (because it happens) This module is primary about setting the stage for customer interaction in anticipation of a proposal. In this module we'll document the activities that occur in a pursuit before the RFP is released and create checklists for some of them. We'll also work on the foundation for intelligence collection and building an information advantage. We need this foundation before we can start working on bringing structure to how these activities are conducted in the next module.

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The first module is about defining the scope of what we're going to create together. Are we enhancing your existing process or building a new one? Are focusing on the pre-RFP phase or the proposal phase? We'll cover both, but how will we apply the material? That's why the first module focuses on discovery and discussion with stakeholders. The material in the first module is designed to be thought-provoking. The topics provide some background and context that will help once the introduction is complete and we start looking at pursuit and capture topic by topic and applying the material. When we meet to discuss this module bring your thoughts about what you would like to come out of this course with, both in terms of takeaways and in terms of what you'd like to build during the course to help achieve your goals. We'll share our thoughts, discuss it together, and spend the rest of the course applying future modules to fulfilling those goals.

When you are alone you have to work within your own limitations. What you know is all you know. What you can write is all that’s going into the proposal. What you can do before the deadline defines your standard of quality. It’s not about winning or creating a great proposal. It’s about whether you can complete the proposal at all. Here are some tips that won’t help you win, but they might help you get your proposals submitted. See also: Dealing with adversity What is the minimally viable proposal submission? The gap between the minimally viable proposal submission and a great proposal is a concern for another day. Right now, you have to focus on the gaps between where you are and what constitutes the minimally viable submission. The minimally viable proposal submission is usually whatever won’t get your proposal thrown out. Perform triage. Only try to save the ones that can survive, because trying to save them all will only result in greater loss. Use Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs applied to proposals to help you make decisions about priorities. Focus on filling your gaps. Since you’re on your own, you have no one to write the missing pieces. It’s just you and Google. You may have to cheat. You may have to do the proposal The Wrong Way. Yeah, it’s ugly. But it may be all you’ve got to work with... Write to what a customer like this one might want instead of what you know this customer wants. Describe what goes into your plans instead of providing an actual plan. Avoid commitment. Use numbers that aren’t precise. Think “more than” or “almost.” Streamline the formatting. Don’t use elaborate formats. Minimize keystrokes and clicks. Go for simple elegance instead of a work of art. Make sure the formatting is within your skill set. If you don’t have any win strategies, differentiators, value proposition, and reasons for the customer to select you to work with, then base them on what it will take to win. If you can’t be great and prove it, then simply be what the customer wants. Who, what, where, how, when, and why. Repeat that until you’ve got it memorized. Then whenever you need more detail, answer the ones you can. If you need an approach for something and you have no idea what it should be, you can talk all around it by addressing who, what, where, how, when, and why. Be prepared to do less. Peel it back like an onion. Do only the things that impact winning the most. And if that fails, do only the things needed for a minimally viable submission. Everything is a trade-off. Make your trade-off decisions based on what requires the least effort. Go up a level in granularity. Make this proposal a learning experience for your stakeholders. If this proposal isn’t going to be great, can you use it as a demonstration so things go better on the next one? Separate what changes from what doesn’t. Don’t mix the details that don’t change with the win strategies and customer insights that have to be tailored every time. Use a question and answer format, even when they don’t ask for it. You can organize reuse material around questions and answers. Questions and answers already make a point and have a defined context, reducing the editing required. Questions and answers stand alone and lend themselves to being interchangeable parts. If you find you’re working on proposals that don’t have a chance of winning, identify the criteria that can be used to decide when not to bid a pursuit. Complaining about having to work on low probability pursuits sounds like resistance. But providing a set of lead qualification criteria is something that people can take action on. Avoid using names. It waters things down, but the more you can avoid using customer, company, personnel and other names, the less editing you’ll have to do. For example, try to refer to people by their role. Be a big picture thinker. When you don’t even know the details, stick to the big picture. Avoid procedures and specifications. Embrace missions, goals, and intentions. Rely on what you do know. If all you know are your company’s qualifications, then make everything about them. Have research tools handy. Invest in relevant textbooks. Get a bookmark tool for your web browser. Make some friends. Why are you alone? Learn the language of return on investment. How much would your win rate need to increase to pay for some help? If you don’t know the numbers, learn them. The odds are that a small increase in win rate will more than pay for the help you need. I’ve talked to companies that bid everything they could find and had win rates as low as 7%. At 15% they’d double their revenue. It would be like doubling the number of leads they have. What would they invest to double the number of leads they have? That’s what they should be investing in improving their win rate. They need you to quantify and explain it to them. Note to companies reading this: If you don’t want your proposals written like this, don’t leave people alone. Get them the information they need. Every once in a while, give them a little help. If you see these things in your proposals, it’s a good indicator you’ve overloaded your staff, those who know the details aren’t providing them, or no one knows the details. Note to proposal staff: If you’re doing these things because you didn’t know any better, change now. If you understand the relationship between win rate, lead identification, and revenue, you’ll never let this happen. But we see it all the time. If you find yourself here and don’t know how to escape, reach out. We can help.

I am still getting surprised by discovering new ways that using MustWin Now changes how I approach doing proposals. Sometimes it’s actually being able to do things that everyone knows they should but can never quite make happen. Other times, it’s being able to do things quicker. More often it’s being able to do things better because of the way it makes it easier to think through what you need to put on paper before you start writing. A big surprise was seeing the proposal process, at least as it is traditionally practiced, disappear as people just started doing what needed to be done but doing it in a structured way. It was an even bigger surprise to see people just doing what needed to be done to create a great proposal instead of resisting The Process. Creating an outline manually isn’t that hard. But creating a proposal outline that follows the RFP instructions, reflects the RFP evaluation criteria, and accounts for all of the RFP compliance requirements, and doing it all while correctly interpreting the RFP, is definitely a challenge. MustWin Now helps you build an RFP compliance matrix and proposal outline. It does this so that you can not only create an outline that puts everything where the customer expects to find it, but it also provides you with review tools to help you make sure that the interpretations and judgment calls you made are the correct ones. Putting your responses to everything in the RFP where the customer expects to find them and labeling them the way the customer will look for them is critical for maximizing your proposal evaluation score. A traditional compliance matrix is prepared as a spreadsheet that shows all of the requirements that are relevant to a given proposal section. Creating a compliance matrix helps you to create a proposal outline that is RFP compliant. Unfortunately, it takes as long to validate the accuracy of a spreadsheet-based compliance matrix as it does to create it in the first place. Working on a compliance matrix in a spreadsheet is an exercise in page flipping and wearing out your cursor keys. But what’s even worse is that in the rush to write, most companies skip validating their compliance matrix, even though this often comes back to haunt them. MustWin Now uses drag and drop features to create the compliance matrix, linking RFP requirements to the proposal sections where they will be addressed. And it makes validating your compliance matrix go as quickly as you can check boxes on online forms. Once you’ve reviewed and validated your outline in MustWin Now, only those with the right access permission can change the outline. This helps avoid having writers ignore the outline. Or having people change the outline after writing starts. I’ve lived through too many traumatic proposal experiences that were the result of trying to fix a broken outline. But the real payoff is that having your proposal outline in MustWin Now makes content planning so easy people actually do it. MustWin Now automatically creates the shell for the content plan. The outline basically is the plan. You fill it by clicking buttons and typing instructions for things you want to remember to include when you are writing, how to present things, things to emphasize, points to be made, etc. I’ve completed a proposal content plan during a strategy session meeting, just by listening to people talk and clicking the button to insert instructions into the plan whenever they said something important. I’ve walked away from the meeting with the plan complete. I’ve also helped companies figure out what to write and put it in MustWin Now so they could take it from there. When you’ve used MustWin Now to collect your bid intel, content planning is even easier because you’ve got the insights to work with. Preparing a content plan is simply a matter of reading the intel and adding instructions based on it. MustWin Now makes it quick and easy to drive win strategies based on your customer, opportunity, and competitive awareness into the document. When you create your outline and plan your proposal content manually, getting the input from others that you need can be a big problem. People don’t want to manually complete a mess of forms before writing. The original version of the MustWin Process was the most streamlined paper-based proposal planning process I've ever encountered. But the idea of writing proposal instructions in a document and then using the content plan document to guide writing the proposal document was too much structure for a lot of people. Doing the same thing in MustWin Now doesn’t seem like work. It’s just getting your thoughts together and clarifying assignments. MustWin Now makes it easier to get everyone “on the same page” than the traditional paper-based process ever did! See also: About MustWin Now This is important because proposal planning usually requires collaboration. No one person knows everything from customer awareness to win strategies to technical details. Content plans require input. People often come to a proposal wanting to help, within reason. They become resistant when they feel like The Process is creating more work than the task requires. When manual proposal planning efforts require creating orphaned process artifacts and the effort is only indirectly related to completing their proposal section assignments, the planning efforts tend to wither from a lack of enthusiasm. Using MustWin Now to collect the input is much easier than trying to do it on paper. You’re not asking people to complete a separate task from the writing, you’re asking them to put a couple of hours into preparing to write by clarifying the assignment and making sure everyone, including the proposal reviewers, is onboard with what’s going to be created. People are far more willing to do this with simple clicks and adding reminders and instructions than they are when creating a plan requires creating a document before they create a document. When you have a validated proposal plan, you are also far more likely to be able to get the proposal right on the very first draft. People are far more enthusiastic about contributing to proposals when they believe their efforts are not going to be wasted in endless rewrites. Writing a great proposal requires having more insight than your competitors and delivering that insight in a document that scores better than theirs. One reason that most companies have such a low win rate is that they try to accomplish this without thinking things through before writing. And a big part of the reason they do that is that their manual, paper-based processes simply aren’t followed. Struggling to overcome this challenge has been around for as long as people have been writing proposals. That’s why I’ve been surprised so many times at seeing how much better and easier things go when working in MustWin Now.

Summary You need information to determine how to properly position your offering. The information you need depends on the nature of your offering. To discover what it will take to win, your process should target the correct information to position your offering. What you need to know to offer a unique solution and win against all competitors is different from what you need to know to offer a commodity and win against all competitors. Which matters more, price or value? This largely depends on what the customer is buying. The items in the middle can lean toward the corners and be positioned very differently. For example, how you should differentiate a product is different from how to differentiate your services. Both are different when your offering leans towards being a commodity vs being a unique solution. Since winning depends on anticipating what matters to the customer, your process should be designed to discover that. How you discover what it will take to win depends on what you offer The information you need to discover in order to win depends on what you offer If you sell products, your offering consists largely of matching your products to customer needs and dealing with any gaps. But if you sell services, your offering consists of tailoring your approaches to match the customer's needs, while making you have the staffing resources to cover the level of effort required. Both of these require very different information, not only to know what to offer, but also to know how to position it in order to win. The information you need will also be different if you are selling your products or services as a commodity or as a unique solution. How the customer will make their decision depends on what they are buying Will the customer buy on price or value? Should you offer quality or quantity? Is capability more important than experience? You will need to anticipate and answer questions like these in order to write a winning proposal. But what questions should you ask? What information should you attempt to gather? Your process should guide people to collect the right information. But how do you know what guidance to build into your process? A good place to start is by assessing the nature of what you offer. You will need to know: What information will the customer need to make their decision? What matters to the customer that might impact their decision? What information will you need in order to calculate the estimates for what you intend to offer? What topics and details are you going to need to address in your proposal? You can use this model to help anticipate what you will need to know and gather it in a way that supports addressing what matters to the customer.

Summary What the customer cares about depends on what they are buying. The closer things get to a commodity, the less the vendor matters and the more that price matters. The closer you get to a unique solution, the more trust and risk matter. Products and services can be either unique solutions or commodities, but what matters to the customer about products and services is different. How the customer perceives their need in relation to this chart matters. If it does not match what you offer, then your positioning will be wrong. Perceptions may not be clear and range over an area instead of point, and may be subject to change, although this can be a tough sale. How to correctly position your offering depends on having the right information about the customer and their needs. The items in the middle can lean towards the corners. For example, what matters about "risk" can depend on the nature of the offering. See also: Customer perspective What is the nature of what your company's offering? Where is your offering in the mix? If a company is not highly focused, they all may seem to apply. Sometimes company's have multiple offering that might not group together on the chart. This might appeal to a broader group of customers, or require different approaches to market. The goal of thinking about this is to see if you can: Anticipate what will matter to the customer? Gain better customer insight by bringing some structure to your customer interactions? Implement a process or model that makes it easier to figure out what to do about it, once you've discovered what matters to the customer. Convert a structured like this into a process that drives customer awareness into the written proposal? You can use this model to connect the dots and streamline the transition from sales to the proposal. You can also use it to increase win probability, by bringing a little structure to your message development instead of making it up during proposal writing. Discussion topic: To design your process, you need to honestly assess what your company offers so that you can implement a process that guides people to discover the customer's concerns and address them with the correct positioning. Different people in your company may have a different perception of your offerings, making the discussion itself a valuable exercise, separate from the process considerations. Also, your current offerings may different from past or future intended offerings. Ultimately it is not even your perceptions that matter. Use the chart to discover what matters to the customer and how to position accordingly.

2019 adds up to some big numbers Since we started in 2001, we have had over 8 million visitors. That's nearly half a million visitors a year, on average. Over 71,000 have requested to join our newsletter. Over 3,500 became PropLIBRARY Subscribers. A lot of people who need to win proposals for their business to succeed give us their attention and we appreciate it so much. I remember when I started down this path and could remember all their names. I still try to respond to nearly all the support requests myself. The topics we published in 2019 covered a mixture of business development, capture, and proposals, with preparing to win as a common theme. The best free articles we published in 2019 Are you one of these 11 kinds of proposal manager? How to make better proposal decisions by using Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Why you can’t just follow the steps to create a great proposal Examples of proposal content planning using MustWin Now 47 questions that tell you if the way you are preparing your proposals is any good Improving your win rate by asking the right questions Proposal writing: 10 before and after examples 16 things that need to happen long before proposal writing starts How to get ready to win before the RFP is released 6 examples of bad proposal writing and how to fix them In 2019 we released MustWin Now as a free benefit for PropLIBRARY Subscribers MustWin Now takes our recommendations related to how to win your pursuits, and turns them into a tool. Instead of learning about the MustWin Process via online training and written materials, and then implementing and following it, you simply use MustWin Now. The "process" simply becomes what you do, and what you do makes sense and delivers immediate gratification. And all of our online training and content becomes guidance available within the tool to inspire and accelerate everything people do to win your proposals. We thought about packaging it as a separate product, but instead we chose to add it on top of all the other benefits of subscribing to PropLIBRARY. We didn't even raise the price. If subscribing to our online training and content library and using it to supercharge your company's growth was worth it before, it is now doubly so. The best of the premium content we published for PropLIBRARY Subscribers in 2019 Our premium content is far more practical and detailed than the free articles listed above and provides information that is ready to use as checklists, templates, forms, etc. In 2019, we focused on a combination of process tools and and practical resources that can help solve key problems. The MustWin Process Architecture Assessing the impact of the organizational layer on your process Assessing the impact of the input layer on your process Assessing the impact of the performance layer on your process 6 targets for relationship marketing and 5 ways to reach out to potential customers How to build quality into every step of your proposal What's the difference between capabilities and corporate experience? A simple formula for influencing the RFP Why all proposal reviewers need training before every review Proposal Quality Validation Implementation FAQs Looking forward to 2020 Next year, our development efforts will focus on MustWin Now, while our content efforts will focus on integration. By integration, I not only mean integrating content with MustWin Now, but also integrating the articles themselves with how they are used. Think of the titles above organized through a user interface that enables people working on a pursuit to drill down to whatever detail they need in that moment, while using MustWin Now to take action on the recommendations. That's where we're heading. We're actually already there when it comes to topic coverage. But I want it to be more streamlined and intuitive, and that means reorganizing the content to better fit the new workflow. That ends up being quite a bit more work than it sounds. Don't expect a lot of fireworks and flash. The more intuitive we make things, the less things will stand out. PropLIBRARY and MustWin Now will just be there with what you need, when you need it, and it won't be as hard for you to produce great proposals. What you will notice is your win rate going up while your stress levels go down.

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Slow down. Take your time. Get comfortable. Ponder the meaning of it all. These topic hubs lead to hundreds of links with over a thousand pages worth of material. Don't try to consume it all in one sitting. Study them like a book that can change the future of your company and the direction of your career. Or maybe just give you an occasional smile. Before the proposal: business development and capture Relationship marketing Making effective bid/no bid decisions Preparing for proposals ahead of RFP release How to respond to Request for Proposals (RFP) and win How to design an offering your customer will love How to plan your proposal content so it meets everyone's expectations Articulating bid strategies and proposal themes Writing proposals from the customer's perspective Making proposal writing faster and easier Making proposals simple Recycling proposals, creating proposal templates, boilerplate, and re-use libraries How to validate the quality of your proposal Successful proposal process implementation Winning vs. Losing Proposal win rates and how to improve them Doing proposals the wrong way Now. What are you going to do about it all?

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When you recycle proposal content, you can’t rely on people to simply tailor it. You can’t rely on them because you can’t count on them to be aware of everything that has changed. Unless you tell them. Re-using proposal content requires more than just updating it. It requires changing the context to reflect everything that has changed about the customer, your company, your offering, the competitive environment, and the external world. See also: Reuse People often think nothing has changed. Sometimes this is because the work that they will do on the project really will be the same as what they did before. However, while the work may be the same, the words required to win it likely will have changed far more than anyone realizes. I challenge you to find out. I challenge you to do a before and after comparison. The challenge is to compare your current circumstances with the previous circumstances to determine what has changed in the environment that should also change the writing. It’s a simple before and after comparison. Only it’s not so simple. There are a lot of considerations. After reviewing them you may confidently conclude that nothing has changed. Or you might discover that it will take longer to edit what you have than to create something fresh. I’m betting that re-use will only save you time if you do not properly assess what needs to change. But take the challenge and find out. If you have or intend to build a proposal re-use library, you should build in procedures for doing this assessment every single time your content is recycled. You should challenge your users to prove that re-use is safe and that it will save time. For PropLIBRARY Subscribers we’ve turned the following considerations into a form for quick implementation. PropLIBRARY subscribers can also use MustWin Now to guide your proposal contributors to make considerations like these and write your proposals based on them. Consider each of the following to determine what is different about the circumstances for this proposal that should be used to tailor your re-use material: Who will perform the activities described? Who will receive the results described? Who will be impacted? Who will interact? Who will oversee performance? What RFP requirements are new? What is required to achieve compliance under the new RFP? What RFP contract terms and pricing requirements have changed? What RFP formatting and submission requirements have changed? What RFP terminology is different? What matters to this customer? What points should be made? What results need to be achieved? What approaches, procedures, methods, etc., need to change? What tools, assets, resources, etc., are needed? What subcontractors or teammates will be used? What needs to be updated? What differentiates our offering? What is required to get the highest score under the new evaluation criteria? What risks are anticipated? Where will work be performed? Where will deliveries be made? Where will work products be used? Where will resources be obtained from? How will schedules change? How will the customer be impacted? How will risks be mitigated? How will quality assurance be achieved? How will roles and responsibilities be defined? When will performance start and end? When will interactions occur? When will decisions be made? When will customer participation and input be required? Why were these options selected and these trade-offs chosen? Why does what we’re proposing matter? Why is what we’re proposing this customer’s best alternative? We prefer to use questions like these in MustWin Now to drive people to write a great proposal that is a perfect match for the new circumstances and is optimized to win. Writing to win is profitable. Recycling to avoid writing may enable you to complete the document but is less profitable. The increase in your win rate easily pays for doing your proposal well compared to taking an easier approach that produces a less competitive proposal. Instead of accelerating your efforts and helping you get ahead, recycling proposal content means starting from behind. Instead of thinking it through and moving forward, recycling proposal content means you think it through and then go back and have to think some more about how to fix what was done before. You may actually have more work to do because you started from something already written. But often the only way to get people to realize that is to have them try. So challenge them!

This program is a hybrid. It blends training with process development. It blends online self-study with instructor-led training. It blends course materials with real world tools and performance. It blends learning with implementation. It produces change. It is about implementing the tools, processes, and things you need to improve your win rate. At the end of each term, if you start another, you have a continuous improvement program for about a thousand dollars a month that will constantly increase your win rate and generate a positive ROI! For small businesses, you can develop without having to wait until you can afford to hire an expert. For large businesses, you can improve with expert advice without having to spend an FTE to achieve it. Here is the list of topics you can choose from. Do you want to emphasize strategic planning, business development and capture, or proposals? Business development and capture Proposals Strategic planning Roles and stakeholders Who to talk to: Customer roles and points of contact Data driven targeting for Federal procurement Lead qualification and bid/no bid processes Ensuring you are ready to win at RFP release Offering design Teaming Pre-RFP proposal preparation Starting at RFP release Proposal management and staffing models RFP release: Now what? Getting your proposal off to a great start. Creating the proposal outline the customer expects to see Understanding and improving RFP compliance Proposal content planning Proposal writing: good, better, best Proposal quality validation Production and submission Lessons learned, metrics, and measurements Identifying who buys what you sell Strategically developing your capabilities and offerings Pipeline modeling: What do you need to hit your targets? Selecting strategic targets and allocating resources Strategically targeting relevant contract vehicles and channels Strategic teaming Positioning for the future Estimating resource requirements to hit your targets Achieving ROI positive continuous improvement If you're having trouble picking just three, focus on your immediate needs and think about continuing in the program and addressing the other topics next. Go beyond training and turn it into a repeatable process for winning that is tailored for your company Instead of a one-size-fits-all approach to process, our Win Rate Improvement Program focuses on understanding how to adapt process to each participating company’s size, type of offering, maturity, staff availability, etc. It leverages our complete proposal content library that we’ve spent 20 years building. Participants will have access to it all, and will be directed to specific items based on the topics we're covering. The Pursuit and Capture Program comes with a free subscription to PropLIBRARY and use of MustWin Now Up to 5 students will get a free PropLIBRARY subscription during the course, including MustWin Now. This alone is a $1,200 value. If you decide not to continue with the program, you may continue your PropLIBRARY subscription for as little as $20 per month. Lock in your discount before February 29th The Win Rate Improvement Program costs $1,000 per month. For 3 months, the total is $3,000. You are welcome to sign up for 12 months, but we anticipate most people will want to try it for 3 months before making a longer commitment. If you sign up for our 3-month Win Rate Improvement program before the end of February, we'll give you a $500 discount. You will only pay $2,500. Not only that, but we'll continue that discount for as long as you stay in the program. If you stay in for a year, you could save $2,000. Just for signing up by the end of this month. You have an extra day because it's a leap year! Let's do this You probably have questions. We'd like to find out more about you and your goals, and share how this program provides a structured way to achieve them. You can ask questions online or you can schedule a conversation below. When you're ready, I'll send you an invoice through PropLIBRARY. As soon as it's paid, we'll get started.

In January we're going to launch the largest, most detailed training program we've ever offered. It's going to be a lot more than just training. It's going to be project based learning. It's going to be a 6-month program that will start with an identified lead and cover everything through to proposal submission. Instead of teaching procedures, this program will teach what you need to know to implement effective processes or improve what you have in each goal and phase. It will show you how to win more of what you bid. And that will make it all worthwhile. Go beyond learning about pursuit and capture and turn it into a repeatable process for winning that is tailored for your company Takeaway materials for you to tailor and use in your process include: A guide explaining 11 ways to get ahead of the RFP A checklist with 24 ways to influence the RFP A cheat sheet providing 101 ways to earn goodwill and help a potential customer in writing A checklist for conducting site visits Pre-proposal process option guides: Are these the right goals? Mapping activities and information gathering to your goals Lists of process quality criteria, activities, and deliverables Over 140 pursuit capture form items to customize Guide: Readiness reviews and gate decisions eBook: 509 Questions to Answer in Your Proposals Sample bid/no bid decision and review criteria to customize 7 topic-driven proposal input forms eBook: Proposal start-up information checklist with 135 questions in 9 categories Pursuit and proposal staffing model guide Proposal kickoff process option guide Proposal logistics planning worksheet Proposal production process option guide Proposal submission considerations Instead of a one-size-fits-all approach to process, our Pursuit and Capture Program will focus on understanding how to adapt process to each participating company’s size, type of offering, maturity, staff availability, etc. If students stay on track with the bi-weekly topics and homework assignments, by the end they’ll have a complete process tailored to their company’s needs. The depth and breadth of coverage is huge. So is the amount of takeaway materials. The course leverages our complete proposal content library that we’ve spent 20 years building. Every other week we’ll open a new course module. In between, Carl Dickson, Founder of CapturePlanning.com and PropLIBRARY, will have a private session with each participating company. During the private sessions we'll focus on the decisions you need to make and the challenges you need to overcome to maximize your win probability and capture what you pursue. You'll get personalized guidance for how to tailor the course topics to your particular circumstances. Each course module should only take 1-3 hours to go through, and you can study on your own schedule. But the emphasis will be on application and not studying. Each week you’ll have options to consider, decisions to make, and assignments to customize and improve your own process. You'll spend more time applying what you learn to improving your company's ability to pursue and capture its leads. The Pursuit and Capture Program comes with a free subscription to PropLIBRARY and use of MustWin Now Each student will get a free PropLIBRARY subscription during the course, including MustWin Now. Each company can have up to 5 students participating. The course will be conducted remotely, and the schedule will be flexible enough to adapt to competing priorities. If you are already a PropLIBRARY Subscriber, you’ll get full credit for your subscription. If your subscription is a single user subscription, you’ll get an upgrade to a 5-user subscription during the course. At the end of the course, the cost to continue the 5-user subscription will only be $95 per month. More details and pricing This Pursuit and Capture Program is for both small businesses who need to compete with more mature companies and large businesses who want to increase their win rate and improve their competitiveness. It is a 6-month program for up to 5 participants, alternating between a course module and a personalized session each week. The price is $9,600, which is the equivalent of just $400 per week. And you can come out of it with a capture and proposal process that companies have spent tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars developing. If you just bought the subscription to PropLIBRARY separately, it would cost you $1,370, and it’s included. You’ll also get all the takeaway goodies shown in the gray box on the right. [Video] [Video]

Most proposals are won or lost before they begin. Either you go into the proposal with an information advantage, or you are trying to fake your way through the proposal without one. Even though this is true, most companies don't have a mature process for pursuing a lead before the proposal starts. Their process amounts to: Hire a good salesperson, whatever that means, to dig up some information. Create the illusion of process by having bid/no bid reviews. As a company matures, bid/no bid criteria tend to become more sophisticated. However, believing you have a chance at winning is not the same thing as having the information you need to write the winning proposal. Having a standard for whether to bid a pursuit is not the same thing as having a process for lead pursuit and capture. When most companies start thinking about formalizing their pursuit and capture process, they often only think about activities, like meetings, events, and contacts. And because they don't know what sequence the events will occur in, they can't imagine how to turn it into a process. They create bid/no bid criteria and often just make the rest up as they go along. What they need are goals for pursuit and capture. Goals inform people about what they should accomplish. And goals can be used to prepare to close the sale with a winning proposal. 1. Establish that you have an acceptable lead See also: Pre-RFP Pursuit When your prospecting efforts appear to have found something, you need to establish that it's an acceptable lead. Some companies track every lead they consider. Some companies only track leads they intend to pursue. Some companies incentivize lead discovery. It’s not a lead until it has been accepted as such. Note that an acceptable lead still needs to be qualified as worth investing in pursuit. An acceptable lead is generally one worth looking into so you can determine whether it is a potential match for your company. What is required to identify a lead as acceptable at your company? 2. Qualify that the lead is worth the expense of pursuit Once you have a lead, the next goal is to qualify the lead and prove that it is worth pursuing. This goal is an investment decision, because capturing a pursuit is expensive. Some companies have rigorous requirements for qualifying a lead, while other companies merely need to know if they can do the work. The level of effort put into lead qualification is usually proportionate to the cost of closing the sale with a winning proposal. If you sell commodities and crank out lots of proposals, lead qualification might be a simple checklist. If you sell complex services or unique solutions in a competitive environment with large, complex proposal efforts, you should put more effort into proving your leads are worth the cost of pursuit. The criteria used for lead qualification are often similar, if not identical, to what you use for making bid/no bid decisions. A company with an ineffective bid/no bid process will also usually have an ineffective lead qualification process. In an effective bid/no bid decision process, each goal, step, or review is another bid/no bid decision gate. Each one is an opportunity to cancel a pursuit that is a bad investment. When you limit each decision to whether to take the pursuit to the next phase, the decision criteria can be more specific. You don’t have to do a detailed win probability assessment in the early stages. But in later stages that would certainly be one of the considerations. In early stages you will be operating with less information and what is acceptable then may not be acceptable for bid decisions in later stages. 3. Pursue with the intent to capture Once you have qualified that a lead is worth pursuing, the next goal is to prepare to capture the pursuit. This requires achieving several goals all at once: Discover what it will take to win Develop an information advantage Respond to customer requests (requests for information, sources sought notices, draft RFPs, etc.) Determine what to offer This phase might take 80% of the pre-proposal capture level of effort. It will require regular (weekly or monthly) progress reviews. 8. Prepare proposal input If the sale closes with a winning proposal, then it's critical that the pursuit process delivers the information needed to write a winning proposal, in the form that proposal writers will need it in. Otherwise, all that effort may not do anything to impact the award decision. What good is having an information advantage, if you don't take action on the information you have? What good is having an information advantage, if the proposal writers are unaware of its significance, or what to do with that information in the particular sections of the proposal where it is relevant? If all you do is gather information and wait until RFP release, you will not achieve the highest win rate possible. What about relationship marketing? Having a customer relationship is not the goal. A customer relationship is a means to achieving your goals. Every one of these goals will be more easily accomplished with a strong customer relationship. None of these goals may be possible to achieve without a strong customer relationship. The strength of your customer relationship is often a good lead qualification and bid/no bid decision criterion. The strength of your customer relationship can be measured by how well it produces an information advantage. Turning your goals into a process Each goal will have activities to accomplish. Each will also have process deliverables to complete. And each will have quality criteria that define whether the goal has been successfully accomplished. You should articulate your goals and design your process deliverables so that the result produces the information advantage required to close the sale with a winning proposal. That is what having a pursuit and capture process look like. It requires more than just holding progress meetings. The Goldilocks pursuit and capture process Introducing too much structure all at once can be overwhelming. A goal-driven process can be introduced a little at a time. Achieving the goals is far more important than the procedures used in achieving them. If all you do is define your goals and nothing more, you will improve performance. As an organization matures, it can introduce things that make achieving the goals easier. This is the real reason to have quality criteria. Quality criteria are better used to enable people to know when they’ve accomplished a goal, rather than simply using them to catch defects in performance. A goal-driven process is less about procedures and forcing people to do things in a particular way, and more about helping people accomplish their goals. Setting up pre-proposal goals enables you to seek a Goldilocks solution. You don’t want too little structure. You don’t want too much structure. You want just the right amount of structure. Just the right amount of structure makes performance easier for people while maximizing your win rate.