Carl Dickson

A presentation Carl Dickson, founder of PropLIBRARY gave on the topic of What defines proposal quality and how can you develop quality criteria to assess it.

If you depend on your website and pay attention to the traffic you get from the search engines, you've probably noticed a decline over the last couple of years. A Pew Research Center report found those who get the AI summaries in their searches visited websites in the search results half as often. And in May, Google started showing these to everyone by default, even if you have not opted in. There have been many other, similar reports. This trend will continue and has incredible implications for the future of everyone who does business. As if that wasn't enough, AIs play by different rules when it comes to intellectual property. And all the benefits of AI could go away if we forced them to play by the rules the way they've been traditionally interpreted. Every business that involves teaching, explaining, and informing based on intellectual property is going to have to transform or wither and die. That includes PropLIBRARY, but we've worked out how to do that. I've spent a lot of time thinking about this, how to not only address the challenges, but to turn them into opportunities for growth. And now I'm ready to talk about not only what we're going to do, but why and how it impacts everybody else. Next week I'll be announcing dates for a series of webinars to discuss it all. The massive changes to the way online business works and the way our society handles intellectual property impact the future in ways that are not obvious. Everyone obsesses over whether AI will change or destroy jobs. What's easy to overlook is that AI is going to completely redefine how we do business. It will change many of the principles our society takes for granted, like those related to intellectual property. It will change how businesses get discovered, how they interact with their customers, what their customers need from businesses, and the exchange between customers and businesses. That pretty much covers everything business. Everything is going to change. On the scale that AI is being implemented as we speak, it will change how the entire economy functions. The days of being able to start a business with a website and grow it over time may vanish. The reason is that search engines as we've known them for more than 20 years no longer exist. Every search engine is moving as fast as they can to become a destination instead of a connector. They are not incentivized to connect their users to the sources they pillaged to create the answers they've given. What are they incentivized to do? Connect people to advertisers. In the future you'll have to pay for every click you get. This will transform how you go about marketing, as well as everything else about websites. But it will also transform everything about teaching, explaining, and informing. And everything else business. So when I say PropLIBRARY is transforming, I mean we're doing paradigm-shifting changes in everything from business model, approach to marketing, product development, and how we plan to interact with customers and business partners. And to make our plan work we have to share exactly what we're going to do. Which, for us is easy, because our business was basically built on over-sharing from the beginning. Stay tuned. Next week we'll announce dates and times for the webinars and how you can submit your questions in advance so we can make sure we address them.

The things you do to win proposals come naturally when you have an effective corporate culture. But if you're encountering win rate stealing friction while doing proposals, it's a sign that your corporate culture is broken. Fixing your corporate culture can help you win proposals. But most companies don't understand what a corporate culture is, let alone how to cultivate an effective one. The good news is that if your leadership focuses on what it takes to win proposals, it can create the foundation for an effective corporate culture. Winning once is easy, especially if you're lucky. Winning consistently takes hard work. There is no single thing that results in winning consistently. Winning consistently requires the integration of all that goes into it. It is the culmination of what you do and not the individual actions. Culture is the same. A winning corporate culture requires not just that you take certain actions, but that you integrate them into something that is greater than the sum of the individual parts. Some of the elements of a winning culture include: Purpose. How are you going to get everyone to buy into the purpose of the effort if you can't even get them to define the purpose of the entire organization the same way? This requires more than a mission statement. It requires all company leaders to be on the same page, make their decisions based on it, and show up committed to it. Most contractors have the wrong mission statement anyway. That will have to change if you want to get everyone on the same page. Collaboration. Is there a common approach to how people work together, face challenges together, organize their efforts, make decisions together, disagree, help each other, and grow together? If not, how can you expect people to get along when things get stressful? Proposals have a tight deadline with many people involved, trying to create something that beats all competitors. They will always be stressful. Having common ways to collaborate when facing challenges helps tremendously. Process. How can you have effective process implementation if people don't define and value process the same way? When there is a common understanding of why we have processes, how we go about implementing them, and what matters about them, it means that people will arrive at the proposal process already having expectations for how to interact with that process. Strategy. Strategy also requires that people have the same understanding and value for it, if it is going to be successful. You are less likely to be competitive when people come into a proposal thinking strategy is someone else's job or without strategic considerations for how they complete their proposal assignments. The same is true when a proposal hero shows up and tries to personally own the strategies. Branding. Most people don't even know what branding is. Few branding experts define it the same way. Is branding a set of rules or is it an identity? Is it who you are or an aspiration of who you want to be? Or is it just an appearance trying to manifest as something real? How your company approaches branding tells the truth about what your company really values, no matter what your slogan says. Does your branding reflect what it will take to win, or is it an after-the-fact pleasantry? Finance. How do you balance cost control and performance? How do you balance profit and expense? How do you approach maximizing ROI? Finance affects everything. And nothing is real without it being fully integrated and compatible with what you are trying to do. But wait, there's more...Culture manifests through the things we do. But the things we do result from how we conceptualize ourselves and what we do. And the individuals within an organization rarely do this the same. That's okay. Maybe even beneficial. Unless they are incompatible. Corporate culture can help get people into alignment. Some additional elements of a winning culture include things like: Curiosity. People who have insufficient curiosity tend to stay in their box. If people can't think outside of their box, they are unlikely to make a cultural shift. Some cultures actually put people in boxes. But people in boxes don't win proposals. Willingness to change. People who are set in their ways are also likely to resist a cultural change. When every RFP requires adaptation, and every proposal requires differentiation and win strategies that can beat the competition who are also improving, you need to be constantly evolving. Prioritization. All companies have resource challenges. Culture must be strong to win over territories and personal preferences in the competition for resources. But culture is one of the few things with the potential to unify people and change their priorities. Dedication. If you demonstrate inconsistency, that is what your culture will become. If your culture lacks dedication, your processes will be considerations and not processes. Issues, Risk, and Fear. Proposals require a lot of problem solving. And they are chaotic. They need issues to be reported quickly. Without fear. They need an environment where risks aren't ignored, they are managed without fear, because risks are never eliminated. Risks are never zero. And because of this, proposals require taking risks. Without fear. But also, not randomly. A culture that manages risks and surfaces issues early is more likely to avoid a train wreck at the end of their proposals. Honesty. Saying you can deliver something in two days that you know will take longer is a form of dishonesty. Hiding problems is another form of dishonesty. So is ignoring other people's expectations when you know you won't meet them. Or having expectations of them that you know can't be met. Or turning in an ordinary proposal section that doesn't reflect what it will take to win, but you hope will slide past the reviewers. Creating a culture of honesty doesn't mean enforcing honesty. It means nurturing it and rewarding it so that people aren't incentivized to stretch the truth. Friction. Friction results where there are things in the environment that impede people's ability to collaborate. Sometimes people are things that impede collaboration. Look for the root cause of proposal friction and then lubricate it. Processes and tools can lubricate some types of friction. Culture is what lubricates friction caused by people. Advanced proposal management requires addressing all of these. But this can be like swimming upstream in a company that doesn't have an effective culture. Does your culture reflect what it needs to be to consistently win and grow? Keep in mind that culture, like parenting, is best taught through modelling. People will do what they see the executives doing, while what they say will only be absorbed so much. If you don't model your culture as well as describe it, it is less likely to grow. Commit to demonstrating your culture, especially when it's difficult. What you model during proposal development can become a model for the rest of the company. This only works if the company's leadership believes that culture is a priority, and that the model you build working on proposals is something that should spread throughout the company. You can build a foundation for corporate culture from the bottom up. But it can't grow and become fully integrated unless the company's leadership gives it the same level of attention and commitment. Modelling effective culture does not cost anything except attention and effort. The thing that can unify us all is growth. And growth requires winning. And winning consistently requires a culture based on it. You can start cultivating a winning culture in the proposal department by creating a department-level culture based on growth, winning, and ROI. You can model it for the rest of the company. But you will always be working with people from other departments with other cultures until your company's leadership decides it wants the entire company to have a culture of growth and winning.

Saying things that differentiate your offering from your competitors is a well-known best practice. Proposal writers spend a lot of time identifying differentiators and then working them into their proposals. At least they should. What we see in a lot of the proposals we review are things that do the opposite. People write things in their proposals that make them sound ordinary. You can’t be competitive and sound ordinary. We call these statements anti-differentiators. If you can’t write a great proposal built around your differentiators, you should at least try really hard not to base your proposals on anti-differentiators. 5 examples of anti-differentiators Anti-differentiator: “Our company is fully capable of performing the required work on time and within budget.” When you say that you can do the work, you sound ordinary. Everyone who is a potential competitor can do the work. Being able to do the work will not win you the bid. Doing the work in some way that is exceptionally better is what will win you the work. Talk about how your way of doing the work is superior or will deliver superior results instead of simply saying you can do the work. Adding “on time and within budget” to the list is like saying “pick us because we will do a merely acceptable job.” When you claim that you will do the work exceptionally, no one will believe you. So don't say that you are an excellent performer, have a great track record, or will do a great job. Being exceptional must be proven. Ordinary companies claim all kinds of things without proving them. No one ever pays them any attention. No proposal evaluator ever told their boss that they should approve a proposal because the vendor they’d never heard of before said they are the industry leader. A company that proves they have a credible approach to mitigating the risks resulting in more reliable delivery will beat them every time. Anti-differentiator: “Our company meets all of the qualifications required by the RFP.” When you say that you are fully qualified, you sound ordinary. Everyone who is a potential competitor will be qualified. Being qualified will not win you the bid. Being over qualified will not win you the bid. However, being qualified in a way that matters and makes a difference can win you the bid. Focus on why your qualifications will make a difference and prove that it matters. A vendor that brags about “meeting all qualifications required by the RFP” will lose to a company that shows how their qualifications will result in better delivery or that simply offers better qualifications. Every time. Anti-differentiator: “Our company will staff every position required for this project.” When you say that you have the staff or that you’ll just hire the incumbent staff, you sound ordinary. Everyone who is bidding will claim to have the staff or be capable of getting them. And they’ll be just as credible as you are. Don’t just say that your staff or ability to get them is better, somehow. Say what the impact of your better staff or ability to get them will be. And prove it. Anti-differentiator: “We will meet all of the requirements in the Statement of Work (SOW).” If you really want to sound ordinary, say that you’ll fulfill or comply with all of the contract requirements. Because everyone will say that and you’ll have lots of company. You’ll be one of many and just like all the rest. And it’s not even what the customer really wants. It’s merely the minimum of what they must have. What they want is someone who will do better than the contract requirements. Only if you’re going to say that you have to detail how you’ll do that and what the impact will be. Anti-differentiator: “Our company delivers the best value.” When you say that you or your approach provides the best value and leave it at that you sound ordinary. If you prove the value impact of what you offer is greater than the value impact of other offers, then you sound compelling. Only how are you going to do that? The best you can usually hope for is to explain the trade-offs and how the trade-offs you chose will strike the best balance between cost and performance. Skip trying to claim to be the best value. Your claim means nothing. The customer will determine who is offering the best value. And they’ll do it by considering the trade-offs. Information about those trade-offs that help them understand what matters is the kind of thing that customers cite as strengths on their proposal evaluation forms. Don’t be the minimum Anything that involves doing the minimum, meeting the requirements, and being capable, will always be anti-differentiators no matter how affirmatively you state them. Why would the customer choose a vendor who is merely acceptable over someone who is better? Any claims that are unproven, no matter how complimentary or grandiose, will also be an anti-differentiator. They do the opposite of what you intend and make you look like an ordinary, somewhat untrustworthy, vendor deserving of skepticism. Each anti-differentiator that you include in your proposal lowers your competitiveness. Don’t be ordinary because ordinary doesn't win. If you can’t find a real differentiator, at least just prove that you are good at what you do. Proof points can be differentiators.

Not only will you never have enough people to help write and produce a proposal, but many of the ones you do have will be inexperienced. You need to get the most out of what you’ve got to work with. Sometimes this means that instead of best practices and a great proposal, you need to figure out how you're going to be able to submit anything with the staff you have to work with. And hope you can still win. Maybe your proposed price will be low. Basic things you can do to improve your chances Anticipate everything an inexperienced proposal writer is going to mess up and have questions about. Don’t just think about the procedures. They won’t already know what the goals should be and you can’t afford for them to get stuck. They won’t know how to structure their response or what points to make. They won’t know what the expectations are. Keeping them from wandering around in the dark will save a lot of time. Make sure people can fulfill their assignments. It will help tremendously if you have practical guidance you can give those contributing to the proposal effort. It will also help if you take the time to detail your proposal assignments. Most proposal assignments come with failure built into them. If you just pass out an outline, you’re setting yourself up for a bad proposal experience. Detailing your proposal assignments means telling people what they need to succeed with their assignment and not just giving them a heading to fill in. Guide them towards success. Proving training is beneficial, but can increase the time burden that the proposal represents. Classroom training is best for procedures, knowledge transfer, or contextual awareness and pays off best for staff who will do more proposals in the future. But practical proposal training is best embedded into your process and doesn’t have to even look like training. Think of it as guidance that can be implemented in the form of explainers built into forms, cheat sheets, and checklists. A little goes a long way, even if it’s just explainers included with assignments. The further you go beyond an outline and a schedule, the more you will get out of the staff you’ve got to work with. Set the bar low and be careful where you raise it. Decide whether your goal is to submit an ordinary, compliant proposal that no one will be embarrassed by without mentioning that it’s not a competitive strategy, or whether you are going to stretch your thin resources to the breaking point in an attempt to win against better prepared and resourced competitors. You’ll do a better job if you assess your circumstances and make an intentional choice between those two instead of leaving it unstated or claiming to do both. Going all heroic without the right resources tends to result in a last minute train wreck of a proposal full of defects that no one will want to admit to. Going beyond the basics to really get more out of people If you only task your proposal writers with writing, you are in for a bad proposal experience when insufficient and inexperienced staff try to figure out what to write and how to present it on their own. There is a lot more to winning a proposal than showing up and putting enough words on paper to fill the page limit. The more you do to goals and expectations instead of procedures. Build for the future In this moment on this pursuit, the staff you’ve got to work with is limited and the best you may be able to do is accelerate the time from thinking to writing and eliminate rework. But over time and on future pursuits, you can improve those staff and possibly find new ones. Building people’s awareness about how to streamline the writing through planning and improving their understanding of proposal quality criteria will benefit future proposals. How much to invest in proposal staffing is an ROI consideration. If you want The Powers That Be to better resource your proposals, you need to show the impact that will have on revenue, and that the return is orders of magnitude more than it costs. The converse is also true. Understaffing proposals will reduce revenue by far more than it saves. Maximizing ROI depends on improving your win rate. Regardless of whether your proposals are fully staffed, understaffed, or most likely somewhere in between, improving the effectiveness of the staff you’ve got to work with will always be part of improving your win rate.