Carl Dickson

You can’t write a great proposal unless you have a great offering. Trying to write about something in a great way when you haven’t figured out what that something even is, is just a recipe for failure. You need to start the writing already knowing what your great offering is going to be. In fact, making up a great offering by writing about it is a great way to ensure that you end up with a poor offering that is poorly explained. That’s a major way that companies end up with a low win rate, and it's completely avoidable. Great offerings are not simply made up. They are engineered. Even if you offer a service that is far removed from engineering, the process you go through to design your offering will resemble engineering. Most offering design efforts focus on what should be included in your offering design. However, to engineer your offering, you also need to focus on the process. The specifics of your engineering methodology for capturing the specifications of what you are offering will vary because they depend on the nature of what you are writing. But there are some goals that all offering design efforts have in common. You should validate your offering design with the customer before you propose it. You are not the judge of whether you have a great offering. Only the customer is. If you want to be sure that your ideas are impressive and reflect the customer’s preferences, you need to test your assumptions by running them by the customer. You can’t do this if you wait until you have the RFP to start designing your offering. You can’t do this if you don’t have a customer contact plan in mind. You need to be able to anticipate the customer's goals and preferences. Having an offering design in mind will help you know how to influence the RFP. What would you like to see in the RFP? Or not see in it? What should guide the customer’s decision? It depends on what you are offering. You can’t influence the RFP with your offering in mind unless you start talking to the customer about it before they start writing the RFP. It’s not enough to start discovering the customer’s requirements that early, you have to start designing your offering that early as well. Offer design is driven by value. What is your value proposition? How do you add value without adding cost? How do you make trade-offs to arrive at the best value? How do you win when the value you add is intangible? Is what you are offering competitive? A great offering design that will cost too much is not a great offering design. If the customer loves it but can’t (or won’t) afford it, it’s not a great offering design. To be the best alternative for the customer, you must consider the price of your offering compared to their other alternatives. Your offering design process also needs to be validated within your company. Is it the best your company can offer? Are the risks acceptable? What is your company’s decision or approval process, and how does that impact the process for your offering design? Finally, your offering design process needs to Proposal Content Planning so that the writing can reflect everything it needs to, without creating additional editing cycles to fix a narrative that’s not only worded wrong but structured wrong because it didn’t anticipate everything it needed to. Don’t write until you’re ready. But absolutely do design your offering and be prepared when it’s time to describe it in writing. From these items, you can arrange a sequence and milestones. Then you have a structure with which you can address all of the details you want to represent in your offering design, based on the nature of what you offer. When your process and schedule are complete, you not only have a better flow of information towards a proposal that is more likely to win, you have a means to better integrate the talent throughout your organization towards the common goal of winning and growing. Premium Content for PropLIBRARY Subscribers Planning Your Solution vs. Planning Your Content

The problem with best practices is the worst care scenario. When the best practices don't apply or can't be used, they leave fail people by leaving them hanging. Don't worry. We're here to help. When you can't do proposals the right way, sometimes you have to do proposals The Wrong Way™. It's one of our favorite subjects to write about, because it's so diabolical and fun to do the opposite of what the best practices say you should do. But we have to give you fair warning: doing proposals The Wrong Way™ can ensure that you lose. Doing proposals The Wrong Way™ is for when surviving the proposal has a higher priority than winning. How often do The Powers That Be come into your office and say “We’ve been looking at this RFP and have decided to submit a proposal.” You look into it and realize that you’ve lost 10 days off of a 30-day schedule, there was no client marketing before the RFP came out, no one knows who the potential competitors are, the customer doesn’t even know your name, and you know you have almost no chance of winning. However, The Powers That Be say you must bid, so you have no choice but to do the proposal The Wrong Way™. Doing proposals The Wrong Way™ is sometimes necessary when you have weaknesses you can't fix, so you turn them into strengths instead. But more often, proposal writers have to figure out how to write about a subject they know nothing about. Sometimes you have to do it that way because you have adverse circumstances, like bad past performance to overcome. Even a good proposal where the best practices mostly apply can have rough edges and insurmountable challenges to overcome. Doing proposals The Wrong Way gives you techniques for overcoming obstacles, coping, or even cheating when the best practices fail you. Just beware the dark side of the force. It is extremely powerful, but also tempting. And it can destroy your soul. But it can also save a proposal, because knowing how to do proposals The Wrong Way can also help you improve their quality. Premium Content for PropLIBRARY Subscribers Recipes for how to do proposals The Wrong Way.

Waiting for a contract before you start developing your customer relationships is doing business development backwards. There are more ways to get ahead of the RFP and start relationship marketing than most people realize. This is a critical first step towards being able to influence the RFP. A lot of people focus on customer intimacy as something that improves your chances of winning. Plus, it sounds cool. No company is going to say they’re not interested in customer intimacy. It’s pretty easy to convince the executives that it’s something you just have to have. But then you have a problem... How do you achieve customer intimacy? It has more to do with being helpful than it does with being conversational. Relationship marketing is largely about demonstrating your value to the customer by sharing information and insight. To help you get started, here are 82 topics to discuss with your customers. Relationships are vital for winning contracts, only not for the reasons that some people think. Relationship marketing isn't about winning contracts because the customer likes you. Relationships alone aren't enough for you to win contracts. Relationship marketing is about winning contracts by having more insight into the customer's needs, and being able to translate that information advantage into a better proposal. In addition to understanding your customer's needs, you can also gain a competitive advantage by understanding your customer's acquisition and decision process. When you start late and can't write a proposal based on your insight into the customer's needs, one strategy you can use is to make the proposal part of a conversation and approach it like the start of a relationship. Another approach is to share a vision and invite the customer to be a part of it. In many ways you can think of the entire customer relationship as one big conversation. Only you need approach this conversation by trying to be helpful and as a chance to demonstrate your ability to deliver value, instead of as an opportunity to talk about yourself.

It's not enough to track your leads. You need to know what they add up to. You need to know how many resources you'll need to win the pursuit. And at each step along the way, you'll drop some leads. Either they fail to qualify, the customer cancels them, or they all land at the same time and you can't pursue them all. Pipeline analysis blends lead tracking with analytics. A pipeline model is a spreadsheet that shows your leads over time, status, source, and other attributes. The formulas contained in the pipeline can enable you to do "what if" analysis that give you exceptional insight into what drives the success of your business. An assessment of your pipeline can tell you whether you're going to hit your numbers, what your numbers should be, and what it will take to get there. Consistent success requires more than just getting a database of leads and submitting some proposals. But perhaps the most important is that pipeline assessments can tell your future. When you try to answer the questions that determine the success of your business development efforts, most of them require a pipeline model and some time to collect the data. In every pipeline assessment we've done, we've discovered that there's something more important to the growth of your business than lead generation. It's so vital that if you don't have it, you really aren't in business at all. You're just gambling. But collecting the data is tricky. And if you interpret the data wrong, you can fool yourself. But when you do it right, it can also help you better integrate business development, lead capture, and proposal submission. You will also discover that successful growth requires more than just good people. When you structure your pipeline correctly and collect the right data, it can help you fill your pipeline the right way, and greatly contribute to successful growth.

Having a proposal process is easy. Successfully implementing a proposal process is hard. And everyone else is to blame. Okay, maybe you are part of the problem too. I call it the Other People Problem. To create a proposal bigger than yourself, you have to be able to work through other people. And other people are problematic in so many different ways. For something to be a proposal process, it must be something that other people can implement. If a specific person is required for it to function, it is not a process. It's simply that person's way of doing things. A process that other people can implement requires more than just steps. It requires a flow of information. People must not only have steps for creating a winning proposal, but they also have to have information as inputs, know what the step involves, and have a way of knowing if they completed it correctly. It will also help if they know what options they have for various contingencies, in case things don't go as planned or in case circumstances change. And it will also help if people have a way to acquire any skills they might need to implement the process. Nearly every contractor I have encountered says they have a proposal process. And nearly all of them are wrong. This includes billion-dollar companies with tons of documentation about proposals. They have tons of documentation. They have expectations. But they do not have a process. One big reason that most companies do not have the process they claim they do is because they give up during implementation. Working through other people, enabling them to do a complex task without being dependent on any particular person, is extraordinarily difficult. It's much easier to simply direct them. To successfully implement your proposal process, you need to: Inform people of the goals they need to accomplish Deliver the right information to the right people at the right time Anticipate what information will be required and how it will need to be managed Itemize the information to be handled and what to do with it Enable people to discover how to do what is required Interface with things that are needed but are outside the scope of the process Collaborate with people who are outside your control Enable people to know when they've completed a task successfully Obtain adequate resources Reach appropriate decisions Operate according to schedule Manage the expectations of all stakeholders Adapt to customer-driven and other changes None of this will be possible without the enthusiastic participation of Other People. How you gain the enthusiastic participation of Other People depends on your corporate culture. However, the most important issue is likely to be whether the participants find it easier to follow the process or to perform their tasks in their own way. If following the process will take more effort than skipping it, you're going to encounter resistance. Forcing people to follow your proposal process is counter-productive. The MustWin Process is designed around the flow of information required to create a proposal based on what it will take to win. The MustWin Process is fully documented for PropLIBRARY Subscribers and can be immediately put to work. It is goal driven. And because it helps people realize and achieve their goals, it's easier than trying to create a proposal without it. I can't tell you how many times I've heard proposal specialists go to management wanting to force people to follow their process. This will never work. There's a reason why people aren't following the process, and it's not because they're not interested.

The only thing harder than winning business is having to work with other people to win business. First you've got all the hand-offs, from marketing to business development to capture to proposal to production. Then there is the natural tension between technical staff and those involved in marketing and sales. People in different positions have different perspectives. It only works when people work together. And to work together people need to know what to expect from each other. They need coordination. And all that starts by defining the roles. It's harder than it sounds. For example, when an organization has a proposal manager, they think that part of the process is settled. But sometimes a proposal manager is not a proposal manager. Titles are not enough. Within the MustWin Process we not only define the roles that people play, we do it in a way that makes it easier to allocate your limited resources. We make those roles a flexible part of the process, so that you can maximize the potential contributions of everyone in your organization, whether they are specialists or not. Premium content for PropLIBRARY subscribers Within the MustWin Process, we define roles functionally. This enables each person to wear multiple hats. It also gives you flexibility in how you map the functional needs of proposal development to the staff you have available. Executive Sponsor Business Development Manager Capture Manager Proposal Manager Process Administrator Production Manager Proposal Writers and Subject Matter Experts Graphics/Illustrators

Should you bid everything? Or should you carefully pick and choose what you bid? How should you qualify which leads are worth pursuing? How do you decide which leads are worth bidding? If you have to justify dropping a lead instead of justifying pursuing a lead, you might want to change the dialog surrounding your bid decisions. To help you know when it's time to rethink your bid/no bid process, we created a list with nine ways to know if your bid decision process needs improvement to help you decide. Then to help you figure out how to change your bid/no bid process, here are six approaches to bid/no bid decisions and ten things they must get right. Lead qualification is key aspect of the pre RFP process and built into the Readiness Reviews. Readiness Reviews also provide a means to achieving effective bid/no bid decisions. The MustWin Process explains how to assess your bid/no bid process, provides major bid/no bid considerations, and because it can't be reinforced enough provides still more reasons to "no bid" a pursuit.

Tips for Site Visits: Just remember that anything you say or do will be observed by your competitors. The site visit should be attended by as many people as are allowed by the customer. Get answers to as many of the Readiness Review questions as possible. The following checklist can help you get the most out of your site visits: Gather Intelligence About The Customer ❏ Learn things that they won’t put in writing in the RFP like what their goals or preferences are. ❏ Try to identify who is participating in the procurement and in particular, who will be participating in the evaluation. Gather Intelligence About The Opportunity ❏ Count staff, including both Government and contractor, to help clarify the scope and pricing. ❏ Inventory which equipment is furnished by the contractor and which is furnished by the customer. ❏ Examine documents such as procedures manuals, standards, and policy documents. Request copies of any that look useful. ❏ Come prepared with technical scope questions. You may get different answers in person than in writing. Gather Intelligence About The Competitive Environment ❏ Examine the sign-in sheet to discover who your competitors are. ❏ Request a “Bidders List” or copy of the sign-in sheet. ❏ Find out who intends to bid as a prime contractor and who intends to bid as a subcontractor, while either broadcasting, hiding, or misleading about your own intentions. Influence The Solicitation ❏ Come prepared to make suggestions and influence the solicitation. ❏ Introduce your key staff to the customer face to face. ❏ Be helpful to the customer. ❏ Reinforce how you want to position your company in your customer’s eyes. Return to the Topic Hub for Pre RFP Pursuit, or return to the Starting Point for Discovering What It Will Take To Win.

When the customer issues a draft RFP, you will need to take action. The Capture Manager should inform the Proposal Manager and together they should determine what action items are appropriate. The following checklist can help you plan your response: ❏ Is a response required/allowed? ❏ When are comments due? ❏ What is the schedule for release of the final RFP? ❏ Does the release contain the full RFP? ❏ Does the RFP provide all of the information you need to bid? ❏ Do you have questions about any of the RFP requirements? ❏ Are there any RFP requirements that you would like changed? ❏ Are there any RFP requirements that would lead you to cancel the bid if they are not changed? ❏ Does anything in the RFP require changes to your teaming plans? ❏ How can you influence the scope of work, performance specifications, evaluation criteria, or other aspects of the RFP? ❏ Is a bidders list available? ❏ Have you distributed the RFP to all proposal stakeholders? ❏ What can you do to stage your proposal planning documents? If your response includes any requests to change the RFP before it is released, make sure that you provide the text for the changes so that the customer can do a simple copy and paste to implement the change. Before taking action, give some consideration to the customer’s goals in releasing the draft RFP. Did they do it because they want: To verify the specifications are reasonable? To see how many bids they may receive? To give the company they want to win a chance to influence the RFP? To give bidders extra time to prepare to meet the requirements? The reason they released a draft RFP can have a major impact on your strategies for how to respond. Return to the Topic Hub for Pre RFP Pursuit, or return to the Starting Point for Discovering What It Will Take To Win.

At any time prior to RFP release, a customer may or may not release an RFI. Customers request RFIs for different reasons and call them by different names. Knowing how to respond and what the impact is on the process depends on what the customer is trying to achieve by releasing the RFI. When the Government is considering a procurement, but is not sure about specifications, methodologies, or potential bidders, they may issue an RFI. An RFI may provide you with an opportunity to: Make suggestions regarding what they should include in the future RFP if it goes forward. Show that you are qualified, responsive, and helpful. Influence the procurement. Provide information about your company to the customer. You should take advantage of these opportunities, if possible. Sometimes, responding to an RFI is required if you want to respond to the future RFP. When this is the case, it will say so in the text of the announcement. There are other documents that are similar in nature to an “RFI” that customers sometimes release. Two of these include: Sources Sought Notice. Usually used when they know what they want, but do not know who can provide it. Market Survey. Used to learn about a market and its suppliers. If the Government thinks a procurement is a candidate for release as a small business set-aside, they may release a Sources Sought notice to see if they get sufficient interest from small businesses. If enough small businesses respond that they are capable of fulfilling the requirements, the Government may be obligated to make the procurement a small business set-aside. If you are a small business you should take advantage of this and include a recommendation and rationale for making the procurement a set-aside. If you are a large business, you should be on guard against this, and include a rationale for why the Government should not make the procurement a small business set-aside. If you have questions about what they are trying to do, you should call the contracting officer. In fact, you should look for an excuse to call, if only to make contact and boost name recognition. Because it is not (yet) a procurement, you may find them willing to talk and to discuss options, trade-offs, intentions, and other critically important concerns that they will not be willing to discuss once an RFP is released. When responding to an RFI, there are many things that you can try to influence, in order to give you a competitive advantage. These include: Technical scope. Try to include requirements that will limit the field of competitors. Specifications. Make recommendations that you can comply with, but which will be difficult for others. Contract Type. If you have a preference, here is your chance to make a recommendation. Contract Vehicle. If you have a contract vehicle that you think is advantageous, recommend its use. Provide sufficient detail (POCs, procedures, contract numbers, etc.) so that they can implement your recommendation. Small Business. If you are a small business and think you can do the work yourself, recommend that it be released as a small business set-aside. If you are not a small business, you may want to point out any aspects of what they need that would be difficult for a small business to provide. Then state your willingness to team with a small business if required. Pricing. Choices made early on can have a big impact on the price. Here is your chance to influence those choices. Past Performance. If you don’t have any Government project past performance, make sure you recommend that they consider relevant commercial experience. Certifications. If you have any relevant certifications, recommend that they become requirements to limit the competitive field. If you don’t have relevant certifications, recommend that they not be required because they would limit the amount of competition, really are not relevant, would increase the price, etc. Methodologies. If there is a particular approach you would take, describe it so that they can make it a requirement. Make sure that you describe your recommendations in language that can be included in the RFP. Keep in mind that if you make a recommendation and it ends up in the RFP, everyone will see it and bid accordingly. Sometimes this will level the playing field and you will lose the competitive advantage. These recommendations are better to save for when you are responding to the RFP, so that you can keep the advantage and stand out from the crowd.

Proposal management is needed when you want to go after contracts that are bigger than yourself and you have to work through difference between managing a small proposal and managing a large proposal. Proposal management means answering questions like: Who issues proposal assignments and who is responsible for fulfilling them? Where do you draw the lines? On the organization chart? Between one person's role and another? How do you allocate proposal resources and perform scheduling? Who defines the goals and sets the direction? And what goals and directions should they set? How do you measure proposal progress? How do people know if they are on track? Who defines, implements, oversees, and enforces the required processes? How do people know what's acceptable? Who defines proposal quality? Who's in charge, and why won't they listen to you? Who decides what and how? How do you do better next time? What should you do to constantly improve your win rate? A lot of proposal management involves knowing how to solve the problems that typically come up during proposal development. Unfortunately there is a lot of confusion regarding what a Proposal Manager is and should be responsible for. Sometimes they become the stuckee for EVERYTHING including figuring out just what that includes. To help you with this issue, here is a list of 90 things that someone needs to do to win and who is usually responsible. Congratulations, you're a proposal manager! Now figure out how to achieve your goals with the meager resources you've been given. If that's not good enough, you'd better be able to explain how many people you really need. And who you need on your team. You might find that an ROI model is a better way to calculate the number of people needed to write winning proposals. A good place to start is by eliminating waste, since a lot of effort that goes into proposals is simply wasted. If you still don't have enough resources, here are some tips to help you get by. Once you have your resources, that's when the real management part of the job starts. Here is a simple and clever technique you can use to quickly improve your proposal management skills. Managing a proposal effort has some important differences from other kinds of management and it can be counter-intuitive. For example, by not trusting people you can improve teamwork and increase your win rate.Management by metrics One of the things the MustWin Process does for you is give you ways to measure business development and proposal progress that you've never had before. Proposal management and winningHere is a list of things you should discuss before taking a gig as a proposal manager to make sure you know what you are getting into. Winning proposals consistently requires having a process that informs people about what they should do and enables them to work better as a team. And getting everyone on the same page regarding what the process should be can be excruciatingly difficult. But usually it's because you're overlooking the real reason why your process is failing. When seeking to improve your win rate, where you should start depends on what your role is. But there are some key areas that are worth investing in if you want to win more of what you bid. If you are just getting started on formalizing the way you produce your proposals, then start with the basics. There are a lot of things that will impact your ability to deliver a winning proposal. Make sure you are focusing on the right things and don't go down the wrong path. Instead focus on these six critical areas. Best practices are all fine and good, but too often in the world of proposals we're called on to solve proposal emergencies. When this is the case, you have to be able to practice proposal triage. LogisticsProposal management and project management have a lot in common. You have to deal with schedules, resources, plans, budgets, workflow, quality assurance, and all of the details that have to be addressed before people can sit down to write a proposal. "Amateurs talk about tactics, but professionals study logistics." Gen. Robert H. Barrow, USMC (Commandant of the Marine Corps) noted in 1980 Lessons learned and continuous improvementContinuous improvement supports being competitive, achieving your full potential, and helping your company grow. Making sure that you're focusing on the right lessons learned after each proposal is key. Sometimes there's a lot of CYA going on after a proposal loses, and people too easily accept that the proposal lost "on price" because nobody can be blamed for it. Here's what you really need to know about a proposal you lost, and here's how to make sure you don't lose before you even start your proposals. And if you're working on a proposal right now that's broken, here are 12 strategies for how to fix it. Bringing your entire organization into alignment to maximize your win rateA well-oiled team has a better chance of winning than a gifted individual or even a collection of gifted individuals. But a well-developed organization will beat ad hoc teams brought together as needed for proposals. Your staff, leadership, culture, management practices, strategies, collaboration, resource allocation, and more are just as important to your win rate as your proposal process. Our topic center for organizational development provides many resources for building the kind of organization you need to support your efforts to maximize your win rate. Premium content for PropLIBRARY Subscribers When the RFP is released, the deadline clock starts ticking. You should be prepared to act quickly. This RFP release checklist can help. One of the first things you should do is distribute copies of the RFP so that all stakeholders can begin reading it without delay. Here is an RFP distribution list template. Holding a proposal Kickoff Meeting can help get the proposal off to the right start. Here is some material to help you get the most out of your Kickoff Meetings: Kickoff Meeting Guidance Kickoff Meeting Agenda Checklist Typically the customer will provide instructions for submitting questions regarding the RFP. Here is a format you can use to consistently and clearly present your questions. When the customer needs to make changes to the RFP, they usually release an amendment to the RFP. Amendments can come at any time and may be insignificant, or they may change everything. Here is a checklist for what to do when an RFP amendment is released.

Never pursue a bid just because you can Every bid can’t be a “Must Win.” It’s really hard to break the habit of bidding everything you find. Here is an additional list of reasons to “No Bid” an opportunity: ❏ You find out about the opportunity when the RFP is released ❏ The customer has no budget or can’t afford what is required ❏ Your competition is cheaper or there are too many competitors ❏ You don’t know who the competition is ❏ You can’t assemble a winning team ❏ There is a requirement in the RFP that you can’t live with ❏ The price risk is too high or the performance risk is too high ❏ You have negative past performance ❏ The customer doesn’t like you or you don’t like them ❏ The customer doesn’t know you or likes someone else ❏ The customer won’t answer critical questions ❏ The opportunity doesn’t fit your corporate strategies or goals ❏ The RFP is either too vague or is too specific ❏ There’s not enough profit in it ❏ You don’t have enough staff available to write the proposal ❏ You aren’t qualified ❏ You have a conflict of interest or intellectual property issues ❏ The customer or the schedule is unrealistic ❏ You don’t have the staff to do the work if you win ❏ You don’t know who the evaluators are ❏ The customer is trying to justify a selection already made ❏ The customer is just fishing or is not serious ❏ Location, location, location ❏ The contract type is not appropriate for the type of work ❏ Your awareness is limited to what’s in the RFP ❏ There is no potential for follow-on work ❏ Pursuing it would distract you from other opportunities ❏ You can’t articulate why you should be the one to win ❏ You don’t know how the procurement fits the customer’s strategic plans ❏ The technology requested is already obsolete Return to the Topic Hub for Pre RFP Pursuit, or return to the Starting Point for Discovering What It Will Take To Win.

You should make a conscious decision whether a pursuit is worth investing in Think about the price of continued investment and not what you have already spent. Discipline is required to “no bid” opportunities that are a bad match, not worth pursuing, or simply questionable. The burden should be on justifying pursuit of the opportunity, and not on cancelling it. Deciding whether to bid an opportunity is not just a matter of guessing how much money you could make or what your chances of winning. Sometimes it’s worth it to bid something you know you’re going to lose money on. At other times it might make sense to walk away from a bid that would be profitable. Bid/No Bid Considerations: Profitability Return on Investment Strategic value Positioning for future work To gain references Competitive positioning Relation to core competencies and customer base Level of effort to respond (cost/budget) Risk Risk in responding Risk in performing Likelihood of a win Relationship with teaming partners Return to the Topic Hub for Pre RFP Pursuit, or return to the Starting Point for Discovering What It Will Take To Win.

If we had to pick one thing to change that would have the most impact on an organization’s ability to win, it would be how they approach bid/no bid decisions. If you think of them as just being about deciding whether to bid, you’re missing a tremendous opportunity, because they can have a much greater impact on how you bid, than just on if you bid. Do you know what percentage of bids you drop at each stage or do you never drop anything? Do the things you bid reinforce your strategic plans or ignore them? Do you arrive at RFP release with an information advantage or just knowing what’s in the announcement? Are you tracking metrics that can quantify what’s driving your win rate? Or are you just assuming that conventional wisdom applies to your circumstances? Do leads go immediately into your tracking system? Or do you sit on them until you know you’re going to pursue them before you make them “official?” Do you put every lead you can find into your tracking system, no matter how weak or unqualified they are, to boost your numbers? Can you articulate what it will take to win before you start the proposal, or do you just base it on what is in the RFP? Do you know your win strategies and themes before you start the proposal? Or do you struggle to define your win strategies and themes during the proposal? Do you have a bid/no bid decision, or a bid/no bid process that defines standards and has steps, goals, and criteria as well as reviews? All of these problems are made worse by an ineffective bid/no bid process. It doesn’t even have to be broken. A weakness on any one of these issues can be addressed by improving how you approach your bid/no bid decision process. Another way of saying this is that you can improve you win rate by focusing on your bid/no bid decision process. If you already have a bid/no bid process, then you might want to add, “Has it become watered down over time by people who have learned how to game the system, or by people who just want to be nice and get along rather than make tough decisions?” And, “Is it driven primarily by financial considerations, or is it driven by the need to discover what it will take to win?” A lot of people assume that a bid/no bid process boosts win rates by dropping the low probability pursuits. While this is true, the real way that the bid/no bid process boosts win rates is by making people do the right things to position the company to win. You can change the behavior of people by changing the bid/no bid process. Readiness Reviews give you a simple structure and approach to implement a bid/no bid process that is strategic and positions you to win the proposals that you do decide to bid. By paying careful attention to the bid/no bid process, you can set the stage for continuous improvement in your win rate, and do it through tiny steps instead of a major overhaul. Return to the Topic Hub for Pre RFP Pursuit, or return to the Starting Point for Discovering What It Will Take To Win.

Making effective bid decisions: Every pursuit progress review should be considered a “Bid/No Bid review.” Bid decisions should be about return on investment and not gambling. At each step, the decision should be whether to commit the resources required to get to the next decision point. You can't accurate predict your chances of winning, but you can assess whether you have met the conditions required to bid with a competitive advantage. The burden should be to justify pursuit of the opportunity, and not the other way around. The MustWin Process has many points where it makes sense to pause and consider whether it is worth continuing the pursuit. Think of them as opportunities. They also provide criteria for your consideration under other topics. Pre RFP Pursuit, or return to the Starting Point for Discovering What It Will Take To Win.

Hardly any RFPs are actually wired. Even if the customer has some bias, they can usually be stolen away if they get a better offer. Think about how you buy things. Most folks will give someone they’ve done business with for a long time the benefit of the doubt, but if someone has a better product or a significantly lower price, they sometimes make a switch. This is especially true if the relationship has gone stale. You may have no way of knowing without bidding. Use of the word “wired” makes it sound like either it is or it isn’t, when in reality it’s a question of how much. We deal in odds, not in certainties. 14 signs that the odds may be stacked against you None of them are conclusive on their own, and one or more will likely be true on every bid. But if several are true they may add up to something... Emphasis on evaluation criteria that only an incumbent will be able to get top marks in. For example experience of the staff being bid with obscure or customer specific tools. Overemphasis on the relevance of experience might be another. Emphasis on criteria that are easy to bias. Risk mitigation and quality are good examples. Prohibitions against contacting or rehiring incumbent staff. Unusual labeling of key staff. If all of the staff are considered key and resumes are required for all staff being bid it’s a bad sign. Evaluation practices that are outside the norm for that agency. If pricing is normally evaluated at 40% and on this RFP it’s being evaluated at 10% you have to wonder why. But this also requires you to know what the norms and trends are for that customer. Use of multiple evaluation criteria to address the same thing. For example, requiring that past performance projects include the staff being bid so that in essence staffing is getting counted twice (and acceptable past performance is hard to find). When combined these can make one particular element count out of proportion. Short, inflexible deadlines. On its own it doesn’t mean much, but it can favor a contractor who is expecting the bid. Ambiguity that favors an incumbent. For example, requirement to supply custom software without the requirements being defined. Scopes that aren’t defined. Deliverables that are named, but not described. Statements of Work that require you to know the customer’s undocumented standard operating procedures. So much detail that it’s overwhelming. Page limitations that make it impossible to respond to all of the requirements so that only the preferred bidder will know what to focus on and what they can skip without being branded “noncompliant.” Fixed price proposals where you don’t have enough information to know how long things will take. Unusually brief responses to questions, especially when there are only a handful of bidders or when they are unresponsive to questions they could easily answer. Unusually lengthy answers to questions, often delivered at the last minute without an extension. “Processes” specified in the RFP that can’t be mapped or flowcharted so that only someone who has experience with them can figure out how they work. Return to the Topic Hub for Pre RFP Pursuit, or return to the Starting Point for Discovering What It Will Take To Win.

Helping the customer understand how to get what they need: You’ll be a more effective guide if you understand the customer’s procurement process better than they do. If you don’t influence the RFP, someone else will. Influencing the RFP can be as simple as helping them get the technical requirements right. But why not help them go further and understand what is important in making their selection? If you cannot influence the RFP, it’s a sign that you are not positioned to win. How you seek to influence the RFP depends on your circumstances. Are you an incumbent? Do you have a high-priced offering or a low-priced one? Can you exceed the requirement? How you seek to influence the RFP depends on your bid strategies. Researching an opportunity and influencing it go hand in hand. If you don’t look into the items below, you could be in for a nasty surprise if they go the wrong way. As you seek to learn more about the opportunity, it’s only natural to make recommendations at the same time. If it helps, instead of “influencing” the RFP, all you really need to do is make recommendations, provide guidance, or give feedback to the customer regarding how to conduct a procurement that will get their needs met. Here are some things to consider influencing before an RFP is released: Should there even be an RFP? Depending on regulatory requirements and the customer’s rules, there might be other ways to conduct the procurement than through a written RFP. What approach to the acquisition will be the most advantageous to you while enabling the customer to comply with their rules? Number of awards. Some types of procurements lend themselves well to splitting the work up among more than one vendor. Sometimes, but not always, this is done through task order contracts. Sometimes having more than one award will help ensure you get a piece, while other times you want the door closed to potential competitors. For the customer, the decision rests on a combination of risk, competitiveness, and procurement complexity. Budget. What guidance can you provide to the customer regarding how to set their budget? The correct answer is not always “More!” Sometimes an approach (such as one your competitor favors — or far worse, your own) can be ruled out because the budget is too high or too low. Evaluation criteria. What guidance can you provide the customer regarding the most important considerations in selecting a vendor? Can you recommend criteria that match your strengths while simultaneously creating a disadvantage for your competitors? Some customers are open to discussions about what is important in making a selection, while others may not be. Award process. Can you recommend steps the customer should take to issue the RFP and make a selection? How can this process work to your advantage and your competitors’ disadvantage? Pricing structure. If you have a creative approach to pricing, you’d better make sure the RFP allows it. For example, it’s hard to bid a fixed rate for a project when the RFP requires an hourly rate. And vice versa. Depending on your circumstances, you may prefer one approach over another. You should make sure the customer shares your preference. Minimum qualifications to bid. Can you define any qualifications that would eliminate competitors while enabling you to bid? If you can’t eliminate them, maybe you can recommend changes to the evaluation criteria that would enable your qualifications to score better. Resumes. If you can name the staff you plan to bid, you should suggest that the RFP requires the resumes of the staff who will perform the work. If you cannot name the staff, then you may want to recommend that the RFP focus on qualifications and not specific individuals. Project references. Do you have excellent references? Make sure the RFP requires them and emphasizes them in the evaluation criteria. You can also make recommendations regarding how to define what experience is considered “relevant” that can work to your advantage. Scope/Specifications. Do you want the scope open-ended or tightly defined? Is there anything that you want specifically included, excluded, or not mentioned? Quantities. Do you prefer quantities to be high or low? Do you want them specified precisely or left ambiguous? Locations. Is it to your advantage to specify that the work be performed at particular locations? Are there any locations that would cause you difficulty that you would rather not be required? Trade-offs and Preferences. All projects involve trade-offs. The adage goes: “Good, cheap, or fast — pick any two.” What trade-offs work to your advantage? Can you influence either the scope/specifications or evaluation criteria to reflect the trade-offs you prefer? Risks. Are there any risks that you would like defined, not defined, or mitigated by the RFP? Platforms/Formats/Standards. Would specifying a particular platform, format, or standard work to your advantage? Resources. Could a requirement that the contractor have certain resources available work to your advantage? Site visits. Would having or not having a pre-submission site visit work to your advantage? Would making attendance a requirement to bid work to your advantage? Demonstrations. Would a requirement to conduct a pre-submission demonstration work to your advantage? Performance Bond/Insurance. Some RFPs require that the contractor have a performance bond or insurance. Would adding this requirement or raising the amounts eliminate competitors? Schedule. Do you prefer an aggressive schedule for RFP release, project start, project completion, or major milestones? Could the schedule limit the competitive field? Transition. Are their any project start-up, phase-in, or transition requirements that would work to your advantage? An incumbent will typically want little or no transition time while a non-incumbent may need it. Intellectual property. How the RFP addresses intellectual property can have a major impact on the competitive field. For example, if software developed is owned by the customer, it can cause difficulty for off-the-shelf providers. Conflict of Interest. Should a company that participated in the design of the requirements be allowed to bid on the work that fulfills those requirements or is that a conflict of interest? Adding a carefully worded conflict of interest requirement can cause difficulty for companies who have an existing relationship with the customer or who do business in multiple areas. Proposal requirements. Are there any recommendations you can make regarding the requirements for preparing and submitting the proposal? Are there any formats, page limits, or specific things to include/exclude that could work to your advantage?

When most people think about what their competitive advantages might be, they tend to focus on themselves. They ask questions like “What do we do better?” and “How can we exceed the requirements?” But they are missing a much better way to find their competitive advantages. A competitive advantage is something that will make it more likely the customer will pick you over your competitors. The best way to find a competitive advantage is to discover your customer’s preferences. When the customer follows a formal evaluation process, the best way to find a competitive advantage is to influence the criteria used during the evaluation in your favor. When the customer will award to the lowest price technically acceptable offer, the best way to find a competitive advantage is to discover exactly what they mean by technically acceptable. In every case, what drives the search for a competitive advantage is information. Instead of looking for a competitive advantage, you should look for an information advantage. When people turn inward to look for a competitive advantage, it’s often a sign that they are trying to identify their competitive advantages too late in the game. At the back-end all you have is your own resources so at that stage people tend to look inward for competitive advantages. That is why they ask the wrong questions. Developing an Information Advantage In order to develop an information advantage, the questions they should be asking themselves include: What do we know about the customer, opportunity, and competitive environment that others might not? What can we find out about the customer’s preferences, opportunity, and competitive environment? How do we turn that knowledge into a better evaluation score? Your information advantage should be turned into a positioning advantage. It may result in you developing a better offering, or it may result in a proposal that scores better with the exact same offering. An information advantage can help you make better trade-offs in developing your offering so that you come in at a lower price. Or it could help you target the right features to better meet the customer’s needs. Or it could give your offering strength where your competitors' offerings are weak. When the RFP requires everybody to propose the exact same thing, an information advantage can enable you to show your offering in better alignment with the customer’s goals. When it’s not clear whether the evaluation will focus on price or value, an information advantage can make all the difference. Your bid process should be structured around developing your information advantage. It is far better to start early, when you can take active measures (influencing what’s in the RFP) as well as passive measures (discovering what’s in the RFP). But even when you start late, the process should drive you to make the best use of the information and knowledge that you have. Your business development, sales, capture, and proposal activities and hand-offs can all be thought of as information hand-offs and steps toward adding to what you know and converting it into what you need to say and do in order to win. The data you obtain, the reports you produce, the format you write things down in, how you assess what you’ve discovered, and what you do about it should all be done in ways that make it easy for your data to build and change into an information advantage. If your bid process is just about reports and reviews, it may not be doing everything it can to carry information forward in the best ways to turn it into an information advantage.

Once a request for proposals (RFP) is out, it may be too late to bid win a competitive advantage. Getting ahead of the RFP does not have to be hard, but it does take effort in advance and relationship marketing. Those that put the time and effort into getting ahead of the RFP are able to achieve an information advantage as well as a competitive advantage. Recompetes. Targeting recompetes is the easiest way to get ahead of the RFP. But it can take years to pay off. The day a contract is issued, you know the date of its recompete and roughly when the new RFP will be out. You can look up all contracts that have been issued through government and private sector databases. This approach gives you time to build a relationship and collect intelligence before the new RFP is released, but requires some investment and a lot of patience. Most companies squander this opportunity. They “track” the opportunity for years and then somehow don’t have much to show for it when the RFP is released. Forecasts and budgets. Most agencies publish procurement forecasts. They don’t include everything and it can be a challenge to reconcile what’s in the forecast with what actually comes out. Budgets are similar. Not all procurements are large enough to be line items. And reconciling what’s in the budget with what comes out can be extremely difficult. If it was easy, everyone would do it. Because it’s difficult, those who do it can have a competitive advantage. Sources sought notices and Requests for Information (RFIs). These announcements come out ahead of the RFP. Barely. They usually come out about 30 days ahead, usually after all the key decisions have already been made and it’s too late to start relationship marketing or obtain an information advantage. Mostly they give you the illusion of starting ahead of the RFP. But they can give you a chance to finalize teaming arrangements and get your proposal resources lined up — if you don’t mind bidding when you’re at a disadvantage to those who knew about it before the announcement. If you are interested in a pursuit, you should definitely respond to any pre-RFP announcements. But if you are just finding out about a pursuit because of an announcement, it doesn’t really count as being ahead and you should try even harder next time. If you are trying to get ahead of the RFP by looking for announcements, you should consider any of the other approaches listed here. Draft RFPs. Sometimes the customer will release a draft RFP. The good news is you get to see it and possibly even suggest changes. But the bad news is they're already invested in the approach described in the draft and there's a good chance someone else helped them get it that far. You're coming in late, but still may be able to influence things. At the very least it will be interesting to see whether the customer accepts any suggestions you make about the draft. Actually talking to the customer every chance you get. Every chance you get to speak with the customer, whether it’s on site, in meetings, or at trade shows is a chance to be there at the moment they need information or mention something related to a procurement they are preparing for in the future. Enlist any project staff who have contact with the customer. Any project can get your foot in the door. Winning a project, no matter how small, especially if it’s at the customer’s site or includes customer face-time, is a chance to build the kind of relationship that gives you the insight you need to win more. Subcontracting. You can get added to an existing contract, if the prime sees enough value in it to persuade the customer to let them add you. They won’t do this to help a future competitor. Subcontracting may not help you get to know the customer, unless you play a customer-facing role. Network with non-competing vendors. If you can identify companies that work with the customer in areas you don’t compete in, they may be willing to share contacts and information, especially if you can help them in other areas. Social networking. Don’t expect the customer to openly discuss future procurements in a group on LinkedIn. But you might gain valuable insight just paying attention to what questions they ask and what positions they take. You might even be able to ask general questions about preferences and interests too. If you establish an online relationship in which you demonstrate that you add value, you might even be able to land a face-to-face meeting. At a minimum, it's a great way to discover potential customer contacts and the roles they plan. Databases. There are companies that track contracts and recompetes, and do a lot of the difficult forecast and budget analysis for you. They will show you opportunities they anticipate will be coming out in the future. Of course, all their other customers know about them as well. But if you are sharp you can make better use of the information available than your competitors. If you are dependent on databases for all your leads, it's a sign that you're not doing enough of the other things on this list. Content marketing. To prepare an RFP, the customer must do a lot of research to write the requirements. If you set up a resource that helps them define their requirements, understand the trade-offs involved, and facilitate what they need to do, you can proactively offer them access to it (even if you don’t know whether they are planning anything). If you make it easy for them to ask questions and follow up, who knows what you will discover.

The MustWin Process is designed so that information flows from its sources into the proposal. Along the way it gets assessed and converted into what it will take to win. That flow of information must not be broken if you want to win. Many post-RFP goals will be difficult or impossible to achieve if the Pre-RFP goals are not met first. When we coach people through the process implementation, we often see people have an epiphany when they realize that if they hadn't skipped something or done a better job of it, they would have the information they need at that moment instead of having to work around it. Part of what the MustWin Process does for you is tell you what information you need to gather and what questions you need to be able to answer. Pre-RFP Release Goals Post-RFP Release Goals Collecting the intelligence about the customer, opportunity, and competitive environment needed to win Staging the Intelligence you collected for use in the proposal Positioning your company to win Identifying your competitive advantages and win strategies Defining what it will take to win Being ready to quickly start the proposal Being able to demonstrate an understanding that goes beyond the RFP Writing to the customer’s unwritten requirements Being able to make trade-offs that reflect the customer’s preferences Defining quality criteria based on what it will take to win Building what it will take to win into the proposal from the beginning Validating every attribute of the proposal against the quality criteria, which are based on what it takes to win

The MustWin Process defines specific goals to be achieved prior to RFP release, so that when the proposal starts you will already have a competitive advantage. You must have specific goals that you seek to accomplish before the RFP is released. Otherwise, the time will likely be wasted. Here is a list of pre RFP goals recommended by the MustWin Process: Collect intelligence about the customer, opportunity, and competition so that you will know what it will take to win Track measurable progress towards collecting the intelligence that will enable you to answer the questions the proposal writers will need answered in order to write a great proposal Develop an information advantage Grow the customer relationship Develop your win strategies and position your company to win Lay the foundation for any teaming with other companies that may be necessary to win the opportunity Identify all of the internal resources that may be able to contribute to the proposal effort Prepare for an accelerated start to the proposal Prepare people to fulfill their roles in supporting the proposal Begin to set expectations for all stakeholders The Readiness Review process provides an approach for ensuring that your goals are accomplished. Achieving your pre RFP goals is what makes achieving your post RFP goals possible to achieve. Many businesses struggle with finding out about opportunities before the RFP is released. Here are 11 ways to get ahead of the RFP. Doing so is not only critical for development an information advantage, it's also when you have the best chance to influence the RFP. We recommend implementing Readiness Reviews to bring structure to the pre-RFP phase. Without this structure, too many businesses waste the time they have before RFP release and end up unprepared when the RFP hits the street. Lead qualification is key aspect of the pre RFP process and built into the Readiness Reviews. Readiness Reviews also provide a means to achieving effective bid/no bid decisions. Guidance for Pre-RFP Activities: Responding to Requests for Information (RFI) or Sources Sought notices Checklist for responding to Draft RFPs Checklist for customer site visits Determining whether the RFP is wired for someone else The MustWin process guides you through discovering what it will take to win and using that to drive your bid and proposal strategies. Return to the Figuring Out What it Will Take to Win Starting Point.

When you have completed your proposal outline, you can use the following checklist to validate it: ❏ Does the outline comply with the RFP instructions for the outline? ❏ Does the outline provide one place where the customer will expect to find the response to each and every requirement? ❏ Will it be easy for the customer to evaluate? ❏ Will it be easy to navigate? ❏ Are there any topics missing that should be added to the outline? ❏ Is there any redundancy or ambiguity regarding the topics? ❏ Does the terminology in the outline match the terminology of the RFP? ❏ When you scan the outline, does it tell your story? Return to the Topic Hub for Creating Your Proposal Outline, or return to the Starting Point for Figuring Out What to Say in Your Proposals.

When you receive a proposal, what information do you need in order to decide whether to approve it? The decision maker starts with questions and looks for answers. They don’t read your proposal. They look for answers. When you are the decision maker, your questions might include: What am I going to get or what will the results be? What do you want (from me)? How much is it going to cost and is it worth it? What will it take to make it happen? What could go wrong? Why should I believe you? What alternatives do I have? Now pretend that you are receiving a proposal from someone who wants you to do something, approve something, or buy something. Think about the first thing you want to read. If you weren’t expecting to receive a proposal, it might be “What do you want (from me)?” “What are you asking me to do?” or “What do I have to decide?” If you were expecting the proposal, then the first thing you'll probably want to know is “What am I going to get?” “How much better off will I be?” “Did they get it right?” or “Is it complete?” This is closely followed by “What do I have to do to get it?” “What’s it going to cost?” “Is it worth it?” and “Can I afford it?” If you agree that it’s worth it and you have the budget, you’ll want to dig deeper and find out what it will take to make it happen. At that point you start looking for things that could go wrong and will want to make sure you can trust the person or company who brought you the proposal to deliver what they promise. You’re asking yourself “Will they deliver (completely, accurately, on time, and within budget)?” and “Can I trust them?” Once the decision maker has answers to all those questions, they still need to consider whether there are alternatives. That’s when they ask questions like “What if I don’t do what they want?” “Is there another approach that better meets my needs?” “What if I pick someone else?” and “What makes this proposal the best alternative or selection?” Finally, the decision maker must be sufficiently motivated. Otherwise they might ask “What if I do nothing?” “What if I wait?” or “What if I ask someone else (for input, for a proposal, for help deciding)?” If this is what the decision maker is looking for, then your outline should provide the answers they are looking for. You can build your outline around these questions. But it's even better to use statements that summarize the answers. When you do that, your proposal headings will directly answer the questions the decision maker has in mind, before they even read the text. If you're writing a proposal in response to a written RFP that specifies how they want the proposal organized, you must follow their outline. However, the evaluator still has the same questions and they still need to find the answers in your proposal. An excellent way to exceed the RFP requirements without increasing the cost of your solution is to do a better job of answering these questions, especially the ones they forgot to ask. Even if you don’t use these questions to build your outline, you can still use them to plan the content of your proposal and use them to assess the quality of a draft. If you decide that it is better to organize your proposal headings another way (geographically, in sequence, etc.) you should still make sure that the proposal reflects the customer’s perspective and answers their questions. To win your proposal, you need to anticipate the questions that will matter the most to the decision maker and then motivate them to accept your proposal.

If there is no RFP, then it’s up to you to figure out how to organize your proposal. When there is an RFP, it sets the customer's expectations regarding how you should organize your proposal. But it may only do so at a high level, leaving you to organize things at the detail level (provided you remain compliant with the RFP). Here are some ways to organize your outline when it is up to you: Expectations. By far, the most important consideration in organizing your proposal is to fulfill your customer’s expectations. If you don’t know what they are, you should ask. If you can’t find out, you should guess. Questions and Answers. Q&A formats are often used because they are easy. But it’s also easy to slip into formulating questions that are based on your perspective instead of the customers’. It can also be difficult to formulate your questions consistently and to ensure that you address everything you should. Results/achievements/goals. Since the customer is most interested in what they are going to get if they select you, organizing your proposal around the results you will deliver, what will be achieved by selecting you, or goals you will fulfill can reinforce the message. This works best when there are deliverables, and not as well for on-going service or maintenance proposals. Alternatives or Recommendations. If you are providing the customer with choices, you can organize your proposal around the alternatives. Customer Concerns. If the customer is aware of issues and has concerns, you can organize your response around them. This can work well for high risk projects, or proposals where the customer may choose to do nothing instead of accept the proposal. Customer Priorities. Organizing your proposal around the customer’s priorities can make it easy to see how your proposal matches up. Graphically. Stop thinking about an outline, and draw a picture instead. Then organize your proposal around it. If you can visualize your offering, then you can make a huge leap in the customer’s perception about your proposal using this approach. Sequence. If there are steps or phases to what you are proposing, you can organize your proposal around the sequence. Calendar. If your proposal revolves around a plan that is based on the calendar, then you can organize your proposal around the dates. Work Breakdown Structure. If your offering will be based on a work breakdown structure, then it may make sense to organize the text that way too. This works best if the customer understands what a WBS is and is expecting to see one. Participants. If your proposal is about what people will do, then you can organize it around the participants. This will make it very personal, which could be a good thing or not. Resources. If your proposal is about resource allocation, then you can organize your proposal around the resources. Geographically. If your proposal covers a lot of ground (whether physical or virtual), and what will happen at each location matters, then you can organize your proposal around the locations. Hierarchy. If there is a top-down structure to what you propose (whether chain of command, logical, general to specific, or anything else), then you can organize your proposal around it. Functionally. If the proposal is about a process or doing things, then you can organize your proposal around the activities. Problem/Solution. If the proposal solves one or more problems or expects to encounter problems, then you can organize your response around them to reinforce the purpose of the proposal. And a bonus tip If you are not trying to match the wording of the RFP, then word your headings to your advantage. Don’t make them merely descriptive of the section. Use them to say something about what the evaluator is going to read. Use them to state the conclusion you want the reader to reach. Word them so that the Table of Contents tells your story. Word them so that someone who skims your proposal will know why to select you just from reading the headings.

There are three competing interests when wording headings for a proposal, and they are listed in priority order: Making it easy for the customer to find things in your proposal. Telling a story through your headings alone. Logically organizing what you have to say. When constructing a proposal outline: You must give using the customer’s wording the highest priority. If they have specified an outline, use their wording exactly so they can find what they will be looking for. Make it easy for them to keyword search their RFP requirements in your proposal. When you parse headings out of an RFP paragraph that itemizes requirements, try to preserve as much of their wording as possible. Avoid abbreviating or shortening their wording to make smaller headings. Only do this if you have to. When possible, include RFP paragraph number references at the end of the heading so they can trace your response back to their requirements. If possible, use the same numbering system that the customer uses and make your heading numbers match theirs. While helping the customer find what they are looking for, doing this usually results in descriptive headings that don’t tell a story. But enabling the customer to quickly determine that you meet their requirements is a higher priority. What you can do to communicate your story is to include a theme statement under each major heading that states the conclusion you want the customer to reach when they read that section. You might even include the theme statements in your Table of Contents so that the Table of Contents alone tells your story. You have to decide whether to do this for all headings or just the major headings, and what heading level to take it down to. Unfortunately, the last priority is organizing the material in a logical way. It is dangerous to try to be more logical than the RFP. The customer expects to find things in the order of the RFP and using the RFP’s terminology. When you deviate from this, you will at minimum make it hard to evaluate your proposal, and could even get your proposal thrown out for being non-compliant. You can reference other sections or provide additional headings that explain how your RFP compliance integrated into a logical and effective solution. After following the instructions in the RFP, in the order of the RFP, and using the same wording as the RFP, then you are free to add to your outline and organize the material in ways the enhance the presentation.