Everything posted by Carl Dickson
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Does it come with hardcopies?
Hardcopies are available and subscribers can order them, but we don't include them with the subscription because we've found when given the choice over 80% of people go without. If you're in the 20% that must have it on hardcopy, then you can order them once you become a subscriber. We keep the hardcopy pricing as low as we can since they're something we offer for the convenience of our subscribers and not really part of our business model. Also, keep in mind that the hardcopies do not contain everything that's in the Knowledgebase. The whole reason we built the Knowledgebase was do to things that can't be done on paper.
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What if I already have a process or a knowledgebase?
While we designed the MustWin Process to stand on its own, we've found a lot of companies use various parts of it to supplement their existing processes. They use it to fill a gap or add detail to what they already have. We don't mind. In fact, the way it's designed makes that easy.
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Can I use PropLIBRARY to put a process in place immediately?
Yes. Your subscription will be processed automatically and you will have immediate access. It's a lot to read, but it will all be there and you'll be able to put it work right away. Most companies do not have a written process for business development or for proposal development. And while most Proposal Managers know how to execute a process, they rarely have the time to fully document the process. And no wonder — we put hundreds of hours into writing ours. It just can't be done if you're also trying to manage active proposals. The result is that most companies, to a greater or lesser degree, ad lib their way through their proposals. They make up their process as they go along. By using the MustWin Process in PropLIBRARY, you get everything you need. In writing. Ready to use. Now.
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Who uses the materials you publish?
Our audience is huge and our materials have been thoroughly vetted by millions of readers. Over 65,000 subscribers get our newsletter on a weekly basis. Last time we counted, our paying customers included 97 of the Fortune 100 and were in 176 different countries. Our MustWin Process is used by several hundred companies and over 12,000 licensed users. They include a few billion dollar companies, and a mix of mid-sized companies, small businesses, and consultants. Our materials are even referenced at a dozen or so universities.
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Do you offer a money-back guarantee?
If you compare PropLIBRARY to taking a class, if you compare it to the cost of the hours it will save you, and you compare it to the value of the increase in your future win rates and still decide that it's not worth it, then we don't have to agree with you, we'll just give you a refund for the unused portion of your subscription. In the past, we've haven't received many refund requests, but we've always honored them. You may request a refund from the Client Area.
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Do you offer trial subscriptions?
It's kind of hard to give away electronic information in a trial, because once it's out there, it's really out there. Instead of trial subscriptions we offer lots of information you can use to assess our credibility and the quality of the information we publish. To see what the subscriber only parts of the site are like: Check out our screenshot tour Take a look at our brochure, because it uses the same document viewer technology we use in our Knowledgebase In our newsletter and on our parent site we have published hundreds of free articles that are informative and useful, even if you don't subscribe. You can use them to create a do-it-yourself solution. Our materials have been vetted by millions of people, and if we publish something that's not accurate, we hear about it — many, many times. So we're pretty confident that you'll find our Knowledgebase both accurate and useful.
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Proposal Content Planning Guide
Our approach to Proposal Content Planning. This material was extracted from the MustWin Workbook to use in a training course we delivered.
- How to Do Proposals: The Wrong Way
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Sample proposal introductions
A dozen versions of the same paragraph, with more than 50 things done wrong and how to correct them.
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Proposal Sample Makeover: Before & After
See a real proposal, and discover what we like about it and what is wrong with it. You get much more than just a sample. You'll get our extensive review comments to help you understand how to apply the lessons learned. We take the original proposal and give it a makeover. You get to see the original proposal as well as the new and greatly improved version that we created. The file is a .zip with 5 PDFs inside.
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Quick and Dirty Guide to Writing a Last Minute Proposal
Simple and practical guidance for people who must complete a proposal against a tight deadline, with little or no advance preparation. Enough said.
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How to Survive Your First Business Proposal
Writing your first business proposal doesn't have to be intimidating. It's amazing how much stress can come from a blank sheet of paper and a deadline. Our guide tells you what you need to know so you can submit your proposal with confidence.
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Proposal Format Guide
The most frequent question we get asked is "what should my proposal look like?" This is closely followed by "can I see a sample of a proposal?" Even though we tell people that winning proposals are built from the ground up to meet the concerns of specific customers and not by following samples, people still crave them.
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Business Development for Project Managers
Provides easy to follow approaches to business development for people with technical backgrounds. If you have technical managers with responsibility for growth or sales but don't have the experience or background to feel comfortable with it, the problem solving approaches in this document are just what they need.
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509 Questions to Answer in Your Proposals
Get some serious inspiration for proposal authors at all levels. It's perfect for figuring out what to write, and for making sure you answer all of your customer's questions. We provide the questions, you supply the answers. While it may not be as sexy as a template that writes the proposal for you, it's actually one of our most useful documents. Highly recommended.
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Whitepaper: Proposal Quality Validation
Red Teams are Obsolete! Why, after decades of trying, is no one able to have consistently effective Red Teams? Find out why the color team model is broken and can't be fixed.
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How to Write a Management Plan
This guide is organized like a cookbook, providing over 180 items divided into 20 topics. It will help you answer your customer's questions regarding how the work will be done, who will do it, what resources will be required, how to mitigate the risks, and what you will do to ensure quality. It will help you prove to your customer that you can successfully manage the project and deserve to win the contract.
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Whitepaper: Reengineering The Proposal Process
If you are tired of ineffective Red Teams and submitting proposals?you know could be so much better, please join us in changing?everything the industry thinks it knows about the proposal process
- MustWin Process Workbook
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How to Write an Executive Summary
This is the electronic version of the tutorial we publish. It addresses: It also includes and a sample to show how the pieces come together. Writing different types of Executive Summaries Why an Executive Summary might not actually contain a summary How to introduce yourself in writing Multiple strategies for preparing to write an Executive Summary How to incorporate your win strategies into writing the Executive Summary Advice for how to format your Executive Summary How to be persuasive in writing 22 questions that you should answer in your Executive Summary