What should your proposal themes actually say?

Once you understand what proposal themes are and how they contribute to winning, then comes the hard part: articulating your message in the form of theme statements.

When we review people’s proposals we see a lot of theme statements that are either:

• Grandiose statements that sound like bragging and are completely unsubstantiated. Like being the best-in-class industry leader ever.
• Claims of qualifications or experience as if they matter, without saying why they matter.
• Bland, boring statements that the customer should pick the company submitting the proposal without explaining why. So much blah, blah, blah.

Each of these is a result of trying to describe yourself in favorable terms or how you want to be seen. They don’t provide any value to the customer or help them make their decision. They do nothing to help your proposal win and can actually work against you.

They come are a result of trying to "sound good" without actually understanding how to articulate your message in a way that matters to the customer. The best way to approach writing theme statements is to give the customer information that will enable them to justify a decision in your favor to others in their organization. Write the award justification for them.

Writing theme statements

Theme statements should focus on reasons. Instead of stating that you are better than your competitors, it is far better to provide the reasons why you are better. Instead of saying that your offering is great, explain how it is great.

When you are the customer, you don’t care if the salesperson thinks their product is great. Of course they do. They better. But that is not even a consideration for you. You ignore that noise and make your decision based on reasons. You make your decision based on what makes it great, why it is better, or what its impact will be. You factor in things that concern you like quality, risk, and timing. Your theme statements should deliver the information that you anticipate the customer will consider and give them what they need to make a decision in your favor.

Good vs. Best

The best theme statements tell the customer what they are going to get. They don’t offer commitment, understanding, enthusiasm, flattery, promises, universal statements that apply equally to your competitors, or even claims of attributes like quality or lower risk. They don’t tell the customer what they require or patronize them by telling them who they are. Good themes offer results. They make the customer want you by telling them what they will get if they select you. If you leave out what they are going to get, then there is nothing there for them to want.

But the best themes offer something more than results. They offer proof. Proof points are the best themes. When a proposal is being scored on strengths and weaknesses and the evaluator needs to justify their score, proof points are exactly what they need. Claims of being "proven" are ignored. But actual proof gets attention.

The next time you are trying to formulate the message you want to deliver to the customer, focus on what the customer wants from you, instead of what you want to tell them. Theme statements should say things that matter — to the customer. Unsubstantiated claims do not matter to the customer. In fact, they get in the customer’s way when they are looking for what matters about your proposal.

Identify what matters to the customer and then prove what you have to say about fulfilling it. In a short, pithy statement. That's a theme. And it sets up the rest of your proposal to substantiate the conclusion you want them to reach.

Passing the test

A good test for whether you are successful is whether you can delete the theme statements from the proposal. If you can delete the theme statements without removing something vital from the proposal, then your theme statements do not matter. If your theme statements do not matter, then you have provided no reason to accept your proposal.

That is the strongest argument I can think of for why you should write your theme statements first, before the text of your proposal. If the text of your proposal is the only thing that articulates the reasons why the customer should select you, this means that the people who wrote the proposal didn’t know what those reasons where. It means they wrote the text of the proposal while also trying to figure out the reasons why the customer should select you, instead of writing the text of the proposal to prove why the customer should select you. The difference matters and will impact your win rate.