Proposal strategies based on the number of proposals anticipated

With a certain well known government multiple award RFP of huge value out, and new ones like it becoming routine, this is a good time to reflect on the customer and how the number of proposals being received impacts how they make their selection decisions. 

What if they only get one proposal?
If the customer only expects to get one proposal, or if that’s just the way it turns out, they approach the proposal with a few considerations:

1. Does it meet their requirements? They have no other proposals to compare it to. So they compare it to themselves. Will it meet their needs?
2. Can they do better? With no other proposals to compare it to, this is guesswork. Do they believe that they might find a better offer with some time and effort? Do they have the time and effort to spare?
3. Should they cancel the procurement? Do they have rules that require more than one vendor response? What do they need to do to satisfy their procurement process when they only have one proposal? Do they need to go find someone else to bid? Will they consider the other bids or are they just to enable them to move forward with the one they really want?

Winning when you are the only proposal is typically about showing them that you meet all of their requirements, do it effectively and competitively, and represent far more value than cost.

What if they get several proposals?

Now they’ve got something to compare them to. If they follow “the rule of three,” they can consider the bid competitive and more easily move forward.

But now they have to do a real evaluation and select one from amongst the alternatives. Will they compare the bids to each other? Will they pick based on the differentiators? How will they handle any cost differences? 

This is the majority of procurements. It is why we focus on not merely being compliant and put so much focus on differentiation, relationship marketing, and developing an information advantage. You want to be the proposal they compare all the others to. Even if they don’t compare them, well written differentiators are far more likely to register as strengths during evaluation. You want to be the company that they already know and trust.

But this is also where bad habits set in. If you are compliant, then you can win some just based on your qualifications without putting a lot of effort into strategy or proposal writing. You won’t have the best win rate, but maybe you’ll get by and convince yourself that your bad habits “work” because you win one in five and are profitable. Sometimes they stay like this because they think it’s the best they can do in their circumstances. The majority of companies are like this. 

PropLIBRARY contains so much information about win rates and return on investment to show them that a little bit of effort can get them to winning two to three out of five and how much that effort is worth. And also to show how easy most companies are to beat.

What if they get dozens of proposals?

Now the customer can’t just read a few and compare. They need to be organized about it. They need scoring and comparison tables. They need excuses to throw some out to lighten the load. They need a team of evaluators.

You need to be compliant and not get thrown out. But that’s not enough to win. You need differentiation. But you also need a scoring strategy. If your proposal is not intentionally optimized to maximize your score, your win rate will suffer. Having an existing relationship with the customer will give you some advantage, but the more bidders the easier it is for someone new to win based on their score. However, if you are turning your relationship into an information advantage, you’ll also have a potential scoring advantage.

Winning a procurement like this usually involves focusing on the win strategies that separate your proposal from the pack and enable you to outscore the competition.

What if they get hundreds of proposals?

Now they need an enterprise approach just to simply evaluate them all. They need to process the proposals and not read them. They will have a rubric for what they are looking for. 

How do you stand out from the pack? Ease of processing.

Don’t write your proposal to tell a story. Prepare it for easy processing.

Can they find what they are looking for? Have you anticipated what will make a difference and matter to the evaluators? If they are extremely well organized, the RFP will provide their rubric. If not, you’ll need to guess it. The more narrative you have to supply, the more important it becomes to know how the rubric applies to the text. 

Once you know what they need to see in the text of your proposal, then you should ask yourself whether you buried it in a bunch of irrelevant self-gratifying noise. Or did you stick to RFP terminology and design your proposal to highlight the details they need to process your proposal quickly? Can they evaluate the text by processing it instead of reading it? Can you make it checklist-simple for them?

Don’t expect to win based on claims. Expect to win on proof points. If each proposal makes dozens of claims and there are hundreds of proposals, the evaluator will gloss right over claims. 

Descriptions are almost as bad. Most descriptions, whether they are about your company, its approaches, or its experience, say very little that would actually impact the evaluation. Take any page from one of your past proposals, and highlight the things said that wouldn’t typically appear in the proposals of competitors responding to the same RFP, and aren’t just minor details or your grand aspirations. Did you highlight anything at all? That is not what an evaluator who has to review hundreds of proposals wants to see.

But facts, numbers, examples, and details that matter and are succinctly highlighted get attention and scored. You help the evaluator process your proposal by pointing out the details that are worth taking note of because they differentiate your proposal and make you worth selecting.

An example of this is the recruiting process. If you give them the typical sourcing, screening, selecting, and onboarding process, you’ll be just like everyone else. It probably won’t matter much if you’ve added more detail to each phase. However, if you cite statistics and examples that demonstrate your ability to quickly hire and retain your staff under adverse circumstances, the numbers and details that make up your proof points will get noticed more than the same process noise everyone else will submit.

If you hide the good stuff in the middle of paragraphs, they might never see it. But if you put things in tables, lists, or other visuals, or even just bold them, they stand a better chance of being seen. Just make sure they are worth not only being seen, but are also worth taking note of and awarding them evaluation points.