What does it mean to be a proposal rockstar?

It means people want to be a part of the proposals you lead. 

It means you inspire the reader so much with your proposal that they dance, sing, and feel the music. If you want to be a proposal rockstar, you need to make your proposal mean something that matters.
 
It means you've opened them up to the raw beauty of what you are creating and they can feel its importance. 

It means you love what you create, and who cares whether anyone else does. Those who matter will get it. If you’re afraid of offending the customer, you can’t change their world. If you want to be a proposal rockstar, the only opinion that matters belongs to the customer.
 
Being a rockstar means you've got a rebellious streak. After all, isn't that where differentiators come from? Isn’t that necessary to defeat the competition? And isn't that what you need if you're going to throw out the ineffective legacy processes (or lack thereof) that everyone else follows because they think they're supposed to? 
 
Rockstars have something to rebel against. If you want to be a proposal rockstar, you must be a change agent.
  
It means no one understands what you do or how you do it, but they love the results. 
 
When you win, corporate will let you do anything you want. When you lose, they want to tell you what to create and how to create it.  Only corporate doesn't produce rockstars. It produces boy bands. However, boy bands make bank too.
 
Rockstars live on the edge between winning and losing. That’s where they shine. Like a crazy diamond.
 
Rockstars make hard work look fun. And most burn out early. But then there’s Keith Richards.
 
Being a proposal rockstar means you skip right past the surface level and create something that's primal, passionate, and compelling because of it. Proposal rockstars focus on differentiators because they aren’t willing to settle and just fit in.
 
It might mean you've got some wickedly bad habits, and they could be a necessary part of how you create such great proposals. Proposal rockstars know when to break the rules.
 
Rockstars can change the world. Rockstars create proposals that have impact, touch so many stakeholders, and change the direction of our institutions. Shhh… don’t tell corporate.
 
All genres have Rockstars. 

Rockstars have their own sound. A rockstar who's trying to sound like what a rockstar is supposed to sound like is a contradiction. More. Cowbell!
 
It's hard to be a rockstar playing cover tunes. Unless you make them your own. Proposal rockstars don’t do boilerplate.
 
Rockstars have moves. And moves within moves. When circumstances move the proposal in one direction, a proposal rockstar knows how to get it to move where it needs to go.
 
Good artists borrow, great artists steal. Pablo Picasso was a rockstar. 
 
Sometimes it's not the words, it's the guitar solo that sells it. A proposal rockstar plays graphics like an instrument.
 
When Rockstars feel blue, they write great songs. When Rockstars feel happy, they write great songs.  Rockstars feel. And when they are doing their thing, everyone else can feel it too.
 
You can know the words. You can know the music. And not be a rockstar. You can know the RFP and know the process, but still not be a proposal rockstar.
 
Being a rockstar means your proposals have soul.
 
A proposal rockstar goes against the grain and doesn't care about creating a proposal that sounds like a proposal should. They don’t just recycle past hits. They don't just differentiate. They change the rules by ignoring the rules. They don't just practice disruptive marketing, they are proposal punk. A proposal rockstar takes risks. They win. They also lose, but their losses don't define them. They fuel them.

They don't just try to assemble a proposal, they create something that matters all the way down, and those who read it can feel what makes it matter. It's not just words. Not just marketing. They aren't just pushing paper to please their corporate paymaster. Their proposal is a manifesto. They don't just follow a process. They create. The process is just laying down the rhythm track for everyone who wants to be a part of it and dance and sing along.

Being a rockstar isn’t always a good thing. Being a proposal rockstar isn’t always a good thing. Rockstars get in fights and trash the room when they get angry. They tend to be terrible leaders. Some are terrible people. A lot of what they do, a lot of their greatness, happens by accident.

But like other tortured artists, what they create actually has changed the world. Capturing just a little of that energy can lead to amazing proposals.