How to write great proposals when you don't know anything about the subject matter

Great proposal writers often have to write about things they don’t know anything about. How do they do it?

Instead of thinking about what they can say, they:

• Start by figuring out what needs to be said
• Break down what the customer has asked about
• Consider what the customer needs to hear for each one
• Address how they prove their claims
• Finish with what would show the most value

These are just some of what they need to figure out, and not the sequence for presentation.

For each bullet above, it’s not unusual to start off having no idea what the answers are. Instead of wordsmithing around what they don’t know, great proposal writers formulate how to set up the responses. An easy way to think of this is that they drop in a bunch of placeholders for the things they don’t know so they can structure the response and fill in the placeholders later.

This shows how proposal writing more closely resembles thesis writing than creative writing.  Once you have introduced the thesis with the point you want to make and you know what the conclusion needs to be, then you can start filling in your placeholders. Doing research to fill in the placeholders is where proposal writers spend most of their time. Setting up the structure brings focus to the research and helps accelerate it.

You can think of this approach like creating formulas for your proposal. You create the framework and then find values for the parts you don’t know. Sometimes filling in your placeholders means you go talk to someone who understands the customer, that issue, or that subject matter.  When you already know what you are trying to prove, it’s easier to interview people to get the information you need to complete the writing. The more specific the questions, the more likely you are to get good information to work with.

This enables you to write a proposal, even when you have no idea what you are writing about. Instead of asking a subject matter expert, “How do we do this?” consider asking, “How does our approach solve [this problem]?” You already know what the solution needs to add up to because it’s in the RFP. You can ask follow-up questions like:

• What’s important about doing it that way?
• How do we prevent things from going wrong?
• How does it accomplish [insert goal from the RFP here]?
• Have we ever done that successfully in the past?

Great proposal writers need to be able to lead the reader to the right conclusions so the customer reaches a decision in your favor and gives you the highest evaluation score. They can formulate a sentence based on supplying those reasons using placeholders for the details, and then do research to get those details.

The challenge comes when nobody available knows those details. Great proposal writers then change the formula to match what people do know. It’s only as a last resort that they write around the things they don't know. It is much better to say something that matters or shows insight into what the customer has asked about, than it is to go shallow and avoid the details.

To get to this level, it helps to start thinking about communication like Legos. How do you snap parts together in order to create what you are trying to communicate? The parts you might have to work with may include things like:

• Any instructions, evaluation criteria, and requirements provided in the RFP
• Experience your company has (relevant work the company has done)
• Sequences or processes (whether you have a full list, know parts, or just know that there is a sequence that you need to figure out)
• Things that must be included (usually you can identify some of the things that will be part of the response, and use them to research the rest)
• Results (whether you know what they should be or not)
• Positioning (usually you know the context that it needs to be put in. For example, should it be quick, powerful, or efficient? Pick the right one and translate everything about it to match that context)
• Conclusions (either you know what it should add up or you have to figure out what that is)

You can introduce your conclusion and position the details. Both may be determined by the details you have to work with. Your goal is usually to prove that the results will be delivered, an evaluation factor is well met, or the fulfillment of one of your win strategies. For anything you don’t know, you can put it in as a placeholder that identifies what you need and what you need it to accomplish. 

Then you try to find the answers and when you are done you actually sound like you know what you were talking about.

Having spent decades working on proposals, I can have short conversations on almost any topic related to the things people do. I may not know any of the details, but I can ask probing questions that make it look like I understand.

Proposal writing isn’t about creating fluff to hide the fact that you don’t know what you are talking about. Proposal writing is about figuring out and presenting insights that matter and impact the customer’s decision process. Knowing how to do this is really all proposal writers need to know in order to be great.