Eleven examples of proposal win themes including the good, the bad, and the exceptional

Proposal theme statements are how you articulate why the customer should select you. They deliver your message, tell your story, and flow through the proposal document. They provide the big picture and define what your proposal means. Themes may be incorporated into headings, tag lines, text boxes, or just be the main point of a paragraph. They are the message and there are many ways to deliver it.

You need to be able to articulate your proposal win themes so that you can build the proposal around them, substantiating the reasons why the customer should select you. Proposal win themes work best when a few themes drive the points you make across the entire proposal. This helps the points you make add up to a message or story that the customer sees substantiated in every section.

Unfortunately, none of that helps you write them, let alone write good ones. A lot of themes end up being claims, descriptions, or beneficial sounding statements that in reality do nothing to differentiate your proposal or help you win. Here are some win theme examples that show what separates good, bad, and exceptional proposal theme statements:

• Examples of Good Proposal Themes. Most proposal win themes articulate the points you want to make about yourself. They are positive and beneficial sounding, but self-descriptive and about you. They tend to sound like something out of a brochure, focused on claims about how wonderful you are. Good proposal themes are based on the hope that the customer will see something they like. A good proposal theme might be "We bring [number] years of experience to this this project," "Our approach mitigates the risks of [insert type of risk here]," "By selecting us, you will receive [insert benefit here]" or claims like "We deliver the best quality."  Statements like these are intended to make you stand out from the pack, but in reality everybody makes claims like these and customers don't really pay much attention to them in a proposal. The problem with themes that are merely good is that being good is not enough to win. Good themes are not competitive. But good themes are better than nothing. At least they show that you aspire to be wonderful, even if they don't prove that you really are. 
• Examples of Exceptional Proposal Themes. Exceptional proposal win themes make and prove the points that matter to the customer. Instead of focusing on how wonderful you are, they are written from the customer’s perspective and reflect what the customer needs to conclude in order to reach a decision in your favor. They help the customer to evaluate your proposal. They help the customer see a future they want to be in that needs your help to realize it. They tell the customer what they are going to get and show why selecting you is the customer's best alternative. But most importantly of all, they differentiate. They are the reasons that the customer should accept your proposals, that no one else gives or can give. Great proposal themes might be "We will enable you to overcome the challenge of [identify trade-off] by [insert differentiated approach]," "By [insert what you'll do] we mitigate the risk of [identify risk] in such a way that [insert differentiated outcome]," "By anticipating [insert something insightful] we are able to [prevent|mitigate] [identify problem] resulting in improved [quality|outcome] that delivers [identify benefits]." The effectiveness of your proposal theme statements will directly depend on how much what you say matters to the customer and how well they differentiate your proposal.
• Examples of Bad Proposal Themes. Bad proposal win themes make points that don’t matter. These are often the same points that everyone else will be making, or things about you that you think sound good but fail to pass the "So what?" test. Even though they sound good to you, bad proposal themes are either ignored or fail to help the customer make their decision. While they might make you happy, they do not show up on evaluation forms or decision justifications. To avoid bad proposal themes, you should only say things that matter to the customer and focus on proposal themes that differentiate your proposal. Delete everything else. Bad proposal themes are worse than nothing because they hurt your credibility, inadvertently position your company as not mattering, and make you sound like a bad salesperson instead of a trustworthy partner. If it does not matter to the customer, then at best it’s noise, a possible eye roll, and extra work they have to do to read your proposal. If it doesn’t matter because it’s just an unsubstantiated claim or full of bravado, it can do real damage. Examples of bad proposal themes include "We are the industry-leading provider of [insert claim here]," "We were founded in [insert year here]," "We are fully committed to [insert promise here], or "We are fully compliant with the RFP requirements."

If it matters, make sure you say why it matters. If it doesn't matter, don't say it.

How do you go from writing good proposal themes to writing exceptional proposal themes?

Most proposal theme statements we see when we review proposals make points, but they are not exceptional. In spite of how you might feel about them, they make your proposal look ordinary, just like all the other proposals with ordinary themes. The company that wins will not just have good themes in their proposals, their themes will be extraordinary and make all the proposals with good themes look substandard.

To dominate the competitive field you must reach beyond the ordinary and submit an exceptional proposal. If you really want to win, you should work hard to make your proposal better than any exceptional proposal instead of just better than the ordinary ones who should not be much competition. You want to raise the bar on what it means to be exceptional.

Here are seven examples of things you can do to write exceptional proposal win themes so you can get there:

1. Don’t talk about yourself. Don't make claims about yourself. Put everything about you into the context of how it impacts them.
2. Say the things that will help the customer justify their decision in your favor. Imagine the evaluator explaining their selection decision to The Powers That Be. What words would they quote from your proposal? It won't be your bragging about how special you are. It will be your differentiators and proof points. Good proposals claim. Extraordinary proposals prove.
3. Make every theme statement matter to the customer. Don't write to please yourself. Don't write to please your executives. Write to please the customer. If your themes don't matter to the customer, then you don't matter to the customer.
4. Focus on results, benefits, and what the customer will get or can expect from you. Don't just have approaches that give the customer what they asked for. Deliver results and benefits that exceed their expectations. Ordinary themes are a sign that the company doesn't understand the customer, no matter how much they claim they do.
5. Focus on why you do things instead of what you do. This is how you show that you have judgment. This is where you demonstrate risk mitigation and quality. This is where you add value.  This is how you prove (instead of claim) understanding. This is how you prove that you are more trustworthy. Explaining why you do things is how you beat competent companies even though your approaches are nearly the same.
6. Make sure that your themes impact your evaluation score. The wording of your themes should match up with the evaluation criteria in a way that makes it easy to give you the top score. A theme that won't end up on an evaluation justification is a waste of everyone's time and potentially does more harm than good.
7. Differentiate. The proposal that wins will have differences from all the others. Don't leave that to luck or load your proposal up with beneficial stuff hoping they'll stumble across something they like. Differentiate on purpose. Differentiate based on the things that will demonstrate you are their best alternative.

A simple way to approach this is the “So What?” test. Read each proposal theme statement while pretending to be the customer and ask, “so what?” If the theme statement says “We bring X years of experience in …” ask yourself, “so what?” What are the results that the customer can expect as a result of your experience? What will it do for them? It’s good to have experience, but what they really want are the results you can deliver because of that experience. That’s what separates a good theme from an exceptional theme. Throw out everything in your proposal that does not pass the "So What?" test.

Making win themes matter to the customer is different than saying what you think matters. To make your themes matter to the customer, you have to understand how they make decisions, what they think is important, what their preferences are, and how they would make the inevitable trade-offs. This requires knowing the customer quite well and is why the odds of winning improve so much when you practice relationship marketing and only bid when you have an information advantage. When you write themes for your proposals, make them matter from the buyer’s perspective instead of being what the seller wants to say.

If you are a government contractor, or if your proposal will be formally evaluated and point scored, the reasons you give for why the customer should select you also need to match up with the customer’s scoring system. A really good theme may have little or no impact if it doesn’t result in the evaluator matching it to an evaluation criterion in which they can give you points for it. Exceptional themes must be optimized to score well against the evaluation criteria.

Don't treat themes as something you should add to your proposals. They aren't the sprinkles on the top. Sprinkles just add color and sugar. Instead, treat your themes as if they are the proposal. Themes come first and drive the proposal, which becomes a proof of your themes.

Make your themes decisive and not just beneficial. When you list your theme statements, they should add up to compelling reasons why the customer will make a decision in your favor. If they don't, why are you bothering with them?