Case study: proposal re-use library

This is an example of a solution that we prepared for someone else. The solution that we prepare for you will be based on your particular needs. However, it’s a good way for you to get an idea of how we work and a great way to start a conversation about how your needs are similar or different.

The Customer’s Circumstances. A company with multiple business lines (B2B and B2G) wanted to improve the quality of their proposal writing and accelerate their proposals. Their initial plan was to implement a re-use library and contacted us to make recommendations and help improve the quality.

Our Approach. Most of the time re-use libraries improve your chances of losing. We had to be very careful qualifying this customer. It turns out that at least one of their business lines was a potential candidate for a re-use library approach. We started off with email and then had a conversation with the customer. From there we made some recommendations and had another conversation. When we were discuss bid strategies, how they vary from customer to customer, and how they impact the proposal, the customer realized that how they planned the content of their proposals was central to the quality of the writing as well as a better way to accelerate things. We finalized our recommendations and sent the customer a proposal.

Our Solution. This project fell naturally into several phases. We took advantage of this to mitigate the customer’s risks.

1. In the first phase, we would re-write the introduction to a proposal they had submitted. If they went with a re-use approach, they could use this as a foundation for the new content. It would also give them a chance to see what kinds of improvements we could make.
2. In the second phase, we would take the Content Planning methodology from the MustWin Process in the PropLIBRARY Knowledgebase and create something they could start their future proposals from. Instead of providing re-usable narrative text (which could not be optimized for every customer context), we would itemize everything that should go into and be addressed in their proposals. This way their writers could sit down and put it in the write context much faster than working from a blank page and achieve better quality than editing an existing narrative.
3. In the third phase, we would take up to 100 pages of their existing proposals and insert them as fragments and instructions into the Content Plan. This way they could carry forward their past work, but not necessarily as an updated narrative draft.
4. Finally, we also offered a vehicle for ongoing proposal review and support to help them continuously improve the quality of their proposals.

The result was:

• For under $10,000 they’d have a baseline Content Plan to speed up the start of their proposals in a way that is driven by strategy and optimized to win for each new customer.
• For under $20,000 they’d have that plus their existing proposal material revised and inserted into the Content Plan to accelerate going from Content Planning to a narrative draft.
• For substantially under $30,000 they’d have all that plus support for three active proposals they were anticipating.

They’d get all this along with a Corporate Subscription to PropLIBRARY and without any long term commitment and with opportunities to bail out if they didn’t like the way things went.

To discuss this solution and how it might be similar to or different from what you need, click here to set up an appointment.