Writing a more compelling and persuasive proposal than your competitors can significantly improve your chances of winning. In this series, we will provide some tips professional proposal writers use to make sure their proposal stands out from the crowd.
Is your proposal written from the customer’s point of view or is it all about you? Think about when you buy a car. If the salesman sits and tells you all about all the awards the company has won, how impressed would you be? How does it relate to you? Why do you care? Obviously, you wouldn’t, since you really came there to buy a car that meets your needs! So, read through your proposal and see if it passes the following tests:
- How many times did you use your company name or “we” in your proposal? If most of the sentences contain these words, then you may well have done a good job of stating your ability to perform the work, while leaving out how you are going to do it for them. One of the most common evaluation comment that kills proposals is this: You didn’t tell us how you were going to do the work, just that you could do the work. Look at each sentence and make sure that the information you provide is addressing the “who, what, when and how” of your proposed approach.
- Does your proposal pass the “so what?” test?” Look at each paragraph and ask “why should the government customer care about this?” Have you helped the customer see the benefit to them in your approach? One way I do this is to develop a table showing a list of the features of our approach or our product then next to each feature in the next column giving 2 – 3 benefits that the customer will receive from these features. Have you explained what matters about your qualifications and how the customer will benefit? If you can’t tell the customer how and why they will benefit from your “decades of experience” or “hands-on expertise” (for example), then how should they know – and why should they care?
- Does your theme statement reflect your understanding of the customer’s needs? While you were getting to know your customer (see our webinar “Taking the Mystery Out of Getting to Your Prospective Government Customer”), what problems did they talk about that they want to fix? What results will they get when they hire you? If, for example, the customer has suffered from ineffective, out-of-date training (no matter how that happened), your theme may be to target how you will ensure effective training and keep it current throughout contract performance.
Remember: This is not a “Capabilities Statement” where you show you can do the job. This is a proposal for actually doing the job. Don’t make them guess, or come to conclusions. Help them evaluate your proposal as the best solution for their needs.