22 Ways to Beat Your Competitors Through Differentiation

What are you going to offer to beat yourcompetition? Sometimes the RFP forces you tobid the exact same thing as everyone else. Orso it seems. The customer wants to be able tocompare apples to apples when they have tomake a selection. However, you need to standout from the other bidders in order to getselected.

So what should you bid? It seems that youonly have two choices: Offer the same thingas your competitors or offer somethingdifferent. But is that really true?

What about offering the customer the same thing as your competitors, only:

1. Developed or delivered in a different way? 2. Producing better results? 3. With more reliability? 4. With more credibility based solely on a better proposal? 5. With more future options? 6. With more growth potential? 7. With more flexibility? 8. Delivered faster? 9. Better integrated? 10. With better after sales support? 11. With a better warranty or guarantee? 12. With more accountability or transparency? 13. With better risk mitigation? 14. With a better attitude or friendlier service? 15. In a way that is more convenient? 16. In more sizes or better quantities?

If you do offer the same thing, you must meet the competition head on andoverpower them with a much better offering. Or under price them. If you are required to bid the exact same thing as your competitors, it may not be possible to have a better offering. It’s easier, not to mention more profitable, to be different.

This is another place where you can apply the “who, what, where, how, when, and why” approach that we recommend for proposal writing. Think about how to differentiate your offer by changing:

1. Who participates in or benefits from the project 2. What you do or deliver 3. Where you work, produce, deliver, or support your offering 4. How you work, produce, deliver, or support your offering 5. When you work, produce, deliver, or support your offering 6. Why you approach it the way you do and what the results will be for

the customer

If you can’t change it, then identify it, make it clearer, or just betterdescribe the results for the customer or how they will benefit from it. That alone can set you apart and make you a more attractive source.

When you offer exactly the same thing as everyone else, you compete on price. When you offer something different, you compete on value. When youoffer the same thing, only you do it in a different way, you gain the ability to offer them something better, without increasing your price. Ifthe RFP is so specific that you can’t have a better offering, then you can still be a better source. In fact, other than price, there might not be anything else for the customer to consider. The customer is looking for differences, so make them clear. Give the customer a clear choice, even if it’s for the same deliverable.

No matter how hard the RFP tries to force you into bidding the same thingas everyone else, you can always be different. In fact, you have to be different in order to be better. You must learn to want to be unusual. Ifyou can’t achieve that, you can’t be exceptional. But it all starts with offering the customer a difference. The question is whether it's a difference that matters to the evaluators. In choosing how to be different, what matters to the evaluators should be your most important consideration.  

5 Ingredients of Proposal Persuasion

Persuasion is Part AnticipationThe most important thing you can do to win yourproposal is to anticipate how the evaluator willreach their decision. Finding this out willprobably require research. Sometimes you can justask them. But sometimes what people tell you andhow they actually reach a decision are twodifferent things. Researching their decisionmaking history and trends can help.

Sometimes you have to guess. However, make sure your guess is based as much as possible on the evaluator’s perspective, instead of your own. Notall evaluators are the same. Different people have different priorities. For example, consider this list:

Risk Cost Time Speed Policy Customer satisfaction Public welfare Competitive positioning Thoroughness Formality Innovation Quality Reputation Politics Career Personal goals Corporate goals

If you ask people to rank them by priority, you’ll find that everyone will put them in a different sequence. If you ask them to write them downor tell you their priorities, you’ll also find a difference between what they say and what they actually do. It’s human nature. You must accept itand dig a little deeper if you want to be able to anticipate how they will make their decision.

If you want to win, you should build every aspect of your proposal aroundhow the evaluator will reach their decision. The problem is that you haveto find that out before you can build your proposal around it. Your ability to anticipate is one of the most important factors in writing a successful proposal.

Persuasion is Part StrategyWhat are the things you are going to do to have the best proposal? Will you have the best recommendation? The best presentation? The most cost-effective? The quickest? Or something else?

Once you know what you intend to do to win, then you need be able to articulate it, to provide the evaluator with the reasons they should

accept your proposal. The things you say to win your proposal are called "themes."

Your best chances of winning come from having a winning strategy that is well articulated, and that reflects how the evaluators will make their decision.

Persuasion is Part PositioningIs your proposal competing against other proposals? How will your proposal compare? Will it be stronger, faster, cheaper, better, more technical, or something else? When a proposal is competitive, it’s not enough to have a strong proposal — you need to give the evaluator a reason to select your proposal instead of theirs. By intentionally positioning yourself, you give them that reason.

Even if your proposal is not competing against other proposals, it will still be compared to other alternatives, approaches, or solutions. You should position your proposal amongst these alternatives to frame the discussion, instead of letting it happen randomly.

Persuasion is Part MotivationAn evaluator can get all the answers they need and still not accept your proposal. Accepting a proposal means effort. It means spending money. It means taking action. It means change. The evaluator needs to be motivatedto accept your proposal. Maybe your reasons will motivate them. Or maybe you’ll make them an offer they can’t refuse. In addition to anticipating the questions the evaluator needs answered, you should also anticipate what it will take to motivate them.

Persuasion is Part of Copy Writing and PresentationA lot of people make the mistake of thinking about how they want to present their proposal first. They worry about how it will look. Or they jump head first into writing as if all it takes are the right words to hypnotize the evaluator into doing whatever you want. Unfortunately, you can’t create magical copy without an effective strategy and without the right positioning. Only after you’ve thought through your strategies and positioning, and have some idea how to motivate the proposal evaluator, are you ready to think about copy writing and presentation. Effective copy gets attention and sets the stage. A good presentation will create

the right impression. But without strategies, positioning, and methods for motivation, it’s all just illusion.

Once you’ve done your homework, copy writing and presentation are about effectively delivering your message to the proposal evaluator. You can appeal on an emotional level or on a rational one. Or even both. What is going to work depends on who the evaluator is and what the evaluator’s expectations are.

This brings us back to anticipation. You must anticipate what matters most to the evaluator, how they go about making decisions, and what they expect to see in a proposal. Will a fancy proposal impress them or offendthem? Will copy based on fear motivate them or make them oppositional? Dothey need to see all the technical details or will their eyes glaze over?Ultimately, strategies, positioning, copy writing, and presentation are all integrated. Their effectiveness depends on your ability to anticipate.

11 Topics That Drive Your Proposal Win Strategies

People talk about “themes” like they aresomehow magical. Like if you write somegood themes and sprinkle them on yourproposal they will transform it intosomething irresistible to the customer. Sooften proposal teams gather together andtry to think of some “really good themes.”Using this approach, they rarely riseabove the ordinary.

Asking for themes rarely produces goodresults. Instead, you need to think aboutwhere themes come from. If your goal is toprovide reasons for the customer to selectyou (what themes are supposed to provide), then maybe you should think less about your strengths and what you offer,  and think more about what matters to the customer...

1. What is the nature of your offering? Is a commodity (whether a product or a service? Or is it a unique or specialty offering, like a customized product, professional service, or solution/integration?

2. What will the type of contract or contract vehicle be? This could befixed price, an hourly rate, or some other variant. It could be a government contract (any of the various kinds) or a commercial

contract. The strategies for winning one type of contract can be very different from another.

3. What is the competitive environment? Your bid strategies depend on the nature of the competitive environment. Are you the only bidder or is it competitive? Are there a few competitors that you can identify or an unknown number of competitors? Is the competitive field regulated or open?

4. How will you position your company against the competition? How are you different from any potential competitors? Why are you a better choice for the customer?

5. What makes your offering special? Does it have to do with the specifications or performance? Or the results it will produce or thebenefits it will deliver? How is it innovative? How is it different from what your competitors will propose? Is there anything special in the way the offering will be delivered or implemented, or in how the contract will be fulfilled?

6. What are your pricing strategies? Will you emphasize price or deemphasize it in favor of something else? Is there anything specialabout your pricing model or the options that you offer? Is there a difference in the short term or long term impact? Are there any promotions, discounts, or anything else that the customer should consider? Are there any incentives or penalties that could impact pricing or performance? Are there any pricing related contractual considerations such as bonding or insurance that makes your offeringexceptional? What are your strategies and messages regarding value?

7. What are the customer’s evaluation criteria? Did they put them in the RFP? Do they have an official, point scored, and documented evaluation process. Will they follow it? What do you need to say to get the top score?

8. What do you know about the customer? In particular, do you know their preferences regarding what they wish to procure, how they wishto procure it, their desired results, and what they want in a vendoror to see in a proposal? Do you have any insights into their true needs? What do you know about their spoken and unspoken goals? What can you do help them fulfill those goals? What is the nature of yourrelationship? What do you want it to be?

9. What is special about your company and/or team? Being qualified is not exceptional. But what is exceptional about your qualifications? What about your capabilities is valuable to the customer? How is your experience relevant? What successes have you had? Do you have any references or testimonials you can provide? What resources do you have?

10. What quantities can you cite? What are the relationships between your resources, locations, specifications, results, etc.,

and the customer’s needs? How can you translate them into percentages, ratios, or statements that having meaning to the customer? Can you make them part of your win strategies or story? Quantifying things brings credibility, and doing a ton of research to boil it all down into a simple sound bite can absolutely be worthit.

11. What special concerns should you address? This can range from topics like risk, quality, or environmental considerations to other qualities that can impact the customer’s decision.

Now based on your circumstances, considerations, and decisions, what do you need to communicate to your customer? What is your story?

But even more important, what does it add up to? Does it give the customer reasons to want to select your proposal? Does it give the evaluators what they need to justify selecting you? When they tell their bosses who they want to award the contract to, what are they going to sayto explain their selection? What they say is your story. And if you don’t tell it, they’ll make one up for you.

 

8 Things You Can Do To Transform Mediocre Proposal Writing Into Great Proposal Writing

Here are 8 simple things a non-writer can do to dramatically improve their proposal writing. Use this list to go through what you have writtensentence by sentence. Doing so can transform your writing into a compelling and persuasive proposal and significantly improve your chancesof winning.

1. Is it written to get the highest score based on the evaluation criteria? This is the most important thing for you to achieve. You should study the evaluation criteria and make sure that what you have written will get the highest score. If you don’t get the highest score, you don’t win. It really is that simple. Anything youhave written, no matter how important to you, will not help you win if it is not addressed in the evaluation criteria. The best thing you can do is to provide snippets that can easily be copied and pasted from what you wrote onto their evaluation forms to justify their score.

2. How quickly can the evaluator find what they need to prove RFP compliance? If you are not compliant with every requirement, your proposal may not even get evaluated. When there are lots of

proposals submitted, the easiest way to get out of reading them all is to disqualify as many as possible based on non-compliance.

3. Does it include all of the keywords from the RFP? You must use the RFP’s terminology instead of your own (no matter how strongly you prefer to use certain terms or how much better they are). In fact, you should use all of the keywords from the RFP. The evaluator will be looking at the RFP and then looking at what you wrote to see where you have addressed what’s in the RFP. When they do that, they’ll be skimming for the keywords. You should make them easy to find.

4. Does it answer all the questions the customer might have? An easy way to ensure that you answer the customer’s questions is to address“who,” “what,” “where,” “how,” “when,” and “why” in your response. Look at what you have written and ask yourself questions that start with those words. See if you can’t add detail to your response by providing answers to all of them.

5. Does every sentence pass the “So what?” test? Have you written descriptive statements, cited qualifications, or made unsubstantiated claims in any sentence without explaining what matters and why? It is not enough to state your qualifications; you need to explain what matters about them and how the customer will benefit. The evaluator is often more interested in why it matters than the statement. Never assume that the value of a statement is obvious.

6. Does what you wrote exceed the requirements of the RFP? Everyone is responding to the same RFP. Any competition will also be compliant. If you are merely compliant then at best you are competing solely onprice and at worst vulnerable to someone else offering something better. Exceeding the specifications of the RFP does not have to mean increasing your price. If it’s a choice between two vendors with the same offering and one offers a better written response or does a better job of answering the customers (written and unwritten)questions, who do you think has the competitive advantage?

7. Does it give the evaluator a reason to want what you are offering? The customer is making a purchase and has multiple offerings to choose from. Does your proposal give them reasons to want what you are offering more than what anyone else might be offering? This means you need to understand what they really want, which may or maynot actually be found in the RFP. Your proposal must provide compelling reasons for the evaluator to select you (as opposed to someone else).

8. Is it written from the customer's perspective and not simply a description of yourself? If every sentence starts with your company’s name, there’s a good chance that you have written about

yourself and not about what matters to the evaluator. When you talk with a sales person, do you want to hear them talk all about themselves or do you want to hear them talk about what the offering will do for you and how you will benefit from it? Look at every sentence and make sure that every feature, attribute, or piece of information you provide is put into the customer’s context.

 

7 Ways That Selling In Writing Is Different From Selling In Person

A proposal is a selling document. Butpeople often assume that all they needare the right words in a proposal for itto sell. They assume they need to bringthe written version of a salesperson toclose the deal. What they don’t realizeis that selling in writing is differentfrom selling in person, and it’s oftennot the magic words you use, but whatyou do before you start writing thatdetermines whether you win.

1. Proposals are not interactive. Watch a salesperson in action: they ask questions and try different approaches based on the answers. Youcan’t do that in writing. In person, how you present yourself often counts more than what you actually say. In proposals, it is the opposite. However, just like people, every proposal evaluation is different. There are no rules that tell you what to do. In person, you can explore and discover. In writing, you must anticipate.

2. Proposals only provide information in one direction. In a proposal, you can’t ask questions and modify your response based on what the customer tells you. You have to research the answers to your questions, and anticipate the customer's questions before you start writing. All you can do is provide information. But the information has to be what they want to get, and not just what you want to provide. Proposals are a lot like trying to have a discussion, when you can’t hear the other party. Or like a performance with no audience response. To keep the other party engaged, you have to taketheir interests into consideration and anticipate their response.

3. Doing your homework is critical. You have to get the answers to yourquestions ahead of time. When you sit down to write the proposal andfind you have questions about the customer's preferences, you may just have to guess.  Educated guesses are better.  Not having to guess at all is best.

4. Perspective is critical. You must to learn to see the world from thecustomer’s perspective. They are not there to tell you how they see things. When they read what you wrote, they won’t hear your voice, your inflection, or your interpretation. They will see your proposalthrough their own eyes. To reach them and persuade them, everything you write must revolve around the customer, what they are trying to do, what they need to reach a decision, what they need to be motivated, and what they want.

5. Mistakes are permanent. Never mind typos. If you misinterpret the customer, misunderstand what they want, or fail to write from their perspective, they will be constantly reminded of it every time they look at your proposal. When you make a mistake in person, you can recover. When you do it in a proposal, it’s there forever.

6. Decisions are made differently. When you try to persuade someone in person, they often make their decision on the spot. When you try to persuade someone in writing, they take their time deliberating. Theythink more about how they should decide and what criteria should guide them. They try to be more logical. They compare, often line byline, in a way that can’t be done with the spoken word. To influencesomeone’s decision in writing, you should take how they will reach their decision into account, make sure they have the information they need to reach their decision, and if possible guide them through it.

7. Trust is earned differently. In a face-to-face meeting, trust is earned through body language, questions and answers, challenges and responses, and interaction. People decide to trust each other based on their reactions. In writing, people decide whether to trust someone primarily by consistency, accuracy, transparency, and thoroughness. In writing, you need to show that you are careful, considerate, and reliable. People only buy from people they trust.

The best way to win in writing is to combine the two approaches. The proposal should follow the in-person discussion. But the proposal is not a follow-up to what happened in person, it is the extension of the discussion into another media.

If you are sending a proposal to a person you do not have a relationship with, have not met, or have not even had a discussion with, you must be able to see things through the eyes of a stranger. If the customer releases an RFP, your ability to win with a written proposal depends on your being able to see things from their perspective better than anyone else and to do it in writing. If they already have a relationship with someone else, you are at a huge disadvantage. If the decision will be made exclusively on the strength of the proposal, your only chance is to write a better proposal. This does not mean that you pick better words.

This means that you do a better job of writing from the customer’s perspective. You can steal the opportunity away if the other company submits a generic proposal and you submit a proposal that correctly reflects the customer’s perspective. Very few people have empathy strong enough to write from a stranger’s perspective. The ones who do we call “winners.”

6 Ways to Break the RulesInvestments in things like training, process development, and software orthe use of consultants are much more difficult to get approved in an economic downturn, no matter how important they might be to growing your business.  But you don't have to go without if you're willing to break the "rules" and think outside of the box.  Doing things the way they havealways been done is not a good survival strategy for an economic downturn. 

If you try to do things the same way they've always been done, all you can do is trim around the edges or go without.  However, many things follow the 80/20 rule. If you are willing to settle for 80% of the potential value then you may be able to get it at 20% of the normal cost. 

Training is a good example.  You can get most of the value of training inthe form of manuals and written materials.  Yeah, you give up a lot, but you get it at a tiny fraction of what instructor-led training costs.  Butmix in a portion of online training with written materials, and suddenly you getting most of the value and still way undercut the normal cost.  Add in some webinars for remote interaction and questions and you've got nearly all of the value and are still way under the normal cost.

Here are some other alternative approaches that are affordable:

1. Do things online instead of in-person.  Don't be trapped into thinking that online is just not the same as in-person.  It isn't the same, but it doesn't have to be.  It just has to be good enough.  And in some ways it may be better.  There are so many options these days for doing things online.  Here are some you may not have considered:

o Use software that lets you share your desktop and simultaneously edit or write a document with multiple people inreal-time. 

o Hook up webcams and have a poor man's video conference. 

o Use webinars to hold online meetings with presentations and file sharing in addition to the audio conference. 

o Record messages, video, and presentations for online distribution and time-shifting.

2. Use Facilitation instead of outsourcing. Don't think that using a consultant necessarily means handing off the project to them or committing to a large number of hours. If you need outside expertiseor additional resources, instead of asking them to do the proposal, ask them to review your work or be available to guide you through the process.  An hour or two a day can help prevent you from gettingstuck and help you achieve the quality you desire without engaging aconsultant full-time.

3. Think Coaches instead of managers.  Don't assume that the most senior person should be in charge of all the details. I've worked with a couple of companies where I functioned as a coach instead of the manager.  They used their own staff to do the business and proposal development.  I made sure their staff knew what to do and how to do it.  They were able to use junior level staff to do seniorlevel work.  And overtime, their junior level staff grew their skills until they could stand on their own.  I'd generally start with a couple of days per week, and then over a year or two, wean them down to a couple of days per month.  When you consider what it would cost to hire a senior manager and more experienced staff, theyreally made out well.  

4. Use process like an assembly line.  Instead of thinking of your process as sophisticated, complex, and comprehensive, try designing it to simplify. The term "cookie-cutter" proposals is synonymous with "bad proposals." Instead of trying to turn your proposal content into re-useable parts, try turning your process into re-useable parts.  We have found with our process documentation that many of the considerations and decision criteria can be standardized, enabling:

o Activities to be guided so that people don't have to wait untilthey are told what to do

o Criteria for making decisions to be mapped ahead of time and simply followed instead of deliberated

o Baseline quality standards, review scopes, and validation criteria to be set ahead of time and simply implemented insteadof being planned

The result is that people can work much, much faster because they don't have to discuss all the details about what to do and how to doit (or even whether to do it). 

5. Do more of the work yourself.  Just because you don't know how or aren't experienced at something, doesn't mean you can't do most of it. If you have a written process you can identify the parts of it that you can do yourself and only outsource the parts that you really must.  It will also make the handoffs and expectation management go much more smoothly.

6. Approach training differently.  Your company does not need training --- it needs to discover solutions to problems and enhance the skills of its staff. Traditional approaches to training are expensive and separate from the work that you need to get done.  In our program we identified a dozen different ways that training couldbe used as a solution.  Instead of implementing a comprehensive and expensive training program, a highly focused unit on where you feel the most pain may meet your needs.  Another alternative is to look at training as an enterprise and not as individual students.  We treat enterprise training as a fixed price offering, so that the more who participate, the more the cost per student goes down.  We also break apart the sessions so that you don't have to take key staff away from their projects for days at a time. 

You need to invest in order to grow, but instead you have to cut back.  In the current economic environment you can't keep going the way you havebeen.  We find that when you are clear and extremely focused on what you actually need, you can often find approaches that involve some sacrifice but still fulfill your most critical needs. 

We discovered a lot of the techniques above by reengineering the businessdevelopment and proposal process. You are welcome to use our process or you can find ways to implement them on your own.  We've also developed a set of out-of-the-box enterprise solutions that are available to you or you may emulate our approaches to create your own solutions.

Why Your Good Proposal Is Going To Lose

A lot of companies do exactly thewrong thing when faced with a must winopportunity. They try to make surethat they don’t lose. They give thecustomer exactly what they ask for inthe RFP. They may even makeimprovements here or there, if they

can do it within the boundaries of the instructions. They try to be exactly what the RFP says the customer wants. They never realize that they are setting themselves up to lose.

When your goal is to write a good proposal, here is what you get:

A little better on specifications, but not enough to increase your cost

A little better by teaming with other companies so you can claim their qualifications even though it won’t impact what the customer actually gets

A little better on price by trimming how much you paid your estimates, but not so much that you lose money on the deal

A little better on staffing by offering a few more years of experience with no way for the customer to know whether your staff will actually do a better job

The problem is that “a little better” means a little better than what theRFP asked for, and not necessarily a little better than your competitors.You’re counting on them facing the same constraints, and hoping your picks will be “a little better.” Sometimes you win, but most of the time you lose. Maybe if you win 1 in 3, you can make it up in volume. All you need are more RFPs to respond to. And your job is secure because you didn’t make any mistakes — you followed the instructions precisely.

Your proposal will be good. But you are who I want to bid against, because you are easy to beat. Here is how I’m going to do it:

I’m going to offer them something that achieves their goals better. Even if we offer the same thing, mine will deliver more and better results.

Depending on the bid, I’ll either team with no one, or a lot of other companies. I’ll either win with better management or way more resources. It won’t just be your small collection of companies vs. my small collection of companies. We’re not trying to win after a difficult deliberation and detailed comparison. We’ll be so different that it won’t even be a difficult decision for the customer to make. We’re going to offer a clear choice and then show why our approach is better.

I’ll change the rules on the pricing by changing the scope. Forget shaving bill rates by a nickel — I’ll change the number of staff needed by changing the nature of the project. And I won’t do it by giving something up. I’ll do it by giving them something better, just less labor or resource intensive. If the RFP specifies a pricing format that forces me to compare apples to apples, then it’s

all about value. I’m going to make sure that the customer can evaluate the value of everything we do that adds value, and I’m going to make sure that there’s a lot of it. When I’m done there will be a clear difference in what they get from us, and the customer will know what it’s worth.

I’m going to do a lot more than just fill the hours or give them bodies. I’m going to give them something tangible. I’m going to give my people tools. Procedures. Resources. Access to information. Ways to solve problems. Oversight. Advice. Surge support. The customer isgoing to know that our people will not show up empty-handed or be ontheir own. They’ll know we’re all hiring from the same labor pool. But regardless of who shows up, our people will come with an advantage.

I love to compete against people who write good proposals. Because my proposal will be extraordinary. While you’re aiming to follow the instructions and be a little better, I’m going to be overwhelming and great. I’ll comply with the instructions but I’ll use them as a starting point and not a boundary.

A good proposal wins because the other proposals made mistakes or didn’t rack up quite enough points. Because of the bell curve, you can get by being like that. But unless I totally misread my customer, I’m going to steal away your business. Because I have no fear of losing. Because I will not play it safe and stick to the RFP and try to just be “a little better.”

Do you want to compete with me? All you have to do is take some risks. Ifyou’re at the kind of company where losing a proposal gets punished and everyone is trying to cover themselves, you won’t be able to do it. But if you are at a company that’s not only able to think outside the box, but it is willing to set aside enough time to conceive of and write an extraordinary proposal, then it’s going to get interesting. The winner will be the one of us that best understands what the customer wants. I wonder which of us it’s going to be...

 

12 More Strategies For Confounding YourCompetition

We’re continuing our series on usingdifferentiation as a competitive

advantage with a collection of useful techniques we’ve identified. They will not apply to everybody. Some may require you to invest, some may require sweat-equity, and some are downright mean. But they can all confound the competition and give you a distinct competitive advantage.

1. Challenge the best practices. If everybody competing follows the “best practices” then you need to be even better to win. Or at leastbe different. Maybe the “best practices” are out of date. Maybe you can do better and ghost your competition at the same time.

2. Give them more. Better specifications, metrics, procedures, involvement, reach, capabilities, resources, speed, quality, risk mitigation, knowledge, results, proof, detail, accountability, transparency, etc. Giving them more does not have to cost more. Sometimes it just means being more thoughtful about what you are doing and taking the time to explain it better.

3. Start early. You can start before winning the award. Obviously you don’t want to spend a lot of money when you are at risk of losing, but you can identify things that you are able to do without incurring a lot of cost. Do those things immediately so that you caninclude the results in your proposal. Some examples might include recruiting, design, prototyping, research, sourcing, testing, validation, etc. If you're pursuing an opportunity to develop software, you can squash the competition submitting not just paper, but a prototype as part of your proposal. Or if you're planning to use software on a project, you can set up a demo server so the customer can see the software during evaluation. Better yet, allow them to start using it to plan the project start-up before award. If you can get them using your services, you not only cement your relationship, you make it so the customer doesn’t want to give up your services by selecting someone else.

4. Change the tone. You can propose the exact same thing and be more friendly, wise, interesting, conversational, collaborative, humorous, careful, knowledgeable, practical, clear, confident, accessible, credible, trustworthy, etc. Don’t hide behind business-speak. Don’t sound the same as your competitors. Sound better. Soundlike someone they’d like to work with.

5. Change the focus. Focus the customer on what matters. Change what the procurement is about. Then be the best at delivering it. You do not have to change your actual offering to achieve this. You can change the context, results, priorities, trade-offs, concerns, etc. This has the effect of changing how the evaluation criteria are interpreted.

6. Change the metrics. How is success defined and measured. If it isn’t, then start (and this becomes your discriminator). If success is defined and measured, then change the numbers. Raise the bar by tightening the numbers. Track more metrics. Provide better analytics. Turn metrics into improved results. Leave your competitors inferior.

7. Go where your competition does not. Expand the scope of the project to areas your competitors don't cover. Offer tools they don't support. Use techniques they don't offer. Provide a demonstration ora trial service that the customer didn't ask for. Provide additionalinformation online. Provide options. Provide related capabilities.

8. Disrupt the business or delivery model. Get clever regarding what you charge for and what you don’t. Change how deliverables are delivered. Or supported. Change the contractual terms. Offer a warranty or guarantee that is amazing. Offer a fixed price instead of an hourly rate. Offer upsell options. Or volume discounts. Introduce the Internet to a material world. Or introduce bricks and mortar to a virtual world. Obsolete your competitors.

9. Convert your weaknesses into strengths. Trade-offs always have two sides. If your weaknesses are the result of a trade-off, there's a reason that your weaknesses are better than the alternative. Position your weaknesses as an advantage. If you're inexperienced, you're also new, fresh, innovative, and unshackled. If you can’t afford something, then you've found a way to lower costs. See how itworks?

10. Deflect and redirect. If you have a problem, redefine it. Better yet, turn it into an advantage. Reinterpret. Spin. Position problems to minimize their impact. Position competitors' strengths so that they do not matter. Position your strengths as their weaknesses. Play verbal Aikido.

11. Attack. Tell the customer what’s wrong with your competitors. Name names. Generate fear, uncertainty, and doubt. It’s not libel ifit’s true.

12. Be honest. If your competitors dabble in the dark arts and practice some of the more aggressive strategies listed above, then one way to counter them is with honesty. Over the top honesty. Don’thide behind business-speak. Just tell the simple truth. Make sure everything is provable and transparent. Be credible. Let the customer see status information in real time. Give them the same

information you have access to. Nobody wants a vendor they can’t trust. So give them one they can.

Using some or all of these strategies is much better (and more fun!) thanthe same old boring RFP compliance that everyone else is doing.   You'll win more contracts and leave your competitors wondering what happened.  Why fight fair?

 

4 Steps to Winning a Procurement That is Wired For Someone Else. Sweet!

When the customer hasalready decided who shouldwin before an RFP isreleased, the procurementis often called "wired." Asin, "It’s wired for thecompany that they prefer."Often this company hashelped write the RFP. Ingovernment procurement, oneof the main reasons for allthe rules is to preventwired procurements. But they still happen.

We recently wrote an article on how you can tell if an opportunity might be wired. Now it’s time to talk about what you can do about it, other than take any legal recourse available (it’s difficult to prove and a great way to permanently alienate the customer). Here are four recommendations:  

1. Take risks. This is something that most government contractors (and probably most other companies) are not good at. But you can't steal a customer away by being similar to their current vendor. You can't just be the same, but a little better. You should aim at being categorically different. You need to present a real alternative.

2. Your proposal should read that way too. Throw out all the blah, blah, blah that has built up in your proposals over the years and speak directly to the customer. Throw out all of your past proposal text instead of trying to re-use it. Change the tone. Have an attitude (that alone is enough to discriminate you from your competition in most proposals). Be upfront about offering them a choice. But most importantly, you need to tell them a story that they want to be a part of.

3. If there is an incumbent, keep in mind that the customer already knows them — warts and all. The customer knows the incumbents limits. The incumbent has been locked into a contract and a way of doing things for years. You need to remind the customer that the incumbent had their chance to be innovative and weren’t. You can be anything you want, but the incumbent can't escape what they've been.You need to be something different from the incumbent. There are only so many ways this can happen: staffing, procedures, responsiveness, personality, resources, capability, technology, results, etc. If you submit the same-old, same-old management plan as you always have just like everyone else, you won’t steal away a wired opportunity.

4. Now for the difficult part & dash If you are a government contractoryou need to recognize that the government buyer (although it's oftentrue for others as well) is both risk and change averse. You need totake risks, but the story has to be about how they don't have to takeany risks or how they face more risks by continuing the status quo. This approach may be easier since changing vendors is an obvious risk no matter what you say to the contrary. If you are in a rapidlychanging environment, it's a lot easier to make the case that failing to keep up is itself too big of a risk. You must offer change, but not a change in the customer.

While the customer may have some bias, it's extremely rare that an opportunity is truly wired. Also, keep in mind that a procurement that looks wired may scare away other companies, making the competitive field much smaller.  This could make you the only viable alternative and helps boost the odds from terrible to merely bad. And winning a wired procurement against all odds is even more sweet than winning a normal proposal.

You need to play to the chance that the opportunity isn't truly wired, meaning that the customer is willing to change if given a good enough reason.  All you need to do to win is to find that reason. And don't focus on price. Yes, it's best to come in with lower pricing, but that can't be your whole story or else they'll wonder what they have to give up if they pick you and view their preferred vendor as lower risk. You want them thinking about what they're going to get. Try giving them something they didn't even ask for, but probably want. Bring them a brighter future by offering something new. And that something new doesn’teven have to cost you anything — it can be a better way of doing things or a more responsive partner.

Make them question why the incumbent hasn't offered them anything new in all the time they've known them. Give them something they want more than

the comfort of staying with what they've got. To do that, it will help tounderstand their goals and motivations. But if you don't know (probably the case because it's wired for someone else who knows them better), thentake a risk and guess.

Remember: the procurement is wired. The odds are you are going to lose. To change the odds you have to change the rules. You can't do that without taking a risk.

 

Now just for fun, play it back and this time be the incumbent

If you are the incumbent, then everything above describes your competition...

So you've got to beat them to it. You need to say how you've been bound by the limitations of the current contract, but the recompete gives you the opportunity to make the changes for the better that you've been dyingto implement. And with your history of lessons learned, you are the only one who knows what they are. Because you understand their goals and preferences so well you can actually deliver a brighter future and they won't have to take any risks to achieve it. You'll not only give them more of what they've come to love and rely on, but you'll give them something new as well. Put a major emphasis on price realism. You are theonly one who knows how much things cost in their environment and therefore are in the best position to make trade-off decisions and deliver the best value. All anyone else can do is guess. Focus on trustworthiness, how they know you will deliver what you promise, and howyou're not like those Other Contractors who will promise anything to get a contract and then quickly become ordinary. The only problem with this approach is that it has to be true.

 

Win Proposals By Being Less Professional

Most of what I write about proposals deals with themechanics of how you construct sentences, developdocuments, and implement an effective process so youcan do it reliably. Today I’m taking a little breakto talk about something that can make the differencebetween good proposal writing and great proposalwriting.

About 15 years ago I was sitting in on a presentation coaching session and the person leading it was telling a group of engineers how they should talk about what makes them passionate. Forget about the script. Forget about the specs. Skip the PowerPoint. Go straight to what matters and talk about the things that are important.

The same is true in proposal writing. A great proposal shows a passion for how you can make a difference for the customer.

 

Good Great

ProfessionalUses the universal "we"UnemotionalDescriptiveAbout youUncontroversialBoringSame old, same oldMaskedA transactionSomething you have to doFollows a scriptGives them what they asked forProvides the specifications

ConversationalUses "I"PassionateAbout the customerTakes a standInterestingYour style is a discriminatorHonest, transparentSomeone you want to work withSomething you wantImprovisesGives them something with personalityTells a story

 

You can't write a proposal like this by copying a sample. You can't even recycle your own proposal and achieve this. Every conversation you have is different. Even when the subject is the same.

I think one of the major things that prevents people from achieving greatness with their proposals is that they want to appear "professional." And "professional" means sounding like other proposals. Not standing out. Nothing someone might criticize.

It's harder for people in big companies. Committee reviews can suck the life right out of a proposal. Nobody's going to get fired for a "professional" proposal. And as long as everyone else submits similarly boring "professional" proposals, someone has to win and it could be you.

But what if someone breaks the rules and stops being "professional?" Could you offend the customer? Possibly. Could you ignite their passion and win because of it? Ask people who buy Apple computers. Did you know Apple Computer's market capitalization is almost the same as Microsoft's?

You can discriminate yourself from your competitors even though you offerthe same exact offering as everyone else, simply by discriminating your proposal writing. This is true even for bureaucratic and regulated government proposals.

First, be different. Then be better. And demonstrate it — with passion. Do you understand their issues, care about quality, try harder, or want their business more? Don't simply say that "quality is our number one priority" and put them to sleep. Instead, say something like "It's a goodthing we make sure we understand your priorities, otherwise our total obsession with quality could get downright annoying."

What's the matter? Afraid to use the words "obsession" and "annoying" in a proposal? Are you afraid to sound "unprofessional?" Is this any better:"Our staff will make quality their priority. Our Project Manager will work with the customer to ensure that both quality goals and deadlines are met according to the requirements of the RFP."   ZZZzzzzzz.  Boring. Worse, it sounds just like every other proposal the customer will receive.

Did this article provoke you?  Get you thinking?  Some of you probably disagree, but even those who disagree are thinking about change.  That's something that's hard to achieve and often half the battle.  Better yet, some of you agree and are thinking about trying it out.  That's really what you want in a proposal.

Got a proposal where you're the underdog? Try being great instead of being "professional" and steal the win away from those who are merely "good."

 

Before and After - Creating a Better Proposal Outline

There are a lot of bad examplesof  proposal outlines out there on theInternet. And many of them come fromtextbooks! Take a look at this proposal

outline derived from an “Advanced Technical Writing” course offered by a university:

TitleSummary/AbstractIntroduction/BackgroundStatement of the Project ProblemRecommendation/SolutionObjectivesScopeMethodsScheduleBudget/PricingResources/StaffingConclusionReferences

Then forget you ever saw it. You don’t want your proposal to be organizedlike this because it:

Forces the decision maker to read halfway through it before they find out what you are proposing

Patronizes the decision maker by describing their own background to them and then telling them what their problem is

Saves the conclusion for the end, when that should be the place where a proposal starts

You see variations on this outline all over the place, probably because that's what people learned in school.

The biggest problem with the outline above, and the reason why it increases the odds of losing your proposal if you follow it, is because it is not written from the decision maker’s point of view. All the headings do is categorize information. The primary goal of a proposal is not to deliver information or to be descriptive. The primary goal is to persuade a decision maker. Instead of delivering information, you need tohelp the receiver make their decision. This may involve delivering some information, but it is in a specific context and is not simply descriptive. The difference is vital.

The best way to understand how to write a proposal is to put yourself in the shoes of the person making the decision. When someone asks you to do something, what do you need to see in order to reach your decision? The decision maker starts with questions and looks for answers. They don’t read your proposal. They look for answers.

When you are the decision maker, your questions might include:

What am I going to get or what will the results be? What do you want (from me)? How much is it going to cost and is it worth it? What will it take to make it happen? What could go wrong? Why should I believe you?

Now pretend that you are receiving a proposal from someone who wants you to do something, approve something, or buy something. Think about the first thing you want to read. If you weren’t expecting to receive a proposal, it might be “What do you want (from me)?” If you were expectingthe proposal, then the first thing you'll probably want to know is “What am I going to get?” This is closely followed by “What do I have to do to get it?” and “Is it worth it?” If you agree that it’s worth it, you’ll want to dig deeper and find out what it will take to make it happen. At that point you start looking for things that could go wrong and will wantto make sure you can trust the person or company who brought you the proposal to deliver what they promise. If this is what the decision makeris looking for, then that is what your outline should be. You can use thequestions above as your outline, but it's even better to use statements that summarize the answers.

If you're writing a proposal in response to a written RFP that specifies how they want the proposal organized, you must follow their outline. However, the evaluator still has the same questions and they still need to find the answers in your proposal. An excellent way to exceed the RFP requirements without increasing the cost of your solution is to do a better job of answering these questions, especially the ones they forgot to ask.

To win your proposal, you need to provide the decision maker with the answers they need and then motivate them to accept your proposal. You outline should be organized to meet their needs.

 

Do you know as much about proposalwriting as you think you do?

One of the problems with staffing aproposal is that there is no way todetermine whether someone can writewell until you see what they produce.

By then it’s often too close to the deadline to replace them if they’re not producing what you need.

Just because a person has had training does not mean they have the skill to write excellent proposal copy. Knowledge does not always translate into skills. Just because a person is a subject matter expert, does not mean their expertise enables them to write excellent proposal copy. Just because a person is an executive, does not mean that their capabilities include writing excellent proposal copy. And just because a person participated in a proposal (or even series of proposals) that ended up winning, does not mean that their contribution is what took the proposal from acceptable to best.

Sometimes the worst offenders are the most experienced. They’ve been meeting deadlines and writing plain, ordinary, acceptable copy for years.But while that may be enough to make your submission and keep you from getting thrown out, it’s not good enough if you really want to win.

So short of seeing them produce, what can you ask someone that could indicate they have the potential to write excellent proposal copy? Here are some questions to ask:

How is proposal quality defined and how do you measure it? If they can’t define proposal quality objectively, then it will all be abouttheir opinion.

What is the difference between proposal writing and technical writing? Technical writing often makes for bad proposal writing. Thetwo types of writing have very different goals. Some writers can do both, but most can’t.

What is the difference between a feature and a benefit? Even specialists can have trouble explaining the difference. Most people are comfortable describing features, but good proposal writing should be able the benefits and not the features. Understanding the difference doesn’t mean they can execute it in writing, but it’s a good place to start.

What should you accomplish at the sentence, paragraph, and section level? This can help you detect whether they write with a plan in mind or whether they just start writing. It can also help you see whether they understand how the mechanics of assembling proposal writing is different from other kinds of writing.

What does it mean when you say that a proposal should tell a "story"and how do you achieve it? A lot of people can talk about the importance of telling a story in your proposal, but can they actually do it?

Are storyboards obsolete or still considered a best practice? The answer to this question will help separate the book-learned from those with real understanding. It will also indicate whether and howthey plan before they write.

Why aren't red teams consistently effective? This question can tell you how well they understand proposal quality assessment. Most people will focus on the symptoms and not the real causes. You want their answer to help you determine how they see themselves interacting with the review process and what their goals are for theresults.

What causes the process to fail? People who have worked on proposalsbefore have encountered problems with the process. So what did they learn? It’s another case where people tend to focus on symptoms instead of causes. For a proposal writer, you want to find out how they see themselves producing excellent proposal copy in-spite of the problems.

Will you complete your assignments on time? This one is a trick question that I just can’t resist. Can you get them to verbally commit to the schedule? Most people who think the schedule is too aggressive will resist passively by not personally committing to their deadlines. You want to know before the proposal starts whetherthe person is passive-aggressive and how much confidence they have.

It's not about whether someone's answers are right or wrong. It’s about how they answer the questions and about how well they understand proposal development, so you can do a better job of predicting how they will perform. It could even be turned into an assessment tool for people interviewing proposal candidates.

For proposal managers, it's also a useful management tool. If someone can't answer the first question, that sets you up to define quality (and take their opinions out of the equation) as well as the process by which it gets built into the document and then validated (giving you back control of the process). The other questions help reinforce it. This is vital when you are dealing with someone who thinks they know all about proposal writing, but actually produces lousy proposal copy (often while ignoring or conflicting with the process). Often the Socratic method of asking questions is a better way to achieve true understanding and get the buy-in of people than just telling them what you want them to do. Done right, it will help them feel they are a part of the decision-makingprocess and that you are simply implementing their ideas. Then you’ve really got them.

 

How Many People Do You Need For Your Proposals?

Proposal groups are often usuallyunderstaffed. But what most don’t realize isthat they set themselves up for it. Theapproach most people use to determine how manypeople they need to do their proposalsconsistently results in not having enough.They need a different approach.

When people ask “How many people do you needfor your proposals?” they can mean it twodifferent ways:

1. How many people do I need to prepare a single proposal? 2. How many people should be in my proposal department to handle all of

my proposals?

We’ve written about the first question and provide detailed guidance for it in our MustWin Process Documentation. In this article, I’m going to focus on how many people you should have in your proposal department.

Most people try to approach this problem analytically, seeking to calculate the right number of people. When taking this approach, here aresome of the things you need to consider:

How many proposals do you anticipate producing? What is the range of page counts for your RFPs? What is the range of page counts for your proposals? What range of people will be needed to produce each proposal

individually? How many proposals will be going on at one time? What locations will be involved in preparing your proposals, and

which staff will be located where? How much of the writing can be handled by a central resource and how

much requires subject matter expertise? Does it make economic sense to centralize proposal production so

that billable proposal contributors can remain billable? What is the level of effort for reproducing, binding, and packaging

your proposals? What level of graphics and visual communication do you aspire to,

and will writers be expected to prepare their own graphics? What is your process for reviewing proposals, and how does this

impact production and staffing?

Who is involved in pre-RFP opportunity pursuit and how is the hand-off to proposal development handled?

Based on a deep methodical calculus you will arrive at the number of people you need. Management will then slash that number down to what theythink they can afford. Then you can argue back and forth. This will happen because you are both approaching the proposal function as an expense. Expenses must be minimized.

We recommend a completely different approach that involves looking at theproposal function as an investment. Investments with a profitable return are to be maximized. To calculate your needs based on this approach, you start with the company’s revenue (or better yet, profit, if you can get the numbers) target. Then decide what percent of the company’s business it should invest in its proposals. You can use the current staffing as a baseline and calculate what percentage it represents. Another baseline toconsider is what the company spends on other functions.

Next, you should calculate what a small difference in win rate does to the company’s profitability. This tells you whether investing in the proposal function can generate a return on investment that’s worth pursuing.

Since you’re not going to know all of the numbers, you can create a spreadsheet with a range of revenue numbers, a range of win rates, a range for the proposal function percentage, and a fill-in for the company's profit percentage. Then you can look for the "sweet spot" that maximizes profit. You can also mark what the company is currently spending on the proposal function and look for a gap.

Then submit the spreadsheet to your executives with a suggestion that theproposal department be operated more like a profit and loss function thanas an expense. You can offer to turn the proposal department into a strategic asset that makes the company more profitable. If you feel like being aggressive, you can even ask for a bonus based on the return on investment. Then all you have to do is deliver on the promise of an increased win rate because from then on they'll be watching the numbers, looking for the return on their investment.

What we like about this approach is that it gets to the real heart of thematter: How much is the proposal function worth to the company? It takes the function away from being an expense to be minimized and turns it intopart of the company’s strategic plans to maximize profit. It means that the proposal group is structured around what it will take to boost the

company’s win rates, instead of it being based on the whim of the budgetary moment.

Be careful, however; along with greater glory it brings heightened scrutiny. It ties your future to increasing win rates, and many of the factors that impact your company’s win rate are outside of the proposal department’s control. But then again, this approach makes you a larger stakeholder and can strengthen your ability to speak to win rate factors that are used to be outside of your control.

How Long Should Your Proposal Be?

The best practices forproposals say you should makeyour proposal as short as youcan while still answering allof the customer’s questions.The best practices are wrong.If you follow them, and yourcompetitors follow them aswell, your proposal will beordinary. Instead, you shouldturn the length of yourproposal into a competitiveadvantage. Here's how:

1. Be much, much, shorter. If your competitors are going to submit 50-page proposals, then make your proposal only five pages. Just sum upall the issues. Focus on what really matters. Use short, choppy sentences instead of run-on passive voice elaborations that don’t really add anything. Make it bold.

Stand out from the pack. Longer proposals do not mean they were written by people who know more. It means they are disorganized. Saythat. Don’t just offer the customer a choice — demonstrate the difference between you and your competitors. Give the customer a chance to choose a contractor that isn’t the same old, same old kindof provider, making it up as they go along and just muddling through.

If you're afraid of making unsubstantiated claims, then put the longversion with all the substantiate on the web. Let your executive summary be your proposal. You can make the proof with all the

details available to them if they want to test you.

By being radically short, you become the unit that everyone is measured against. So make darn sure you have a great offering. Make darn sure you truly understand what they want (as opposed to what they’ve asked for). If they want to select you, then they will look at the other, longer, and far more boring proposals with dread. Yourcompetitors will seem unenlightened, uninspired, and out of touch. But if you offer something ordinary, they might seem like they did more of their homework.

It is harder to write a short proposal than it is to write a long proposal. If you want to win.

2. Be much, much longer. If you’re competitors are going to submit 50-page proposals, then make yours 500. Give them all the details. Prove that you've thought about every possible contingency.   Prove that you're ready now and not just making it up as you go along. Just put it in appendices so they don’t have to actually readit. Instead of referring to procedures, show them the procedures. All of them. Don’t just promise. Show. Demonstrate. Ghost against the uncertainties of dealing with other contractors. Instead of offering to become what they need, you should already be it. Tell them straight up that you included all the backup, just to prove youare that ready and that your credibility surpasses that of your competitors. Tell them that if they select you they already know what they're going to get. If they select your competitors, all theyget are promises.

Make sure you include an executive summary that sums it all up in just a couple of pages. Tell them that they don’t have to read any further, unless they need to see proof. Make sure that the material is very, very well organized. Make it easy to skim. Make it visual. Make it easy to find things, like answers to questions.

Give them a link to an online, searchable, clickable, expandable, collapsible version of your proposal. Better yet, turn it into a project portal that can be used as a tool for performance after award. Only give it to them before award so they can kick the tires.Be better prepared.

Some RFPs specify a page limit. When they do, you can expect nearly all of your competitors to turn in proposals that are within a few pages of the limit. You can easily stand out by turning in a proposal way below

the limit. After all, what message is the customer sending by having a page limit?

When you have to provide information and that information is going to addsignificantly to the page count, remember to format the document to separate what you want them to read from the reference material. Put all the dry, data heavy, information intensive pages in an appendix or separate section of your proposal. When they open your proposal, you wantthem to read your story and see why they should select you. If they need substantiation, questions answered, demonstrations, detailed procedures, etc., then tell them where they can find them. But don’t let them disruptyour story.

If you want to be competitive, there is no such thing as having “just theright” length to your proposal. You can either be way too short, or way too long. Either way, you can turn it into a competitive advantage. Avoidbeing comparable to your competition. Stand out. Be extraordinary. Get selected. Win.