Laura’s Winning Ideas

I’ve been thinking about teaching Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) proposal writing skills lately.

The first assumption technical experts bring with them is that, what is obvious to them should be obvious to others. This isn’t correct, and loser proposals prove this. In many cases, your competitors are technically as qualified as your team. However, the winning proposal communicates value in a more illuminating way.

Chris Witt at Life after Powerpoint! said it best yesterday:

– Knowing something without acting on it is like having a candle without lighting it.
– Acting on what you know is like lighting the candle.
– Communicating what you know so others can use it is like using your lit candle to light other people’s candles.

That’s why “presentation and communication” skills are so highly rated, even for technical experts. The better able you are to share what you know so that other people can understand and use it, the more valuable you are.

This is a perfect analogy for proposal professionals. We tip the candles of our SMEs to light the candles of our clients.

By Chris Simmons, founder and principal member of Rainmakerz Consulting

In Part 3 of this series we described the importance of providing discriminating proof for theme features and benefits to substantiate your claims and to give your customers the reasons to believe. In Part 4 we describe a proven methodology for developing winning proposal themes that are compliant, compelling, and position your company to win.

Most experts agree that you need to think about (and write down) your proposal themes BEFORE you start the proposal drafting process. Failing to follow this simple idea causes proposal teams to fall into a number of common proposal development traps.

1. Drafting proposal prose before themes are identified and vetted.
2. Placing too much emphasis on the wrong features and benefits.
3. Lacking a common vision and thematic threads throughout the proposal.
4. Playing into the hands of your competition with a ‘me too’ response.

What can proposal teams do to avoid these common pitfalls?

The Recipe for Success
There are a number of established ways to develop proposal themes and discriminators. The best recipes for theme development all have common elements that include a few simple ingredients that come from the RFP, the capture plan, and the collective intelligence of your capture and business development teams. (Exact measurements may very depending on the type and quality of the RFP.)

• 2 ounces of proposal evaluation criteria (Section M)
• 1 ounce of proposal instructions (Section L)
• 4 ounces of requirements (Section C, SOW)
• 2 dashes of customer hot buttons
• A pinch of competitive intelligence

Your proposed solutions are also key theme development ingredients. Most recipes for great proposal themes require at least 1 scoop of solutions for each of the following areas (technical, management, past performance, and business/pricing).

Use a Method…Any Method
Although the proposal theme recipe sounds simple, most proposal themes end up being…well…half baked. The problem is many proposal teams fail to invest the appropriate time and resources developing proposal solutions and themes. Many proposal teams bolt for the boilerplate and forget about themes altogether – hoping that they will miraculously emerge in the Executive Summary the night before the proposal is due.

There are scores of proposal development methodologies that include some form of theme development process. I recommend a 3-step process that starts with the RFP and leverages information that should be documented in the capture plan.

Example: The technical volume of a five volume proposal is worth 60 percent of the points and the other four volumes are of equal weight (10 percent each).

Step 1: Develop high-level themes (starting with features and benefits) that are roughly proportional with how the customer will weight (and score) your proposal. Detailed evaluation sub-factors (in Section M) are an excellent place to start and literally tell you what the benefits should be. For this example, consider 5-8 high level technical themes and 1-2 themes for the other four volumes to represent the relative (6 to 1) ratio between the weighting of technical volume and the other volumes.

This approach obviously depends on the wording of the evaluation factors and the real weighting of the price factor. The main point is that placing too much emphasis on anything but the technical solution in this example is likely to yield a number of themes that are not as important to the customer resulting in lower evaluation scores.

Step 2: Once the high-level features and benefits are developed, list the proof-points and discriminators for each theme. Define as many proof statements for each theme as you can, using quantifiable metrics. Be creative and get as many of your ideas down on paper. A good starting point is 5-6 proof statements for each theme. Use a template (PowerPoint or Word) that highlights the volume, theme statement (feature and benefit) in a highlighted box. List the supporting proof statements (in order of importance to the customer) for each theme underneath the theme statement in a separate box. Use the capture plan as the basis for integrating customer hot buttons and competitive information into the themes and proof statements to create powerful discriminators that set you apart from the competition.

The resulting high-level proposal theme deck (approximately 10-15 slides) should be included in the proposal management plan, uploaded to your document management or backup server, and posted on the proposal room wall. The theme deck also serves as the basis for the development of the executive summary.

Step 3: Develop more detailed themes (features, benefits, and proof) to support the high-level themes at the volume, section, and requirement levels in accordance with the proposal instructions, evaluation criteria, and the requirements (SOW). Incorporate these lower level themes into the storyboard, module plan, content plan, or whatever pre-proposal planning deliverable you use. Now you are really ready to write the proposal.

Even the companies that have established proposal development organizations, processes, and tools in place often fail because they either lack the discipline to follow standard theme and proposal developments procedures or they simply don’t have the right people on the team. Part 5 highlights some of the most common theme development challenges and provides some practical recommendations you can use to create great proposal themes.

Chris Simmons is the founder and principal member of Rainmakerz Consulting—a business development solutions company specializing in proposal management, writing, and review.