Four Rules of Thumb for Preparing Winning Proposals
By Dan Safford

I have worked on a dozen proposals in the past year, some small (e.g., 10 pages worth $150k) and some large (e.g., 2000 pages worth $2B). These proposals were written to customers in a variety of industries: aerospace, Architecture/Engineering/ Construction and Information Technology. I have worked on proposals to customers in 4 different countries. And I have had the same lesson reinforced on each and every one: you must follow four basic rules of thumb if you want to win.

Here they are.

1. You must make each proposal totally customer-focused. The biggest problem with most business writing these days is that we write to ourselves. We’ll read a letter or a report we wrote and say, “Sounds good to me.” That’s one reason why many reports fail to communicate the real message; we don’t ask, “Does it sound good to the reader?”

A proposal is not about us. It’s about the customer. Period. If we come up with what we think is a good solution to the customer’s problem, then we must run it by the customer to validate our thinking, or to make changes he tells us to make. If the customer thinks we are weak in an area, we don’t argue; we show him that we are strong. If a customer likes a lot of tables and charts in his proposals and fewer words, we give him charts and tables. If we read the RFP and discover that the customer doesn’t seem to know what he wants, we give him what he asks for anyway; it’s too late to change his mind now. Or we don’t propose.

Be customer-focused, not you-focused. That’s a good starting point in your quest to keep from being eliminated.

2. You must tailor each proposal to the specific project and the specific customer. This just makes sense. Think about how you respond to a form letter (“ Dear Bob Smith you may already be a winner!”): you’ll toss it in the trash without even reading it. Your customer feels the same about “form” proposals; she’ll spot one immediately, and likely set it aside. Or at the very least she will be offended by it. Not an auspicious beginning for your proposal.

3. You must make each proposal easy for the customer to read and follow. If you want the customer to see all the specifics you have included in your proposal, then you must make it easy to read. Otherwise, they won’t read it, and will miss all the specifics you’ve worked so hard at including. Don’t ruin a good proposal filled with customer benefits by hastily dashing it off, using the same old formal language and tone that you learned in business writing back in school. Or worse yet, writing in that engineer style that you always use.

Making your proposal easy to read means using short sentences and paragraphs, using active rather than passive voice, choosing simple words rather than more “impressive” big ones. It means using graphics that really communicate concepts. It means making your format user-friendly. This is a critical factor in preparing a successful (winning) proposal.

4. You need to take a systematic approach to writing proposals in order to manage the process efficiently. Proposals are devilishly complex things to write. You have to explain how you will solve a customer’s specific concern while at the same time demonstrating that your approach is significantly better than your competition’s while at the same time trying hard not to sound too arrogant about it. If you are responding to a formal Request for Proposals (RFP) you must contend with a bewildering number of requirements spelled out—sometimes clearly, other times not—in each of a number of sections. You often are given only limited number of pages to explain what may well be a highly complex technical project. Plus you usually have a tight time restriction within which to work.

Proposal writing is a process. And all processes can either be disorganized and chaotic or they can be systematic and orderly. Following a systematic and orderly approach lets you make sure each proposal you write contains all the essential elements to keep you from being eliminated.