Proposal writing tip: etc = “oops, ran out of things to say”

Think your proposal is ready to go? Do a quick spell-check and see if you can find any instances of the abbreviation “etc”. This is one sign that the proposal isn't yet ready for the customer to read.

At best, finishing a sentence with “etc” looks like you have run out of things to say; at worst, like you have run out of interest in what you were writing about. It doesn't matter whether you were stumped, distracted or just ran out of time.  You don't want one little three-letter word to tarnish an otherwise great proposal.

Luckily, this is easy to fix even if you don't have a lot of time left before the deadline.

Look again at any phrase ending in “etc” and see if you have supported the main claim with at least three pieces of evidence ("...for example, X, Y and Z").  If you really had run out of things to say, consider deleting it.  The customer won't notice it's missing - but they will notice your use of “etc”!

Is your bid pricing methodology leaving money on the table?

Join pricing consultant Greg Eyres and I for a free 30-minute webinar on Thursday 13 June 1.00pm (AEST) and find out how to use Evidence-Based Bid Pricing as a powerful strategic weapon to build more successful bids. Customers will spend if they get value in return. However, according to bid pricing specialist Greg Eyres of Inforvalue, most organisations have a bid pricing model that doesn’t consider value at all. “Your bid price speaks volumes about your company but the task of pricing is usually approached with a great deal of nervousness,” Eyres says.

Are you nervous about bid pricing? If you aren’t, maybe you should be. There’s a very good chance that your pricing methodology is losing you bids and is also leaving money on the table that could have been yours, had you advocated for it. Some of the telltale signs that your bid pricing model needs an overhaul:

• You’re making a "guesstimate" of all your costs, adding on a margin and hoping for the best.  
• You tend to leave pricing to the day before the deadline.
• You’re always revising and whittling away at your price as a result of late information.
• Your sales and finance teams constantly lock horns, with one advocating for what the customer will pay and the other insisting on cost recovery.

“Customers will pay when they perceive they get more benefit than they pay for - in other words, where the value justifies the price,” says Eyres. "A tendering environment, by its very nature, gives you the opportunity to get to these value drivers. During the tendering period, you have the ability to communicate regularly with the customer and to get a detailed understanding of their business model.  Through this, you can determine how you can affect the customer's ability to create value for its own customers and/or reduce its own costs. This not only gives you evidence to develop your pricing strategy, it also enhances the relationship you have with the customer.”

Greg and I are delivering a free webinar on Thursday June 13 where we will discuss how to use Evidence-Based Bid Pricing as a powerful strategic weapon to build more successful bids.

If you missed the webinar, contact Greg Eyres to find out more about Evidence-Based Bid Pricing.

Proposal writing tip: beware the cut-and-paste answer

As useful as proposal content libraries are for knowledge management, cutting and pasting from them can be problematic. For example, if your library content has been built to answer a standard question that has been asked in a certain way - like "describe your quality process" - it will go only part-way to addressing a more specific question that asks you to "describe how your quality process will achieve zero defects and manage risks in achieving budget and schedule".

That's where your specialist knowledge is needed to turn the description (of the quality process) into persuasion (how this will deliver something that's meaningful to the project and the customer).

Does the proposal you submitted last week sound like the one you pitched six months ago?

Join me for a free 30-minute webinar on Thursday 2 May 1.00pm AEST to find out to how build a great proposal library by harnessing the knowledge - and building the skills - of your subject matter experts. Pretty much every organisation has a ‘library’ of past proposals that they draw from when writing new ones. In theory, content libraries should help you answer the questions that come up - in one form or another - in all RFTs. These are core issues that every prospect wants to know about, including your past experience in similar contracts; customer references; capacity and resources; approaches to quality; approaches to Health, Safety and Environment; innovation; and risk management.

Proposal content libraries are important for knowledge management and to make the production process faster. However, the way that they are built and used tends to hinder – rather than help – the proposal effort.

Firstly, just the fact that the library exists tends to make people lazy. I see far too much cutting and pasting and not nearly enough thinking about what the RFT is asking and what the proposal really needs to say.

Secondly - let's face it - writing proposals isn't most people's favourite job to begin with, coming as it does on top of a mountain of other work. Because of this, I've seen many organisations employ writers to produce content for proposal libraries. But this is a bit like asking the cabin crew to fly the plane.

Good proposal content comes from experts who know what they are talking about. Passing the content development task off to ‘writers’ means that material is often superficial, because experts are busy and it’s difficult to get their time for interviews and reviews. The process gets drawn out and expensive, and leads to a one-shot outcome that is quickly out of date. Content is written descriptively, rather than persuasively, meaning that it lacks any expression of customer value. All of this leads to lacklustre proposals that lack insight and depth.

Writing persuasively is about taking what you know and putting it into context that the customer will understand, and that convinces them to see things your way. This is a skill that anyone can learn, and the process for doing so is actually very simple. If you missed the webinar, contact me to find out more.

Is complexity killing your sales model? New study by Bain & Co

Bain & Co. recently looked at nine years of income statements from 200 large companies and found that more than half have increasing sales and marketing expenses, and aren't getting scale benefits from their growing size. According to the study, customers increasingly demand a tailored solution anchored in expertise about their industry or a specific function; expect providers to solve their business problems; measure value based on outcomes, not the lowest price; and have more competitive, disciplined bid processes that trump ‘relationships’.

This is consistent with what I see in my practice and the detailed report makes interesting reading.

Proposal positioning tips for challengers and incumbents

A proposal is just a means to an end. You aren't writing a proposal - you are convincing someone to buy from you. The role your proposal will need to play to achieve this goal will be very different, depending on whether you are pitching to a prospect or a customer.

If you're pitching to a prospect — someone you've never done business with before — you're a “challenger”. In this role, you may need to win the business away from someone else or to convince the prospect to buy something that they're not currently in the habit of buying.

If you're pitching to a customer – someone you're currently doing business with, or for whom you have done similar projects before — you're an “incumbent”. In this role, you already have the business and want to retain it, or you want the customer to continue giving you repeat business in preference to competitors.

So which role are you playing today – challenger or incumbent?

As a challenger (you want to win the business), your proposal needs to convince the prospect of your relevance. First, you must get them to notice you, then get them interested enough to listen to you. This is particularly true when you are responding to a formal tender request. Once you’ve done those things, you also have the task of getting the prospect motivated enough to go through the perceived pain and hassle of signing up - or changing suppliers - in order to work with you. Change is a risk and the prospect will be looking for reasons not to give you the business. Don’t make this easy for them.

If you're an incumbent (you already have the business and want to retain it), your proposal needs to convince the customer that you remain relevant to them. Be aware that while change is a risk, they are also taking a risk by staying with you. First, you must show them that you are not just resting on your (hopefully excellent) service record. Next, you need to present your vision of their future. Finally, you need to show them that you are continuing to innovate and build best practice in your business from which they stand to benefit.

This is the first of 10 tips in my new e-book - 10 Easy Ways to Write a Better Proposal Today. See sidebar to download your free copy.

Two reliable ways to improve your proposal success rates

How do you go about continually improving your proposals? You may be missing out on valuable insights that could really make a difference to your win rates. Most people I talk to only pay attention to losses. That's understandable, but it is rarely helpful.

Yes, it hurts to lose. Your boss is probably breathing down your neck for answers. Maybe you want to argue with the prospect in the hope they'll change their mind.

Unfortunately, in most cases there is little value in seeking feedback on a lost opportunity.

If you're not the winner, the prospect has no interest in giving you rational feedback that you can actually use. You aren't the supplier they chose. They just want you out of their office and out of their hair. In a government tender debriefing, you will get the least possible information designed to protect the department’s probity position.

If you think that sounds a bit disheartening, it is. There's no way to sugar-coat it.

The truth is that there are only two reliable ways to build your proposal success rates.

1. Get feedback when you win. Every win contains a lesson and your mission is to figure out what that lesson is. We often tend to skip this step due to a little habit called "confirmation bias" which - according to Bri Williams, a specialist in buying behaviour -  is our tendency to seek information that confirms our existing beliefs. In other words, to assume that the reasons why we won the business are the reasons why we thought we should win it. Never assume; always ask. You may well be surprised at the things that the client liked most about your offer.

2. Get feedback from a friendly, long-standing client, even if they passed this time. They probably still like you and feel they owe you an explanation. For example, one of my most successful clients recently lost a bid that they were fully expecting to win. Yes, it hurt, but they were able to pull themselves out of the post-loss quagmire and really listen when the customer told them where our bid had missed the mark. These insights were the benchmark against which the bid team assessed everything we put into the next bid. The customer was impressed, and three months later my client was rewarded with a huge contract that was widely considered a long shot before we got the wake-up call.