Is Your Proposal More Than Just Its Content?

Sample proposal cover - opportunity, dates, and company names are all fictional - cover design was actually used for a real opportunity by a CLEVER client.

What makes one proposal different from another. The fact is, for a large percentage of proposals there is no opportunity offered by the nature of the work or the SOW to create a distinguishing solution. And everyone has a good PMBOK based management approach with a Plan, Do, Check quality process. Even in most technical projects, IT and engineering, while specifics of the solutions may differ, all of the approaches tend to sound good. So, unless the government has a particular preference, which you should have known about before you bid, your solution is not the difference maker. What is?

When thinking about what makes a proposal different it is important to keep in mind that it is a product, so it shares the same characteristics as any product in terms of what makes it attractive to a buyer - in this case the evaluation board. We need to remember evaluators are people (admit it, you knew that, right?) and therefore susceptible to the same emotional factors everyone succumbs to when buying a product - any product.

What are these factors? The first one may surprise you, because it really does not have anything directly to do with your proposal. It is your company's reputation - or more precisely the perception the "buyer" has of your company. They know you are going to be involved with their job/mission for a long time, so they want to be able to trust and depend on you to have their best interest at heart. It would be difficult to create such a perception if they never heard of you before seeing your proposal. Not impossible, but difficult.

Where perception interfaces with your proposal is in demonstrating your understanding of the customer. Ever heard one person say to another "you don' really know me", and immediately you thought, there is no way that relationship is going well! Of course, the best solution is to assure there is mutual trust and understanding before you submit your proposal, but you can reinforce this idea through your content. This is how you use every part of your proposal, from your introduction to technical to management to resumes as tools to reinforce your intimacy with the customer in terms of both emotional and technical understanding. This can be done even when your overall solution is identical to the competition. That’s right, it’s not the solution, it’s how you talk about it.

Now, assuming you have created a positive perception, what is the next thing someone looks at when deciding to buy? It may sound shallow, but it’s tough to sell an ugly car, and the number one reason someone tries a new bottle of wine is because they like the label. Yes, looks matter. So, you need your proposal to 'look' professional, from your cover design to the last page. And, despite the governments best attempt to restrict you with font selection, point size, margins, and line spacing, there is a lot more you can do than most people think, and we will take a deeper dive into the whole science of page layout, content management, and how readers absorb what they see in another blog post. But for our purpose here let’s just say that the overall presentation of your story has a significant impact on the reader. Remember, a proposal is not a book, it is a marketing document. When was the last time you saw a marketing document that was a 400-page wall of words?

Moving on, we might get to another aspect of successful products, ease of use. Yes, how you organize your proposal matters, and how you provide assistance to the reader to guide them through the proposal, and how you identify items to make it clear what they are about to see or read, and how you tie the pieces together, and how you place different information types on each page will all make a difference in their perception of how easy it is to use.

So, does your solution matter? Of course it does, but there is a lot more to a winning proposal than just having a good technical approach, not to mention that short straw - your price, but we will save that for another time.