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Business Proposal Writing - Sick and tired of Losing?

Are You Fed Up With Losing?

There are few feelings in marketing existence worse than getting rejected by a customer for something you considered to be a certain bet. As the mind struggles to absorb the words on the voice at the other end on the phone, your stomach knots and blood rushes to your head causing dizziness which blanks out everything. It takes all you have to remain calm and professional as you thank them for the call and say that you would like a debrief at an appropriate time. Then you have to go and tell your management and the team who put their all into delivering your lost proposal. Jobs might now be at risk.
That experience never leaves professional marketers. Any loss is bad enough but some losses are for opportunities which are key to delivering a corporate plan; must win opportunities. The strategic plan can be delayed by years – or even blasted completely out of the water. And there is forever to reflect on the whys and wherefores of what went wrong.

There are many elements which have to come good for a successful offering: solution; price; proposal. Poor performance in any of them can result in a loss. Writing the proposal itself is the element which, arguably, has the greatest chance of being heightened through process.

Before a single word of the actual proposal is prepared it is critical to plan what you are going to say and how.

I cannot emphasise enough the significance of not rushing to pen and paper as soon as the ITT is delivered or as soon as you have decided to submit an unsolicited pitch. Even if you have an off-the-shelf solution ready to go. It is essential to spend time reviewing the ITT/RFQ documentation to make sure you really understand what is being asked of you. I have never worked on a bid where there wasn’t an unexpected requirement which could easily have been missed.

(For unsolicited proposals without a customer requirement there is an additional step of defining, capturing and agreeing with that customer what the basis of your proposal is going to be).

The running order of the proposal itself is something that has to be worked on and evaluated and then reviewed and worked on again. Developing it is an iterative process because you need to understand that you have a compliant solution you also need to understand what work packages you will include in the offering to the customer.

Add to this the fact that you would like to emphasise your solution strengths while at the same time drawing attention to the weaknesses of your competitors’ offerings in a subtle way.

A simple 5-Step process for preparation of the proposal outline, which works well, is as follows:

1. Read the Exam Question - Understand the requirement. Know it forwards, backwards and upside down. The main reason proposals fail is because they fail to answer the actual exam question.

2. Generate Compliance Matrices - Assess your solution for initial compliance.

3. Make Work Breakdown Structure for your solution programme. This ensures that everything has been tackled. This is useful to help the reviewers compare apples with apples.

4. Develop an Outline Proposal – taking into account customer specified constraints. Answer the exam question in the order it was written.

5. Develop a detailed Storyboard/Annotated Mock-Up and Review it. The AMU has to reflect the customer’s “hot buttons” and the benefits that your solution offers to satisfy these. It also needs to weaken your competitor’s offerings by emphasising their weaknesses, which your solution satisfactorily addresses.

Prepared properly and thoroughly the AMU makes the job of writing a proposal straightforward. Note: I didn’t say easy! Isn't that what we are all aiming for?

Article Source: http://www.ezinearticles.mk

Steve Price he has a proven record of success in achieving business goals in UK Ministry of Defence procurement, defence industry and the oil and gas industry. Steve has managed large business units and major complex system project teams at all phases of the business capture and development cycle, including leading many proposals which successfully won £M of new business for his employer. Are you fed up with losing your business proposals? Do you need to write business proposals for your company? Have you received a request for proposal and want to know what to do next? Want to write an unsolicited proposal? Find out how you can learn exactly what is involved in business proposal writing, including what to put in the proposal and how to structure it by going to our website to learn more about how to write a business proposal. site at www.learnhowtowriteabusinessproposal.com.

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