7 Strategies for Dramatically Improving Your Proposal Success

When I first stepped into a business development role in 1985, I was immediately drawn to proposal writing. As a competitive person by nature, proposals seemed the most directly competitive aspect of selling. And since I loved winning (and still do!), I determined from the start that I wanted to master the craft of consistently producing winning proposals.

The small engineering firm where I worked sported only a 33% win rate. Back then, we didn't have industry benchmarks for such things, but it mattered little to me what average looked like. Losing more than you win simply was not acceptable in my mind. So when it came to learning about how to write successful proposals, my first choice in seeking instruction wasn't from my colleagues. I turned to our clients.

In those days, clients were generally more accessible than today. Our firm worked mostly with local governments and I found it relatively easy to get an audience with most of our clients. I'd ask them how we could produce proposals they would love. Most were generous with their advice, sometimes even bringing out boxes of past submittals and showing me specifically what they liked and didn't.

Although I had no previous experience writing proposals, my suggestions for improvement came directly from our clients, so my colleagues could hardly ignore them. We made many substantial changes in our approach and by year two were winning just shy of half our proposals. I routinely did post-proposal debriefings with clients—win or lose—and continued to tweak my approach. That practice continued over my 30 years as a proposal manager, resulting in feedback from hundreds of clients of all types.

In my last stop as a corporate proposal manager for a national environmental firm, we won 75% of the time, resulting in over $300 million in new revenue. I don't approach proposals like anyone else. You shouldn't either. The norm in our industry isn't worth replicating. Instead, consider these seven strategies for winning more than your share:

(1) Say no more often than yes. Our problem is rarely having too few requests for proposals to respond to; it's having too many. Thus the first step in radically improving your win rate is to be very selective. If you haven't been talking to the client before the RFP is released, that should be an automatic no-go (with rare exceptions). In my experience, you generally win less than 5% of those opportunities. It's not worth your time.

Yet many firms find it hard to turn down any RFP for work they're qualified to do. This is particularly true if they have dedicated staff for proposal preparation. Some seem to think it's their responsibility to keep these folks busy. I think helping them be successful is far more important. That usually means doing fewer better. There's a tremendous opportunity cost involved in spending a lot of time producing losing proposals. That time could better be diverted to enhancing your chances of winning, as described below.

ACTION STEP: Try my "simplified go or no decision process" to help you be more selective in the proposals you pursue.

(2) Engage the client well before the RFP. The most important work in improving your proposal success comes during the preceding sales effort. During this time, you build relationships, gain critical client and project intelligence, and position your firm at or near the head of the pack. One of my success mantras is "never trust the RFP." It never contains all the insight you need to confidently create a winning proposal. That only comes through the sales effort.

A structured sales process works best. Years ago I helped one of the largest firms in our industry create a standard sales process for one of its key business lines nationally. This was needed to define a consistent approach in the wake of acquiring several different firms. Within months of installing this process they found that they won over 80% of the time when they followed the process, but only 35% of the time when they didn't.

ACTION STEP: If your sales efforts lack structure, build out a simple process using The Sales Funnel, as described in this article. Also, follow these steps in managing the "complex sale."

(3) Make your proposals distinctly client centered. As former client Gary Coover puts it in his book Secrets of the Selection Committee, "It's all about us [the client], not you [the consultant]." RFPs hardly seem to suggest that, however. They are typically shaped by qualifications-based selection (QBS) protocols that entice us to produce firm-centered proposals focused on our qualifications, experience, and self-promotion.

However, trying to win consistently based on showing your firm to be more qualified than your competitors is a fool's errand. There are plenty of fully qualified firms. But few that can write a proposal that truly focuses on the client's interests. Clients don't really hire you based on what you've done for others, but on what they believe you can do for them. Set yourself apart by making the client the centerpiece of your proposal. The strategies that follow are key in doing this...

ACTION STEP: Consider the tips outlined in my article "Win More by Writing Client-Centered Proposals."

(4) Prioritize a value proposition that centers on client outcomes. Consider this: The primary way your firm creates value is when client outcomes are realized. This usually takes place beyond your scope of work—when something is built and delivers the needed benefits, when your recommendation is successfully implemented, when the client achieves the ROI. Thus your value proposition should connect your work to its ultimate results.

Yet most proposals in our industry have little to nothing to say about results. We tend to focus on services, tasks, and technical solutions. But as Harvard Business School professor Theodore Levitt famously noted: "People don't want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole." The value, or course, is in the outcome. So what do your proposals sell—the drill or the hole? The vast majority of proposals I've reviewed focus on the latter.

Your value proposition should form the core of your proposal. The most effective way I've found to construct an effective value proposition is illustrated below:

The diagram suggests a work flow from left to right. But the planning process ideally flows in the opposite direction. Often, the client has clearly defined outcomes and benefits in mind. Yet sometimes you have the opportunity to give shape to those. In any case, your proposal should make clear the connection between your scope of work (including the solution) and the expected results. Of the 7 strategies highlighted in this article, this one can be the most powerful!

ACTION STEP: Reference the ultimate results in your executive summary, project understanding, and project strategy, emphasizing how your approach will position the client for success. Describe delivered results in your project descriptions and resumes.

(5) Tell a compelling project story. Everyone loves a good story, whether delivered through movies, books, plays, podcasts, or simply around the dinner table. Various studies have also revealed just how powerful storytelling can be in business. They are particularly effective when trying to sell an idea or service, or motivating people to take specific actions.

Projects are stories. They have a start and a finish. There is a narrative that evolves through a series of events, activities, milestones, and accomplishments. Critically important to story is the integral role of people, an element typically absent in our proposal narratives. There is even dramatic tension and release through various problems, challenges, solutions, and results.

Relative to the previous strategy, it's important to recognize that the story of our scope of work is typically but a chapter in the client's larger project story. Thus you want to place your story within that longer narrative context. A simple framework that I have used for years in crafting project stories is illustrated below:

ACTION STEP: Over the course of client conversations during the sales process, be conscientious about building out the project narrative, using the framework outlined above. Usually when technical professionals struggle to outline the project story, it's primarily because they have too little insight to bring it to life—especially relative to consequences and outcomes.

(6) Start your proposal with a strong executive summary. The top proposal experts are in agreement; your executive summary can be a significant factor in winning the job. Clients will almost always read it even though they didn't ask for one. They have repeatedly told me over the years that our executive summary was one of our proposal's greatest strengths. Of course, it's easier for it to be a differentiator when most firms don't even include one! And the few executive summaries you do see in A/E firm proposals generally aren't very good.

What makes a good executive summary? One that persuasively and succinctly outlines how your firm will deliver client success in its most compelling dimensions. Revisit strategy #4. Preview the connection between your approach and client outcomes. Highlight how you'll solve their most pressing problems. Establish your basic value proposition. Above all, start the proposal by clearly focusing the spotlight on the client, not your firm.

When I first started adding executive summaries to my proposals years ago, it was primarily motivated by my distaste for complying with RFP instructions to open with a description of our firm and its qualifications. Even though clients would tell me—as Gary Coover does in his book—that I should focus on their needs and success, their RFPs often suggested the opposite (again, largely due to QBS). As a general rule, I put the most client-centered content first in my proposals, unless the RFP prescribes otherwise. In that case, the executive summary at least partially maintains the proper order.

There are various strategies for writing a strong executive summary, but I usually lean toward highlighting critical success factors and how we plan to effectively address each. I recommend no fewer than three CSFs and no more than five. Ideally, you've defined what they are through prior conversations with the client. These are the essential terms of project success. Briefly summarize how your firm will deliver each and you can gain an immediate edge over the majority of competitors who either omitted an executive summary or used it primarily to highlight their qualifications.

(7) Make your proposal skimmable. This is seemingly the easiest of the seven strategies, but is somehow the least utilized. I could probably count on one hand the number of times I've seen a proposal that I would consider skimmable. The odd thing is that it would appear that there's universal agreement that clients aren't reading our proposals word for word; they're skimming! (Again, Coover states this.) When I've asked audiences of A/E professionals how many think clients are reading their proposals closely, no one has raised their hand!

Here's the deal: If client reviewers are skimming your proposal and it isn't designed to be skimmable, you've lost message control. It doesn't matter what you say in your proposal if it doesn't get read. Skimmable content visually highlights the most important points you want to convey, so that someone skimming it will likely notice.

Unfortunately, not only are the vast majority of A/E firm proposals not skimmable, they're grossly unskimmable—large blocks of text, few headings or subheadings, long paragraphs and sentences, few or overly complicated graphics and tables, etc. I recently reviewed several proposals from some of the most notable engineering firms in our industry, and found that most of the executive summaries were the least skimmable part of the proposal!

But let's be honest: One reason our proposals aren't skimmable is that we usually don't have a clear idea of what it is that we're really trying to communicate. What are our key messages? What are the few things that we absolutely need our audience to take from our proposal? To create a skimmable document, you need to know what few things need to be highlighted.

ACTION STEP: Imagine you only had two minutes to orally present your proposal. What would you say? This is great exercise to employ to distill your proposal messaging down to its essence. I call it the Two-Minute Drill.

One final point: Yes, this article is not a great example of skimmable content. But how long would it take you to figure out what my seven strategies are if you weren't inclined to read it. Less than 30 seconds? My secret weapon for skimmability is boldface inline headings. If you did nothing else, it would significantly help the readability of most proposals. Of course, you need to know what points most need emphasis, and organize your message accordingly.