This is what the professionals with the superior records tell me: You must get into the mind of the customer as expressed in the RFP. I mean you read the RFP several times while looking deep into the words to gain a profound insight into what the customer really wants. And then you must develop a solution that really responds to what he wants.

This is the opposite of parroting back the words of the SOW or the evaluation factors. Instead you are structuring a top-to-bottom response that deeply appeals to the customer mindset as culled from the RFP. You have to tell a total story that provides a complete response to what is wanted with low risk.

Although everyone knows it is much better to have a lot of advance customer intelligence, you can still write a winning proposal even without an overwhelming amount of customer information. The way it is done is to analyze the solicitation until you have a deep and intimate understanding of what is really wanted. Then write a strongly customer-oriented proposal that presents such an appealing solution that the job can be won.

The idea for this article came when Russell Smith and master practitioner Joe Jamison were at dinner. Joe Jamison is one of the 80% winner proposal professionals. Joe Jamison and any other interested proposal practitioners are invited to submit a response further commenting on the ideas expressed in this article.

 Submit your thoughts rsmith@ociwins.com