A proposal self assessment and improvement plan can help you outshine your competition. Below we highlight tools to help.  This article is #4 of our “Opportunity Development” series.

Opportunity Development Series Recap

Remember this?

To Win You Must Beat the Competition in the Minds of the Evaluators.

We previously emphasized the importance of gathering and understanding customers and buying office information. We followed that with the importance of predicting the requirements-by-requirements proposal response of your top competition and the importance of predicting the Source Selection Plan’s (SSP) award decision.

Identify Your Proposal Strategy

Our Opportunity Development approach next addresses the identification of your Proposal Strategy and Win Strategies that beat the competition (Article #3) in the minds of the evaluators (Article #2). The toolsets are plentiful for accomplishing those items, and they range from Win Strategy Work Shops – to the development of your proposal presentation strategy approaches.

First and foremost, to accomplish this requires the conversion of proposing Business as Usual (BAU) into selling new ways of doing best value services that exceed the performance of your competition. These things may require changes to technical approaches, processes, organization, staffing, etc. This must be done while also demonstrating that you have mitigated the most likely customer- perceived risks to your faster, better, cheaper claims. Use the “right” teammates as needed, and don’t be afraid to “brand” your new approaches across your team.

Tools and Approaches to Help with Proposal Self Assessments

  • Using your previously developed competitor proposal as the baseline – identify your new and improved approaches that beat the toughest competitor IAW the evaluation criteria for the highest score category. Integrate those changes for cohesion and common terms
  • From your new approaches, roll-up a “we will win if we do….” document in Feature-Benefit-Proof theme format
  • Develop your Executive Summary (ES) based on the “we will win…” documented themes
  • Develop and tailor short, theme-drive section introductions (pre-selling) from the ES
  • Ensure you deliver qualified and quantified “proofs” within proposal narratives and art
  • Use off-ramps to preserve B&P if you are unable to set up your win prior to Final RFP Release

If you are finding yourself “surprised” by recent losses. Or you are watching your Capture/B&P dollars turn to vapor with inadequate growth results; OCI can help you get back to the basics of Best Value winning before and during proposal development.

Start early, do your homework, define the win before you commit to the bid.