Probably the greatest desire in the industry is to find the perfect formula to prepare a winning proposal.  The school solution is to cultivate the program / customer through every step in the procurement process.  Thus you follow it from concept to Request for Information (RFI), Industry Day, response to draft RFP, etc. positioning your company to win even before the RFP is released.

When it is possible to execute this lengthy process, it can put your team in a powerful position.  However, let’s assume you’re facing a proposal for one of the programs – where it wasn’t possible to go through the classical steps.

Let’s say you get assigned to be Proposal Manager.  What do you do?

The Perfect Formula

Among the hundreds of proposal managers I have known, this is what the best say:  You “read the hell out of the solicitation.”  I mean, you read it many times.  Each time, you can see deeper into the problem.  Finally, through the nuances of the language, you can gain a profound insight into what they really want.  What their dreams are and what their fears are.

And then you develop a solution that responds to what you learned about the customer’s dreams and fears.

You may not be as intimate as you would wish with the contracting and program personnel.  But you can still prepare a top-to-bottom response that deeply appeals to the customer mindset as culled from the RFP.

The Take Away 

Here is the most important part: In your proposal you are creating a scenario of what the customer can achieve working with you.  You are painting a picture of outcomes that address his dreams and fears.  The focus is always on him and not you.  The story must be coherent and believable with good support for your claims