There are many factors affecting your win rate and your ability to get new work.

An accurate assessment of the real probability of success is one of the most difficult and important challenges facing firms and their marketers today.

Computerized prospect lists are filled with long shots, projects that never happen, or with projects "wired" by the competition. How do you sort the wheat from the chaff? How can you assure that your judgment isn't clouded by the glitz and the excitement of a new project? What can you do to focus on the realities of the selection process and minimize the subjective elements of your thinking? The challenge is to develop a process or systematic approach to aid in an objective assessment of your real chances for success.

One way to develop this systematic approach is to develop a probability check-list that forces you to evaluate each prospect against criteria related to the markets and the client types you serve. 
I would like to share with you a system or a process that has worked well for me and clients I have consulted with over the years - a probability checklist.

The criteria listed play an important part in the selection process on most projects. You may find it useful to include additional criteria that you have observed in your own area. These might include such things as firm size, in-house services, depth of staff, financial strength, etc. By sticking with the ones shown here, we can illustrate the process. Here's how it works.

The weighting factors in column 1 are based on a scale of 1-5 with 5 being the highest and most important. Each factor is rated as to its importance in the selection process. These may be different for different types of clients, but you will find certain patterns will develop over time as you feed back into the system, information about the selection process from both successful and unsuccessful interviews.

Once you are comfortable that your weighting factors (column 1) represent your best guesstimate of the relative importance of each selection criteria, it's time to "measure" your firm against those weighting factors. For example, on the first criterion, you may have worked with this client successfully before, completing a project two years ago. In that case, you may feel comfortable assigning it 4 points. Because of this successful project, you have probably developed strong relationships with key decision makers and can give yourself 4 points under criterion number 3 - relationships with decision makers.

You may be early in the selection process and have only limited knowledge of the project scope, client needs, etc., and can only give that criterion 2 points.

You continue this process until you have completed the checklist to the best of your ability with the information you have at hand. It is important to understand that this is a process, not a static event. These point assignments can and do change as more information is known or as circumstances change.

Once column 2 is completed, multiply column 1 X column 2 to compute the score for each of the criteria. Total the score in column 3. In this case we have a total score of 122 out of a possible 150 points or 81 %. This does not mean necessarily, that you have an 81 % chance of getting the project. As you gain experience working with this process, you will develop your own "experience factor" that will allow you to know how that 81 % rating relates to your own success rate. For example, you might find that when your score exceeds 75%, you almost always win the project. Or you might find that, when your score is under 50%, you almost never win. Develop your own rules of thumb.

This tool is also helpful in assessing your competitors' probability for success. Try applying the same standards to them. You'll be surprised at the results. Remember, it is more important to be consistent in the way you apply your points to the criteria than to try for precision. It is a subjective process at best, where the amount and quality of your information is the key to the reliability of probability assessment. Work with the process, mold it to fit your needs and let us know the results.

Any competitive proposal must be the best possible product your firm can produce. Proposals do three things:

1.  They substantiate the position of the client*s decision maker who was pushing for you. He can proudly hold up your proposal and say, “See, I told you they are the best. Their proposal proves it.”

2.  It is a stand—alone sales tool. It carries your message and tells the client what you want the client told. If it is a good proposal the message comes through. If it isn*t, the mes­sage dies.

There is no magic pill that wins competitive proposals. Selling is the real activity that produces a winner.  And selling is a word many professionals are not comfortable with.   The superior proposal is the document that clinches the sale.  The sales team does all the work up front to find the client decision maker, understand what motivates him, what he wants in the procurement, what he wants from the winning firm, and to determine what he needs to select the winning firm.  They have the task of selling the decision maker, and getting him ready to select you.

For the firm who is looking for instant sales and instant response from their sales and marketing activity, consultative solution selling is a huge disappointment. Results usually don*t happen in days or weeks. They start to show after months, but then they build and build. When the selling is done properly, the client becomes locked in with you, and all his business goes to you over the long run. As more and more of these clients are developed, your business continues to expand. The proposals become the formality.