Winning Proposals
Clare G. Ross CMC

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.

3.  The proposal is a sure indicator of the kind of work your firm does. If it is a superlative proposal, it is more than likely your work will be too. If the proposal is just average, quick and dirty, or poorly done, it implies it*s possible your work will be also. In fact, the proposal is the first work you do for the client. It is the first thing he sees that is a real sample of what you can do.

Marketing and the decision maker

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.

Obviously not every firm or office has a special sales department. Often, everyone on the professional staff sells, and this applies equally to them. I use the term, “Selling”  as a generic term for anyone who is out trying to get business.

Study after study has shown more than 90% of contract awards were won long before the proposal was submitted. The winning firm spent a lot of time with the client decision maker helping him and influencing him; selling him. Much of this time was spent zeroing in on the decision maker to develop his support. When the request for proposal was issued they were the predetermined win­ner. Only when they got overconfident and submitted a mediocre proposal did they lose.

Sales

Perhaps the biggest fallacy existing in the preparation of winning competitive proposals is the idea that the proposal itself will win the contract. Very, very seldom is this true. Proposals are just one leg of a three-legged tripod; sales, the proposal, and the oral presentation. The sales leg of this tripod is the most important in the long run. The other two confirm everything done in the marketing. How­ever, while the major part of the win is in the selling, the proposal and the oral presentation can kill it for you if they are not prepared and presented properly consistent with the sales input.

Generally speaking, most competitive proposal activity is concerned with high value contracts, at least high value relative to your business, where there may be only a few competitors, and a few clients. This is. where selling is important.

What is selling

Most A-E&C firms who are in market places requiring competitive proposals certainly understand they must mar­ket their services. But often they get the proc­ess of sales and marketing mixed up. They use classic mis­sionary sales techniques to work with clients, calling this marketing. They get RFP*s, and they respond. But they don*t win, and they can*t understand why. They ascribe the loss to bad proposals, “the breaks”, the competitors buying in, bad weather, and any number of other things.

Selling is a long-term, relationship building activity, sometimes stretching over months and even  years be­fore the contract is awarded. It is characterized by lots of personal contact, advice, consultation, and a team effort. The closing phase of the sale is signaled by receipt of a request for proposal. The traditional methods of hard personal selling don*t work here, or if they do, they usually work only once with any individual client. You may get a contract, but probably only one.

Selling, and most particularly, “consultative” solution selling is a completely different method of business develop­ment, and a method that seems to be the most successful in the typical marketplace requiring competitive proposals. There is no open and blatant attempt at selling, but rather a process of steadily building a relationship with the client that leads to the “locked—arm” relationship. It*s a proc­ess where you and the client actually become team mates for the job to be done. If you have done consultative solution selling correctly, you may still have to submit a pro­posal, but it will be just a formality. It still must be pre­pared properly, and be the best thing you can produce to support the client decision maker*s reasons for award­ing to you, but the selling has won the contract for you.

Why sell?  

Why do you want to do this? Why do you want to spend months working with the client ahead of time? Simply, you want to win a contract. Even in today*s business en­vironment, most firms can*t afford to act like brain surgeons and wait for the client to call and hand them a contract. You have to go out into the marketplace and get it, and get it before the competitors do.

Selling then becomes a process of developing op­portunities and a relationship with the client that as­sures you are the only logical candidate for the contract. This takes time and a lot of personal contact.

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.

Click here to return to Marketing Tips