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The One Thing You Must Do to Win Consistently
A lot of the advice people give on how to win proposals isn't all that helpful. Consider:
You must start the proposal before the RFP is released in order to win. While this is true, it doesn't tell you what you really need to know. What exactly are you supposed to write before you get the RFP? What intelligence should you gather? How do you translate that into a better chance of winning?You must have win strategies and themes woven throughout your proposal to win. While this is true, it's more important that the win strategies and themes be effective, and the statement doesn't tell you anything about what a good win strategy or theme is.
You must have a good proposal process to win. A proposal process may keep you from losing by preventing mistakes. But winning requires a process that reaches back before the proposal starts and answers questions like those above.
While each of these statements is true, they don't translate into action very easily. This may have something to do with the fact that they don't actually have much to do with winning. They only relate to winning in an indirect way.
Winning implies coming out on top of the competitive field. The only way to do this and consistently win is to enter the arena with a competitive advantage every time. You must not only give the customer what they want, you must do it in a way that provides an advantage beyond what your competitors offer.
When you think of capturing a business opportunity in terms of developing and presenting your competitive advantage, the advice you get makes more sense. All the fuss about relationship building and intelligence gathering before the RFP is released should really be about developing a competitive advantage before the RFP hits the street. Your win strategies and themes should add up to an articulation of your competitive advantage — otherwise, they really don't say much that matters to the customer.
Your proposal process is really as much about follow-through and not making mistakes as it is about winning. Because if you don't start your proposal with a competitive advantage in mind, it is highly unlikely that one is going to appear during document production. While the proposal process seeks the best way to present your competitive advantage, it is too late to create the competitive advantage and without one your chances of winning are severely impaired. If you start the proposal with a competitive advantage, then the proposal process should be about presentation and providing quality assurance to make sure that you don't make any mistakes that could keep your competitive advantage from working.
If you make it your goal to develop your competitive advantage before the RFP is released, and then present it during the proposal phase, you actually have an achievable goal to work towards. It forces you to start every business pursuit by asking, "What would be a competitive advantage for this opportunity or with this customer? What can I present about me or my offering that will provide me with an advantage over my competitors?" Answering these questions will require you to gather intelligence and have a customer relationship. It will bring purpose to your customer interactions and intelligence gathering activities --- no more meetings just to have meetings.
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