How to Lose Really Big: An Evaluator’s Advice for Writing Losing Proposals

How Do You Think I Feel?

Like evaluators everywhere…

• I am busy, overworked, and I have to do more with less…

• I am subject to the stresses and strains• dealing with my bosses' political agenda• our company’s budgets• Keeping my job

• I want proposals that are compliant with our requirements

If you want to learn how to LOSE your proposals — then you better listen to me

A few pointers to help your company not be #1.

Five major blunders that will guarantee that you and your team will deliver a losing proposal to me.

132 4 5

Use boilerplate with reckless abandon!

My team and I really appreciate"canned" solutions.

It makes us question whether you actually looked at our detailedrequirements.

Blunder #

“Proposal evaluators can smell boilerplate a mile away. If you decide to use it, make sure it is not in place of sections you should tailor to this specific proposal.”

Dan SaffordPage 126, Proposals: On Target, On Time www.psassociates.com

Don't include an Executive Summary

Some proposals make it too easy for us - they omit the executive summary entirely.

Generally, in doing this, you make it difficult for us to understand your proposal.

Blunder #

• Tell us about the history of your firm.

Don’t even try to impress us with your experience, capabilities, track record, or the specifics of your solution in a 3-5 page Executive Summary

• Tell us that your company is over 100 years old or

has a lot of employees. • Don’t review the Executive Summary

section of the Shipley Proposal Guide for an Executive Summary planning tool.

• Or better yet, include a really weak, undefined Executive Summary. Ignore our hot buttons, our pain points, our requirements.

Ome Almeda, of the Valley Medical Center in Renton, WA evaluates proposals for his organization and thinks that the Executive Summary is…

"a very important part of the proposal . . .If I don't get what you are offering in the first ten minutes, I will lose interest".

. . . The executive summary is more than window dressing. For at least some of your readers - very likely including the final decision-makers - the executive summary will be the only part of your proposal they read.

Svoboda and Godfrey Page 109, The Perfect Proposal, 1989New York, Telecom Library

Ignore Costs

Make sure your technical and management proposal is excellent and that your cost is 30% or 40% higher than my budget or your nearest competitor.

Blunder #

“. . . . the average sales person knew nothing of the costs of the program he or she was proposing . . . but was led to infer that costs were none of his or her concern, that he or she needed only to design and present a program for the accountants to cost for the client . . . Small wonder that so many proposals lose on cost alone!”

Herman Holtz Author (with Terry Schmidt) of the classic on proposal writing,The Winning Proposal, McGraw Hill, 1981 From Proposal Discussion Forum on www.proposalworks.com, J anuary 05, 2001

Avoid a detailed analysis and discussion of "our problems”

Blunder #

If we believe that you understand our problem, we might believe that your solution will work.

So, make our jobs easy.

Keep the proposed solution vague.

You can reinforce this approach by repeating the RFPs definition of the problem. If I say on page one of the RFP

"due to an expansion in the number of transactions, and the age of our programs and technology, we are looking for a network-based solution, capable of handling five times our current volume",

… then be sure to just repeat my words in your proposal. The more words that you copy from the RFP, the more I'm convinced you don't care.

“Simply regurgitating the RFP buys you absolutely nothing; it will earn the evaluator's disgust with your ineptness, or worse yet, his everlasting hatred for your insult to his intelligence. “

Donald V. Helgeson Page 99, Engineer's and Manager's Guide To Winning Proposals,1994, Norwood, MA, Artech House

Be arrogantIgnore our instructions and turn your back on the work we've done

Blunder #

“Don't rewrite the RFP requirements, and don't imply that a particular requirement is foolish, inappropriate, unnecessary, unsophisticated, technically backwards, or unworkable. Even if it is.“

Tom Sant Page 67, Persuasive Business Proposals 1992, AMACOM

Make my job easier, I have ten proposals to evaluate before the end of the week, so I need to disqualify as many as possible as quickly as possible — don’t forget to….

#1 Use boilerplate with reckless abandon!

#2 Don't include an Executive Summary.

#3 Ignore Costs. Be higher than competitors.

#4 Avoid a detailed analysis and discussion of "our problem”.

#5 Be arrogant. Ignore our instructions.

• Judgment Day: A Look Inside Our Evaluation Process

• You submitted your proposal, and now you're waiting. • How will your response be judged?• How will I evaluate your bid?

Scoring The Proposal: The Inside Story

• Evaluation can be a complex process.

• It can be on a very short time or a very long time based on a lot of factors.

• Evaluators are influenced by their own experiences and expectationsand that can be translated to a not so objective evaluation.

Make sure that your responses are compliant with each of the mandatory requirement in the RFP.

Not Comply

Comply

Tip #

Tip #

Evaluators are influenced by past experience with your company and its people.

Tip #

Evaluators compare proposals; they can't help but compare proposals.

Tip #

Evaluators don't like promises without a description of how you plan to keep them. Weak and vague promises: Proof statements:

Company A is uniquely qualified to be your desktop vender.

Company A has over 70 years experience helping global enterprise customers facing similar challenges and counts nearly all of the global Fortune100 companies as customers.

We are confident that our offering addresses your company’s key business objective.

Company A’s superior product quality reduces downtime and saves customer money.

Company A’s total print management solutions can reduce your printing and imaging costs up to 30%.

Your company can expect to reduce downtime by up to 40% and realize savings of approximately $50,000-$200,000 by choosing Company A’s Notebooks, as evidenced by Gartner’s 2011 Notebook Assessment Report.

Tip #

Easy to follow, well-written proposals receive higher scores.

Let’s review how I evaluate your proposal

1. Evaluators are influenced by past experience with your company and its people.

2. Evaluators compare proposals; they can't help but compare proposals.

3. Evaluators don't like promises without a description of how you plan to keep them.

4. Evaluators want easy to follow and well-written proposals.They receive higher scores.

Resourceshttp://teams1.sharepoint.hp.com/teams/naspc_1/Executive%20Summary%20Workshop/Forms/AllIte s.aspx

http://www.qvidian.com/

www.psassociates.com

www.proposalworks.com

https://www.shipleywins.com/myaccount-products.php

www.apmp.org

http://www.eyesonsales.com/author/tom_sant/

Further Reading:

http://www.amazon.com/Powerful-Proposals-Business-Winning-ebook/dp/B000W68676

http://www.amazon.com/Persuasive-Business-Proposals-Customers-Contracts/dp/0814471536/ref=sr_1_8?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1330306887&sr=1-8

http://www.amazon.com/Engineers-Managers-Proposals-Professional-Development/dp/089006780

Thank You – you are the best, don’t let your guard down!

Sandy Luttrell, AMP. APMP

Proposal Support ManagerNorth America Strategic Proposal Center (SPC)

Hewlett-Packard Company

email: sandy.luttrell@hp.com

Office:  770.979.8811Mobile : 404.861.5998