"What's the number one change teams can make to their oral presentation that will help them win?" This is a question I've been asked repeatedly over my 25 years as an orals coach. After coaching more than 200 teams during that time, I'm very clear on the answer.

Many of us think our proposals and our writing is focused on the customer. We write about the features of our offer, but we’re falling short. Why? We might be trying to sell them on solutions they don’t need and the customer quickly loses interest and our proposal goes straight in the trash. Apply these guidelines to improve readability and increase your probability of winning the business...

In most effective proposals, all weaknesses, known or potentially known to the customer, are addressed in the proposal. Proposal contributors generally have no issues talking up their company’s unique strengths, but what is the best way to address weaknesses in your company or other threats to winning the contract?

While the proposal team is separate from the capture or opportunity team, this shouldn’t automatically sever any communication between them...

This little piggy...

A Lesson in Customer-Focused Proposals from a Nursery Rhyme

Most people are familiar with the nursery rhyme “This Little Piggy.” In this nursery rhyme, a parent counts the number of toes on their child, all leading up to the pivotal climax when the last piggy goes “wee, wee, wee all the way home,” and the child gets tickled. This may be a fun game to play with kids, but it is also a lesson on writing customer-focused proposals.

I’ll never forget my first day in the proposal industry: My boss heaved a glossary of terms onto my desk and told me to read up. That’s what I spent the next 5 hours—okay, 3 days—doing. It still took weeks of hearing terms like “pink team,” “value proposition,” and “SWOT” in context before I began to understand what these words meant.