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Probability of Win (Pwin) remains one of the most misunderstood concepts in business development today...

Win rates seem like pretty simple statistics—what percentage of your qualified opportunities are you winning?...Learn from past proposals and when to end a pursuit.

For some people, efficiency is synonymous with speed. Sometimes there is very little time from when the RFP drops to the submission deadline, and this means the proposal team must work very hard and very quickly to prepare a proposal for submission. However, efficiency is not just doing things as quickly as possible. It is also about doing things right the first time, so you do not waste time on rework.

Sales and proposal professionals often focus too little on benefits and fail to link key solution features to benefits. Or worse, they wait to articulate the benefit until the end of a proposal section. When the benefits are buried, the customer won’t see how your solution is best and may decline your offer...

A myth is defined as a story without an author that is passed along…a popular belief or story that has become associated with a person, institution, or occurrence (like a proposal).We pulsed hundreds of proposal development professionals to ask them about proposal-related myths they run into and deal with in their profession. Here are a few. Fact or fiction? Myth or reality?

All businesses know the realistic price they can offer for services. What can you do when you’ve performed a competitive analysis and discovered you cannot compete with the low prices your competitors are predicted to offer?

Winning a task order master contract is not easy! Typically, many people have worked many hours (and many after-hours) to help our organization win this master contract...

Losing a bid is hard. It’s easy to get swept up in disappointment, to see the flaws in your proposal, and to blame others for mistakes. This breaks down the morale of the team and quality can absolutely suffer. Mistakes need to be addressed in a lessons learned review, but don’t dwell on them. There’s usually more to losing than what’s in the proposal...

Yes, a proposal must persuade the customer and help lead them to a buying decision. But the words and visuals on the page or screen don’t tell the whole story. There’s much more to winning business than developing a compliant, compelling, and persuasive proposal...

We may have the perfect solution for our customer’s problem. Another probability is that we have the perfect solution for what we perceive the customer’s problem to be. The customer may not trust you because you missed the mark by explaining your solution more than you listened to their needs...

This is one of the most common questions in our industry. The funny thing is most people and organizations want to create all sorts of complex dynamics, conspiracy theories, dreams, fables, and excuses as to why their proposals fail to win and why their win rates and capture ratios are so low...

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...

When positioning for a strategic opportunity, any advantage should be considered to improve the opportunity’s Probability of Win...

Proposals require a lot of planning up front. Many companies have done all the work to make sure the message is accurate. But when the submission is rewarded, that company still may not be selected. The issue could be in the details...

Today we are in a fiercely complicated and competitive environment. Many companies have seen their revenue go flat or decline. In order to survive and thrive, we need to improve our business development and capture skills. We must be as good at winning business as we are at our core business...

You’re responding to a lot of RFPs but not winning much business.Many companies believe that casting a wide net and submitting proposals for every opportunity that comes their way will increase revenue. However, this is not the case. Responding to every RFP can spread your resources and proposal team thin, leading to poor proposals and less business overall.

There is no “normal” in the new normal we’re all experiencing. No matter our role in our jobs, we’re likely working outside our comfort zone. Hopefully, our “zone” is expanding because there is no normal...

How do you move from an unknown position to a favored position?...

Toward the end of the year, people tend to spend a lot of time planning. Some may plan gifts for family and friends. Some plan how they will maximize what is left of the corporate budget for the year. Others begin to plan what they want their personal goals for the next year to be. Whatever type of plans are on your mind right now, it is hard to deny the importance of having a plan and adhering to it.

Planning is especially important when developing a proposal. Planning efforts should begin before writers ever begin typing, and it should carry the proposal writing and editing through to submission. Even when limited time is available, taking the time to plan proposal development will save you valuable time.

Supporting the proposal while continuing your capture activities is essential to ensuring capture and proposal strategies are aligned and implemented in the proposal...

In every novel there’s a problem to solve. For most business development opportunities, a proposal is submitted as a solution to a customer’s problem. But the similarities between the most common three-act novel structure and the business development lifecycle don’t end there...

Capture planning is the process of identifying opportunities, assessing the environment, and devising and implementing winning strategies oriented toward capturing a specific business opportunity...