As one of a small number of people who has seen hundreds, if not thousands, of proposal debriefs spanning the gamut from unacceptable to outstanding over the last 20 years, I am in the semi-unique position of being able to correlate debrief results to proposal content on a statistically significant scale.
Looking across the client’s critical and complementary comments reveals, or should I say, confirms, three key truths in creating a high-scoring and therefore winning proposal. These three keys, which I call the 3Cs are “Compliant, Complete, and Compelling”. Faltering on any one of them often results in disastrous consequences. Your proposal must include all 3 to win. In fact, without the first two, compliant and complete, your proposal may very well be eliminated from the competition before it’s even scored. Let’s look at each of the three.
Compliant: A compliant proposal follows the RFP instructions to the letter. It includes everything the customer asks for; every requested volume, section, and subsection including required appendices and attachments. A compliant proposal ensures there is a place to address each requirement from the instructions (Section L), evaluation criteria (Section M), statement of work or performance work statement (Section C), model contract, and any other requested content. There are no omitted requirements and information is presented where, and in the order requested. All required fill-in fields (DUNS Number, Legal Entity Name, CAGE, etc.) are entered correctly. The proposal is within specified page limits and arrives at the customer delivery address by the date and time at which it is due.
Non-compliant proposals are often rejected by the contracts staff during an initial inspection and never make it to the evaluators. Compliance is the absolute minimum cost of entry – it is not optional. Hundreds of proposals are eliminated from competition every year because they failed the compliance check. For example, before I joined my previous company, they submitted an >$80M proposal for a large environmental remediation project. The corporate contract administrator accidentally entered the wrong bidding entity name, which should have been the JV formed for the specific opportunity. Instead he entered the standard corporate entity name in the field. The proposal manager missed it, the contracting officer found the inconsistency between bidder and contract signatory and the proposal was eliminated from the competition for non-compliance before it even had an opportunity to be evaluated. To avoid situations like this, create a compliance matrix, keep it updated based on amendments and client RFP changes, and follow it to the letter. Designate a second person within your organization to first check the compliance matrix itself, and then do a final compliance check of the proposal before it goes into the shipping box. Check the box contents as well. A missing component; volume, required copy, CD or DVD, will also get you thrown out.
Complete:A complete, and hence fully responsive proposal goes beyond mere compliance. A complete proposal not only includes an answer to each question posed by the RFP, it correctly interprets the requirement and answers the question to the level of detail and with the appropriate focus that the client is looking for. It is complete in that it responds both to the questions and to the intent of the questions. For example, if the RFP asks you to describe your approach for qualifying subcontractors, the client is expecting you to describe a process (approach), that’s the key word here. You should define entry and exit points, steps and activities, how long they take, who performs them, are they (the client) involved in any of those steps, are there specific qualifications or thresholds. As a reviewer asking this question (I’ve been on both sides of the proposal fence) I would expect to see some type of process drawing; a flow chart, timeline, or other similar artifact along with a brief description. And yet, as a Red Team reviewer, I continually see answers to similar questions that never actually describe or show a process or anything like it. They make claims, with great voracity and often without a supporting shred of evidence, as to how wonderful their process is. They explain for how many years and with how many clients they have successfully used the process. They tell me how many contractors they have pre-qualified in a database, and on and on. In the meantime, the RFP requested none of this – it asked very specifically, “describe your approach”. As a reviewer, if I was feeling generous, I would probably give them a marginal rating at best – otherwise it’s a big zero. The greatest proposal improvement secret I can give you from my 30+ years of experience both managing proposals and creating winning content is this, “read the question, answer the question”. It’s that simple. Answer the question fully, clearly, and concisely and your client will thank you. I follow that mantra every time I manage a proposal. Here’s a debrief quote from one of my recent proposals that received an “Outstanding” rating as proof that it works, “Offeror’s narrative for Factor 1 is excellently written. Offeror goes into depth and explains in detail each key point that [the] RFP is requesting.”
Compelling:To get beyond a basic acceptable rating your proposal must be more than just compliant and complete; it needs to be compelling. That is, it must convince the client that not only can you do the job, but you are the best choice to do the job. It must compel them to pick you, or at a minimum score you higher than your competitors. A compelling proposal provides justification for them to give you the maximum score, it describes the tangible and quantifiable benefits that your approach provides and proves that you can deliver what you are promising. The exact specifics of compelling content are dependent on your industry, technology, customer, and your specific offer. In some cases, you may already have a specific patented technology or proprietary process that you plan to offer. In many other cases your value proposition is defined as you develop your technical or management approach. Which, by the way, you should be doing well in advance of the formal RFP release. However, one thing that all compelling proposals have in common is that they quantify benefit and prove that you have the capability and capacity to deliver what you are promising.
For example, “We’ve used this proven, cost saving approach for numerous clients around the world”, isn’t very compelling. It makes broad, unsubstantiated claims, fails to quantify benefit, and provides no specifics that prove the product does what you are claiming. It’s nothing more than a trust me statement – and it doesn’t score any points.
Now let’s try using specifics and proving them. “Our patented surfacing material and paving process provide a hard surface with the same strength as, and greater durability than, traditional blacktop material while using a layer half as thick as standard methods. As a result, installation time is 40% faster than standard blacktop at a minimum 30% cost savings. Table 5-1 provides a list of 15 locations where the product has been proven over the long-term. As seen in the first 4 entries, the product has already exceeded the useable life of more traditional coatings with no degradation, proving it’s longer service life.” This example is compelling in that it offers specific benefits, quantifies cost savings, demonstrates that the product is in widespread-use, and proves durability using specific examples that the client can check themselves.
The three C’s, compliant, complete, and compelling, offered at a price the client is willing to pay, are the keys to a winning proposal.
© 2019 Dominick Soldano
 - Shopify Philippines)