Writing Winning Business Proposals
Third Edition
RICHARD C. FREED
JOSEPH D. ROMANO
SHERVIN FREED
For Julie, Sarah, Adele, Bruce, Marcia,
Renee, Terese, and Amara
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Contents
Preface
This book is written for business people who prepare proposals (and for business people who evaluate them). If you are a consultant who owns your own business or who works for a firm of one or one thousand, if you are an internal consultant who sells services to your own organization, if you are a business executive who sells ideas to your management, you will benefit greatly from this book.
If you are like most people, you probably find selling your services or ideas in a proposal both demanding and difficult. Your proposals not only take too long to prepare, they are often written when you least want to write themat night or on weekends, because during the day you are occupied with everything else that you do: conducting projects, furthering relationships, developing people. Proposal writing often seems like extra work, additional but necessary effort to get selected to perform projects so that you can be successful in your intensely competitive business.
Perhaps equally frustrating is the margin of difference between winning and losing. Hundreds of people consulting in the private sector have told me the same thing: the difference between winning and coming in second is very small, often just two to five points on a hundred-point scale. Those who place a close second never get back the upfront costs of proposal development. What they do get is second place. The situation in the public sector is similar. For a recent proposal to manage a $30 million project for a U.S. government agency, the difference between the winner and the second-place also-ran was five points out of one thousandone-half of 1 percent!
What accounts for this difference? Sometimes its price, of course, sometimes your particular methodology or your qualifications. But all too often, its heads. That something has to do with relationships, with the buyers feeling that you are right, that you understand, that you are compatible. So, yes, price is frequently a consideration, as is expertise. But someone is always or can always be less costly, and the world is full of experts. Price and expertise get you in the running, but they dont ensure that youll win.
The goal of this book is twofold:
Specifically, to get you the additional two to five points necessary to win
Generally, to increase your win rate, your hit rate
By how much? Thats impossible to say, of course, though some data suggest that it might be considerable. The concepts in Writing Winning Business Proposals (WWBP) are the same ones taught in a two-day program that has been offered to organizations large and small in more than 25 countries on five continents over the last 20 years. The largest organization tracked over one year the performance of those who had taken the two-day program and those who hadnt. Following are the results. (See .)
When you calculate the number of proposals won by the number of proposals submitted, the participants hit rate percentage (proposals won divided by proposals submitted) was 30 points higher. More interesting is that when hit rate was weighted using the monetary value of the proposals won compared to the total value submitted, the hit rate percentage more than doubled, suggesting that participants were able to sell higher-value work than those who had not taken the program. As you read the contents of WWBP, youll clearly understand why.