Shipley Asia Pacific

The Executive Summary is one of the most important elements of a winning proposal. It sets the tone for evaluators and is sometimes the only section decision-makers read.

To create a winning Executive Summary, it's important to demonstrate a deep understanding of the customer's vision and hot-button issues. Focus on the customer and their needs throughout, emphasising the unique value your solution brings to the table.

Don't fall into the trap of treating the Executive Summary as an afterthought. Start early in the sales process and make it an iterative process to refine and improve.

Focusing on solving the customer’s problems and demonstrating value in our solutions are keys to customer-focused writing in our proposals. Applying these guidelines will improve readability and increase your probability of winning the business. 🏆

✔️ Cite the customer organisation’s buying vision—address their primary need. Numerous studies of buyers have found that while nearly all bidders are technically qualified, the proposal selected was the one that stated the best understanding of the customer’s business objectives.
✔️ Link the customer’s buying vision directly to your solution. Sometimes, sellers get so close to the immediate project that they lose perspective and focus on features rather than benefits. Help the customer connect the dots between their need and your solution.
✔️ In theme statements, focus on the customer’s hot buttons (needs, issues, and motivators). Addressing the customer’s hot buttons immediately in a theme statement focuses the proposal on solving the customer’s problem instead of what you are selling.
✔️ Address hot buttons in the order preferred by the customer. When organising your proposal or section, address the most important issues first. Use the customer’s own words whenever possible.
✔️ Whenever possible, name the customer in paragraphs and sentences before your organisation. Scan the opening sentences of each paragraph in your documents. Ensure they don’t always open with the words “we,” “our,” or your organisation’s or product’s name. Name the customer first. Make it all about them, not you.
✔️ Name the customer as many or more times than your organisation. Avoid making the proposal “all about us.” You increase the customer’s engagement and connection to your message by mentioning the customer's name more than your own.
✔️Cite benefits before features in your writing. Doing so places the value of your solution at the forefront.

If you're ready to learn how to apply these customer-focus principles to your proposal writing, check out our upcoming POWeRful Proposal Writing Workshop!

https://youwin.by/4963qYZ

So, let's talk about oral proposals 🎙️

Did you know that, unlike some sales presentations, the oral proposal is not always a direct restatement of information in the written proposal? Most businesses use oral proposals as part of the final evaluation criteria before awarding a contract. This means meeting, interviewing, and assessing the contractor’s key personnel is just as important as the written proposal.

To ace your oral proposal, there are a few things you can keep in mind:

✔️Know your audience and the evaluation criteria.
✔️Plan your entire approach before preparing your presentation, including your win strategy.
✔️ Organise your presentation according to customer guidelines and instructions.
✔️ Create compelling visuals (know your audience).
✔️ Develop a delivery style that presents your nonverbal message so they reinforce your verbal messages.
✔️ Rehearse with the actual orals team early, realistically, and often.
✔️ Orchestrate the entire presentation and anticipate questions from the customer.
✔️ Prepare and preserve a lessons-learned analysis on each oral proposal – regardless of whether you win or lose.

Now, over to you, how do you prep for your oral proposals? And did it make a difference in securing the win?

So, what's the difference between compliance and responsiveness in proposal writing? 🤔

It's important to know that a proposal can be responsive but not compliant or compliant but non-responsive. Compliance means following the customer's bid request and requirements to a T, while responsiveness means addressing their underlying needs.

To make sure your proposals are both compliant and responsive, here are some helpful tips to get you started:

✔️ Follow the customer's instructions exactly when writing your proposal
✔️ Prepare a compliance checklist for all formal and even informally solicited bid requests
✔️ Use compliance checklist shortcuts and automation tools with caution and understanding
✔️ Create a response matrix early to help plan and track every response
✔️ Submit a response matrix with your proposal to make evaluation easy

Always remember, don't sacrifice compliance for responsiveness - you need both to create a winning proposal! 🏆

If you're ready to learn how to write your next winning proposal, click the link to check out our upcoming facilitator-led workshops.

https://youwin.by/3Ss1qER

⚠️ Problem: We’re not connecting with our customers

Many think our writing and proposals focus on the customer. We write about the features of our offer, but we’re still falling short. Why?

Chances are that our proposals may not be as customer-focused as we think. Maybe we are offering features that the customer doesn’t want or need. Talk about a red flag. When this happens, we’re not demonstrating customer focus. We’re trying to sell them solutions they don’t need, and the customer quickly loses interest, and our proposal goes straight into the bin.

💡 Solution: Show more customer focus in your proposals—write to the evaluator

Customer focus means we step into our customer’s shoes to determine what they need and require.

✔️What are their hot buttons?
✔️What is their buying vision?
✔️How will our solution solve their problem?
✔️What value are we offering?
✔️What matters most to the evaluator?

Speak to these questions as you write, and you're well on your way to a winning proposal!

Keen to learn more about writing a proposal that speaks to your customer?

Click the link to view our upcoming POWeRful Proposal Writing workshop and get hands-on teaching from business-winning experts.

https://youwin.by/4baf7j5

📣 PSA: Don't underestimate the power of peer reviews! 🙌🏼

They may not be part of the formal colour team review, but peer reviews are hidden gems that can uniquely benefit your proposal process. Your reviewers may not know much about the opportunity, which can actually work to your advantage. They can spot things that you might have missed, like confusing jargon or inconsistent writing styles. More importantly, after reading your proposal, they should immediately know if it will solve your customer's problem. If your reviewer can't tell if the customer's problem is being solved, neither will your evaluator!

When choosing peer reviewers, ensure they are unbiased, honest, and willing to offer suggestions, not just critiques. An honest review doesn't have to be harsh! And if there's a problem, suggestions for improvement can make the process a rewarding experience for everyone involved.

So, don't sleep on peer reviews! Use them to refine all your documents and submit clear, concise, and correct proposals. 💯

Developing and utilising your value propositions can be a game-changer for your business. Here are four tips to help you get started:

1️⃣ Establish a single sales objective.

Narrow the focus of your value proposition to a single sales objective—be sure to answer for the customer: What’s in it for us?

2️⃣ Use the value proposition as a collaborative selling tool.

The best value propositions are specific and developed collaboratively with the customer. Gaining input from the customer works to your advantage as you advance the sales opportunity.

3️⃣ Consider developing unique value propositions for each type of buyer.

Because executives, users, and financial and technical buyers have different hot-button issues, prepare a different value proposition for each type of buyer. Then, summarise these into an overarching value proposition for the pursuit.

4️⃣ Organize your executive summary around your value propositions.

Begin the executive summary by stating the value proposition that targets the most influential customer evaluator. Then, present all aspects of your solution against one of the underlying value propositions, substantiating all claims.

Your value proposition should be reinforced throughout your proposal, including in theme statements and callout boxes. A well-thought-out value proposition keeps the evaluator focused on how you will solve their problem or bring them value.

Value propositions establish customer value based on the business relationship. They describe how the seller’s solutions will improve the customer’s business and how the improvement will be measured. Value propositions are opportunity and customer-specific and are developed collaboratively with the customer throughout the pursuit cycle.

A value proposition goes beyond a theme statement and:

✔️ Quantifies the anticipated business improvement for the customer
✔️ Specifies the timing of the benefits
✔️ Specifies the timing of the investment
✔️ States the payback period (ROI)
✔️ Specifies how the results will be measured

How do you establish value with your customers pre-RFT?

We are wishing everyone a holiday season filled with joy and happiness! As we wrap up this year, let's take a moment to 'bid' farewell to all the challenges and 'propose' a toast to new opportunities and successes in the coming year. 🥂

From all of us at Shipley Asia Pacific, Merry Christmas! 🎄

Page and document design impact whether your proposal is read, how it is scored, and whether it is remembered. The style and design of your proposal pages emphasise or de-emphasise your messages, much like body language, word dynamics, and facial expressions in conversation.

Customers are lookers first, then readers. A good page and document design entices readers and facilitates understanding (even though evaluators may not be conscious of the design techniques used). A well-organised, visually appealing design helps evaluators find what they need to know rapidly and easily.

Never underestimate the importance of the proposal’s appearance. When competitors’ offers differ minimally, the appearance and organisation of the proposal can make the difference.

How interested and motivated are evaluators in reading your proposal?

Follow these guidelines to engage your readers:

✔️Follow the customer’s page and document design instructions strictly.

✔️Use a style sheet for every proposal.

✔️ Select a document and page style appropriate to your industry and organisation as well as your customer’s organisation.

✔️ Adapt your layout to the structure of the writing.

✔️Use white space to guide the evaluator and to emphasise key points.

✔️Use headers and footers to help evaluators navigate your proposal while maintaining customer focus.

Have you been eyeing some Shipley training and biding (or bidding) your time to make a move? Are you keen to learn, improve, or refresh your proposal knowledge and skills? 👀

Well, today is the day! Preregister for a Shipley workshop and receive a 10% discount. Take advantage of this opportunity to equip yourself with the skills you need to succeed in 2024. 🚀

Our courses are designed for all skill levels and offer a stimulating and engaging learning experience. So, what are you waiting for? This offer is only available until December 22nd.

Click the link below to view our upcoming workshops and use promo code: YOURYEAR at checkout to receive up to $352 off.

https://youwin.by/3Tnt2vN

Are you struggling to turn potential customers into actual ones? "Touching base" with them is not enough to secure a business relationship. To increase your win rate and generate more revenue, you need to focus on the customer's hot button issues in every interaction.

Effective, customer-focused capture involves gathering information on the opportunity and maintaining it. A capture team has no substitute for good opportunity intelligence. The more you know about the customer's program, key issues, and biases, the more persuasive your capture planning positioning activities will be.

To show customer focus, you need to know what your customer cares about. As you gather intelligence on the customer and the program, ask questions like "What type of project/program/service is it?", "Is the customer cost-sensitive?", and "Is there an incumbent?"

After gathering initial information, develop a capture strategy while keeping key customer issues in mind, and then implement that strategy. Manage implementation tactics, evaluate feedback, assess progress, and repeatedly update implementation tactics.

Persuasion takes time and repeated interaction and collaboration with the customer. To persuade individuals in the customer organization with different hot button issues, your capture team needs to repeatedly deliver aligned, customer-focused messages.

Remember, customer focus sells the solution during capture efforts. Focus on your customers' hot button issues to increase your win rate and generate more revenue. It's not just about maintaining contact, it's about building a strong business relationship.

Take note: mature defence bidders are some of the best in the business. 📝

Learn how to secure your contracts well before tenders hit the market by elevating your capture plan with these insights into defence bidding.

From strategy to evaluation: How defence companies win big with their Capture Plan Discover how defence companies strategically capture business with governments worldwide. From scoping exercises to post-purchase evaluations, learn the key steps to winning big in the defence industry.

When it comes to writing, everyone has their own idea of what "writing correctly" means. Some may think it's fact-checking everything you write, while others may believe it's about using proper grammar. Let's focus on choosing the right words to convey your message effectively in your proposal. ✏️

✔️ Simplify long words and phrases

To make your writing more accessible to your readers. Even if you're presenting a complex idea, it's important to use short and simple words to clearly communicate your point. Contrary to popular belief, using long and complex words won't make you look smarter to your audience. Instead, it can obscure your meaning and hide important concepts.

✔️ Avoid jargon and gobbledygook

While industry-specific or technical jargon might be necessary in some cases, it can be confusing to readers who aren't familiar with it. Always define any necessary jargon, but use clear and concise wording whenever possible.

✔️ Use precise, powerful and descriptive verbs

Their use can make a huge difference in how your writing is perceived. Choosing the right verb can completely change the tone of a sentence and prompt powerful reactions from your readers. Avoid using weak verbs that require further explanation and instead, use strong and precise words to convey your message effectively.

Be Bold: Use Active Voice in Your Proposals

Active and passive voice sentences convey action, but active sentences are more persuasive, decisive, and confident. Use active voice unless you have a good reason to choose passive voice.

Proposals written in strong, clear language are more effective. Active sentences are usually shorter, more dynamic, and more forceful. Remember, we are trying to win business and persuade the evaluators. Active voice is emphatic, decisive, and accepts responsibility for action.

Passive voice in writing tends to create longer, less persuasive, and sometimes ambiguous sentences. Passive voice weakens your message by evading responsibility and distancing yourself from your customer.

Customers are less interested in awarding a contract to an organisation that seems weak-willed, evasive, or indecisive. Customers want the bidder to accept responsibility, make things happen, appear confident, meet requirements, and solve their problems.

In a perfect world, we could win a contract without submitting a competitive proposal, but real life is different.

The reality is that few customers are permitted to award a contract—or want to award a contract—without soliciting competitive bids, even when they have a preferred vendor. Government regulations or corporate purchasing guidelines often require competitive proposals, usually from three or more bidders.

That's where capture management and proposal management come in to form the dynamic duo of business winning. They require different skills, but integrating the two can help you effectively align and implement your strategies.

Follow these guidelines to engage professional proposal support, and you're on your way to a successful bid!

✔️Seek proposal manager input when preparing the detailed proposal budget.
✔️Extend the capture strategy into the proposal strategy.
✔️ Integrate the extended capture team in key pre-proposal activities.
✔️ Draft the executive summary.
✔️ Influence the selection of the best core proposal team members.
✔️ Support the proposal kickoff meeting.
✔️ Define and manage customer contacts.
✔️ Participate in but do not facilitate colour team reviews.
✔️ Help analyse the final bid request and lead the Bid Validation Decision gate review.
✔️ Lead, guide, or contribute to post-bid submittal interactions with the customer.

The success of a proposal often hinges on a strong kickoff meeting.

It's important to remember that there's no such thing as a "perfect" kickoff meeting, so don't wait until everything is perfectly ready to hold one.

Instead, focus on making the meeting motivational, informative, and directive by achieving the following objectives:

🔷 Initiate contributors’ proposal efforts

🔷 Convey information about the opportunity

🔷 Coordinate upcoming activities

🔷 Create a cohesive team

🔷 Make assignments and follow up

As a bid manager, establishing direction before velocity is key to a successful proposal effort. 🚀

So, what do you use to point your team in the right direction?

You guessed it.

A Proposal Management Plan.

The Proposal Management Plan (PMP) is a critical step in documenting your team's roles, responsibilities, tasks, schedules, and deadlines. It's the "evergreen" guide that keeps everyone on track and accountable.

So, as tempting as it may be, don't skip out on this plan!

Check out these tips to ensure a sound PMP:
✔️ Always prepare a PMP, even for re-competes or task orders.
✔️Complete and review the PMP before the kickoff meeting
✔️Distribute the PMP at the kickoff meeting.
✔️ Keep the PMP current and refer to it at daily stand-up meetings.
✔️ Develop a PMP template that fits your organisation's needs.

Want to learn more about building a solid PMP?

Click the link to view our upcoming Managing Strategic Proposal Workshop!
👉 https://youwin.by/40lRDm9

Happy Halloween! 🎃

Have you picked your costume and stocked up on lollies yet? 🍭🍬

While you get your treats sorted, we've got some proposal tricks for you.

Shipley Asia Pacific has conjured up a blog that explores the eerie similarities between crafting a winning proposal and classic horror movies (yes, they exist!).

Explore the following seven characteristics of winning proposals:

🔹Compliance
🔹Responsiveness
🔹Strategy
🔹Competitive focus
🔹Quality of writing
🔹Visualisation
🔹Page/document design

And uncover more chilling insights into creating customer-centric bids and horror stories that send shivers down your spine.

7 Techniques to (witch)craft your next proposal Discover how the Shipley method for crafting winning proposals can be applied to classic horror movies. Explore the seven critical elements that both proposals and scary stories should have for maximum impact and success.

As a proposal manager, developing the project schedule to manage your team within a defined process is up to you. This is a daunting task! Here are some key recommendations to make it easier to get the bid out the door and help maintain the sanity of you and your team.

✔️ Schedule Backwards: Schedule proposal submission first. Next, schedule key milestones. Adjust timing as tasks are added.

✔️ Reserve contingency time: allow time for unanticipated problems

✔️ Maximise parallel tasks: avoid bottlenecks by scheduling many tasks simultaneously.

✔️ Estimate realistically: use time standards to ensure adequate time is allowed for critical tasks

✔️ Resource optimally: conserve budget by assigning start and end dates for each task.

✔️Use standard work periods: except on very short schedules, leave weekends and holidays free. These days may be needed later for contingency time.

Keen to learn more about proposal planning and ex*****on? Click the link to learn more about our upcoming Managing Strategic Proposal workshop!

https://youwin.by/3Fuk9sd

Never underestimate the power of ✨collaboration✨

Collaboration with the customer helps to understand the customer’s issues, concerns, and preferences. Collaboration builds rapport and educates both customers and sellers. By explicitly linking your features to advantages, you convert advantages to benefits.

Follow these guidelines for winning proposals:

✔️Collaborate with the customer to develop a common vision of the customer’s issues and needs.

✔️Establish an understanding of the customer’s issues and needs before discussing the features and benefits of their solution.

✔️Convert advantages to benefits as the sale progresses.

✔️Always emphasise benefits over features.

✔️Quantify benefits whenever possible to show value to the customer.

Understanding features, advantages, and benefits is a key part of selling effectively, in person and in a proposal.

Sometimes, it's easy to mix them up. So here's a quick breakdown:

🔷 Features are separate aspects of the seller’s product or service, such as speed, schedule, process, price, training, certification, capacity, weight, size, or colour.

🔷 Advantages are how, in the seller’s opinion, the product or service can help the customer.

🔷 Benefits are advantages that can solve a problem for the customer. They address the specific issues for which the customer is seeking a solution.

Advantages become benefits only under two conditions:
✔️They are linked to the customer’s needs
✔️The customer wants them

Benefits have the strongest and most lasting impact on the customer’s buying decision because they are explicitly linked to alleviating issues. In short, customers buy benefits, not solutions.

It may seem unfair. But has anyone ever told you that "maybe your buyer's just not that into you"?

It'd be pretty annoying if someone did, but it could have some truth to it.

Your client is always lovely to you in person, and they call back when they say they will. But then, when it comes time to submit the bid, you lose.

So what's the deal?

More than likely, they told you, you lost out on price. But is it true? 💸

Did you miscalculate your price? Or did your customer just want to avoid an awkward conversation?

In the latest Shipley Asia Pacific blog, Singapore Senior Consultant Amy Lees delves deep into the misconceptions surrounding bidding processes, explicitly challenging the belief that decisions are always made solely on price. In a world where companies often lose bids, attributing their defeat to price, Amy sheds light on the nuances of buyer behaviour.

Key ideas covered:

✔️Ditch the price-only perception
✔️ Uncover hidden RFP requirements
✔️Consistent customer-focused strategy throughout the bid

Click the link to read the full article! 👇

Your buyer's just not that into you (it was never about price) Discover why companies often lose bids on price and how understanding your customers' buying behavior can help you target all types of price buyers. Learn valuable insights from a senior consultant on pursuing successful proposals.

Are you guilty of using statements like these in your and ?

- "We are a leader in our field."
- "The thing that makes us different is our people."
- "We are uniquely placed to fulfil your needs."
- "We believe we are the best people to help you."

The problem with this approach is:

- It’s all about the seller when the focus should be on the
- Competitors are likely to make similar claims, so every supplier sounds similar in the eyes of the buyer

With that said, here are some key points to keep in mind:

- Focus your narrative on your customer and their needs.
- It’s about selling value as seen from their perspective.
- Focus on your discriminators. These are differentiators you have over your competitors based on issues that your customers actually care about.
- If you make a performance claim, back it up with some independent proof, such as a customer testimonial or quote

Keen to do a deeper dive into proposal best practice? Check out our online POWeRful Proposal Writing workshop on October 17 and 18; click the link to learn more! 🤓

https://youwin.by/45nBZb2

Ensure Customer-Focused Discriminators

Don't fall into the trap of emphasising features that you believe are important to the customer, but actually are not.

A feature is only a discriminator when it...
1. Differs from a competitor’s offer
2. Is important to the customer

Make sure you have enough competitor and customer knowledge to correctly incorporate discriminators throughout the proposal.

The most powerful discriminators are important to the customer and focus on people, experience, performance, and understanding the customer’s business. Even if some of your known discriminators are negative, do not shy away from discussing them in the proposal. Be specific enough to address the negatives and emphasise how your company has rectified the experience.

"Shipley’s Effective Grant Writing workshop was an incredible opportunity to learn a proven approach to managing the grants submission lifecycle."

That's a wrap on our first-ever Effective Grant Writing Workshop! 🎉

Thank you to everyone who joined us, your participation was invaluable. During the workshop, we delved into grant writing, shared insights, and connected with like-minded individuals. It was inspiring to see the commitment to making a positive impact.

After the success of our Melbourne session, we'll be offering this in-person training in Sydney. Click the link below to join the waitlist!

https://youwin.by/3Rz5Tp9

Tackle Poor Past Performance

If previous performance with the or with a similar customer was not as good as you would like, address this using a risk mitigation and avoidance strategy:

- Cite the lessons learned.

- Cite the changes you have already made in your approach, and emphasise the positive results attained, if any.

- Cite your decision to team with another organisation or hire a proven individual with a record of performance in the area.

Again, contributors can be tempted to ignore or gloss over poor past performance. This will not strengthen your relationship with the customer. When addressed head on, poor performance is a chance for your company to highlight a commitment to improvement, honesty, and customer focus.

Never over-apologise for poor past performance. State the facts and move on to the lessons learned from the experience.

Using successful past performance is a key way to strengthen any proposal. But what if you don't have relevant past performance examples to promote in a proposal? Instead of omitting past performance when you don’t have relatable experience, address it.

If your company doesn’t have directly relevant experience, break the proposed tasks into subtasks that can be modified or tailored to the customer’s specific needs. For example, if you don’t have experience supporting a company on a global scale, emphasise the highly rated, round-the-clock support you have provided other customers. Lead into a plan to apply these best practices with the potential customer.

When you address the lack of precisely relevant past performance but emphasise relatable experience and skills, you show the customer the range of experience you still have and can apply to their needs.

Don't bury your head in the sand when it comes to weaknesses; mitigate them instead!

Consider the two examples below:

1. Our Project Manager will:

• Plan all work

• Set quality standards

• Report progress Weekly

2. Our Project Manager will complete the following tasks:

• Plan all work

• Set quality standards

• Report progress Weekly

Naming the type of information to come removes the need for the evaluator to work out what information they are being provided. They can then more easily understand and evaluate your proposal. Never miss an opportunity to make life easy for your evaluator!

Many organisations will spend countless dollars investing in training and activities related to opportunity capture, yet fail because the investment made in the pursuit of an opportunity does not make it into the document itself.

What happens when your response is compliant only and lands on the desk of an evaluator that has no experience working with your organisation, or worse still has experience working with one of your ?

Industry-leading organisations:

•view the proposal document and process as strategic

•ensure they have an effective means of communicating the strategic message from sales to proposal teams

•submit compelling customer-focused proposals that clearly articulate the business case for choosing them over their competitors