How to Develop Strong Win Themes For Your Proposal

2. WIN THEMES ARE REASONS TO BUY—BUT ARE THEY YOUR CUSTOMER’S REASONS? • Experienced proposal managers know that proposal win themes are the key benefits you’re bringing to the customer’s RFP. But as so often happens in the haste of proposal development, win themes can be afterthoughts.

3. HERE’S THE BIGGEST MISTAKE YOU CAN MAKE IN DRAFTING WIN THEMES! • Quite simply, hastily crafted win themes will read like bullet points from your company’s sales literature or website. Yes, your leadership and marketing team continually assess and refine your firm’s value proposition as a worthy competitor in your industry.

4. CHALLENGE YOUR WIN THEMES • To win the hearts and minds of your customer’s evaluators, you must begin your thinking from the opposite direction: • What core business needs in the customer’s organization motivated the program or project this RFP requires.

5. SO WHAT IS A WELL-FORMED WIN THEME? • Win themes fall into one of three categories: • Discriminators and differentiators • Common themes based on strengths • Turnarounds and ghosts

6. DISCRIMINATORS AND DIFFERENTIATORS • These advantages set you apart from your competition. Perhaps you’ve got a track record of building LEED-certified buildings or a prominent government agency uses your technology. You don’t need to be the only company that has this differentiator, but there should only be one or two others. • Above all, this differentiator must matter to your customer. If you’ve won “Best Place to Work” in a prestigious HR journal five years in a row, it’s important to ask whether this testimonial really matters to your client before making it a pillar of your proposal. • On the other hand, if you’re an industry-recognized leader in protecting your clients’ data and your customer has cited privacy concerns as a hot-button issue, you’re looking at a powerful win theme.

7. COMMON THEMES BASED ON STRENGTHS • Talking about your non-unique strengths may sound counterintuitive. • The government expects any qualified bidder to bring them. But remember that your win themes tackle how you’re going to get from the bidding stage to the signing stage. • You’ll get there by demonstrating that you meet the customer’s requirements.

8. GHOSTS INTO TURNAROUNDS • There’s no need to shove your past failings in a closet and shut the door forever. On the contrary, there may be an opportunity to make them win themes if you’ve taken steps to address the problems. • So resurrect your ghosts and turn them around! (Or, in the jargon of proposal management, turn your lessons learned into best practices.)

9. WHAT MAKES A WIN THEME EFFECTIVE? • A strong win theme will: • Emphasize the features that deliver the benefits. You thus demonstrate that your solution is both specific and effective. • Avoid technical jargon. Non-subject matter experts within your customer’s organization — and particularly some of the early evaluators — might not know these terms. • Offer specifics — and proofs — instead of the generalizations that your competitors might use.

10. WIN THEMES PROVIDE A ROADMAP FOR YOUR ENTIRE PROPOSAL Short and sweet — if your authors understand your customer’s core needs — as echoed in your win themes — their descriptions of your offer will not only meet requirements but also solve the fundamental problems that motivated the RFP. And if your competitors are just regurgitating bullet points from their sales pitches, your proposal will be the one to hit home.

11. 7361 Calhoun Place, Suite 560 Rockville, MD (301) 384-3350 https://ostglobalsolutions.com/ service@ostglobalsolutions.com • Reference Article -https://blog.ostglobalsolutions.com/developing-government-proposal-win-themes/ GET IN TOUCH WITH US