How to write winning proposals in a competitive enterprise market. Hard-won victories from hand-crafted proposals gave way to a predictable win machine with a 3x win rate

Winning is a habit…and so is losing. The client was a large consulting company that had hit a losing streak. They won only a small fraction of their fair share in any competitive stakeout (in a three-way contest, a fair share is ⅓). This share was worse at larger levels, where in deals above $50 mn, the company’s win rate was a minuscule fraction. Something was wrong here.

Doloop Digital’s Gaurav Rastogi’s team audited the proposals and win themes. Nearly 400 people were involved in the proposal writing process, and each proposal was a uniquely hand-crafted collage of boilerplate service line text. The clients were being sent Frankenstein’s deck- a discordant and incoherent compilation with no link to the client’s stated and understood problems. It was a surprise the company was winning at all; the few proposals that it did win, and each rare win was a source of joy and celebration.

How do you make winning boringly predictable?

We set up a Value Design function that could be the backbone of the proposal factory. This team could “see it better, sew it better, and say it better.” Solution architecture was trusted with specialists pulled from other delivery functions while working in this team. Bid Managers were trained and hired to serve as the producers and managers of the entire bid process. A better knowledge management system was built to have 60% of the proposal content available before anyone begins work on the proposal, thereby releasing more time for solution design and client buy-in during the pursuit. The win themes were decided up front, allowing the sales leaders to write and socialize the executive summary with the client at the beginning of the proposal process.

This program took 18 months to implement, and the company saw a tripling of its win rates without a commensurate increase in pursuit effort.

How are you creating a win machine for your proposals? Begin with the following steps:

• Audit your winning and losing proposals and presentations for the last two years.
• Understand the effort-time graph of how a proposal is currently assembled. Chances are there is a peak at the last hour, which is unlikely the team’s finest hour.
• Compare proposals to see the quantum of new content created across the company, even for similar win themes.
• As for an executive summary at the beginning of the deal pursuit, as a condition for deploying expensive resources.



Further learning. Contact us for Gaurav Rastogi’s “Setting Up a Proposal Factory,” a one-week workshop about your proposal factory.