Learn to Write Proposals

Business Proposals that go wrong and the lessons learned

Here are two proposal horror stories. OK, one of them involves a presentation, but these are truie stories of what can tgo wrong when complacency becomes part of your business development processes. 1. A company decides to use a junior member of staff... Read >

Incentives for your bid team...and your other team members too

Look through the job adverts - or perhaps you are even writing the job adverts? Here are the salary highlights from two jobs posted today on an online jobs board: 1) Business Development Manager: BASIC £65K, OTE £100K+ 2) Bid Manager: Salary: £4... Read >

When two pages can be better than forty when you write a business proposal

When you are writing a business proposal it can be in response to a "Request for Proposal" (or "Invitation to Tender") - that is, a re-active proposal - one that is reacting to an event from the buyer. Or you can write a pro-active proposal - one that you... Read >

How to write a business proposal when you are a small business

Big businesses take writing business proposals seriously. Why? because big contracts are offered particularly by the public sector? On the radio this morning I heard that in the UK over 80% of public sector IT projects are awarded to only 5 of the larg... Read >

Anatomy of a proposal...presenting the solution

When writing a business proposal Executive Summary we suggest the following flow to the structure of this part of your sales document: - What's the requirement? - What's the ideal solution? - How does your solution solve the buyer's problems? An E... Read >

Anatomy of a proposal...our understanding of your requirement

Why do we need to explain back to the client what the requirement is? Surely the customer knows all there is to know about their problem? Why do we need to tell them? Well, yes they do know their problem and there will always be some background to the ... Read >

How to write an executive summary

Getting the structure of an Executive Summary right is vital. Just like the structure of your proposal, it needs to make sense. It also needs to demonstrate your understanding of the client's needs, a viable solution and your ability to deliver it with va... Read >

The anatomy of a bid...what to include when you write a business proposal?

If only there was a holy grail answer to this question... Let's look firstly at the anatomy of the business proposal and following on from our articles on the business development activities that go on before you write the proposal, in our next posting... Read >

How to write a proposal - Business proposal planning and managing your bid

This is the fourth in a short series of articles from Learn to Write Proposals examining how to write a proposal. If you compare sales people and project managers yu may conclude that you wouldn't want your project managers going out selling and writin... Read >

How to Write a Proposal - Finding and creating opportunities for writing a business proposal

The fact is that proposal writing starts well before you even put pen to paper...because the proposal is only part of the business development cycle. Sure, there are the technical things you need to know how to put the proposal together and to write persu... Read >

Capture planning...business development strategy that wins!

Capture planning is a term from the US that encompasses the strategy required to win a piece of work. It's more than the strategy of creating or writing business proposals, it's the technique of managing an opportunity from the very beginning to the very ... Read >

How to Write a Proposal - Qualifying your leads and bid/no-bid decisions for your business proposal

Once we have an opportunity we need to decide whether it is a viable one for us to actively pursue. Having meetings with clients, preparing a written proposal, travelling to a presentation and all the other costs of gaining business are just one aspect. I... Read >

Know you competitor's strategy and write a business proposal that has the edge.

You won't win every piece of work you pitch for; it's just not possible…and very time you lose a contract it's going to a competitor. However, you can help prevent this from happening by analysing the competition. Why analyse competition? How does t... Read >

Highlighting financial benefits is how to write a business proposal

It's not always the cheapest proposal that wins. In fact, very few buyers buy based on price…though they have often rejected proposals because they are too expensive! Buyer's buy based on value, not price. This means that they are looking for the soluti... Read >

Creating Customer Value When you Write Your Business Proposals

Read any book on sales or proposal writing. Go on a sales training course. One of the first topics that will be covered is features, advantages and benefits. Ultimately, any ... Read >