Being a creature of habit and schedule, I like recurring blog features. And, as someone asked for a lot of advice, I like to boil things down to outlines.

Which brings us to the first regular feature of Engage: the Friday outline.

Each week, I’ll post an outline relevant to management, business development, marketing, or PR. And because I’m all about priming the pump, I’ll kick things off with three outlines this week.

First up: Creating a great new-business proposal. I’m often asked how to put together winning proposals, either as part of counsel given to clients or water-cooler conversations with colleagues launching their own consulting careers. While best practices are going to vary a bit from industry to industry, the following outline can win work if executed strongly.

GENERIC PROPOSAL STRUCTURE

Executive Summary

• Write it first — let it guide the tone of the other proposal elements
• Umbrella statement of your case and summary of the entire proposal
• One page; two on a larger proposal

What you say: Lead with value — the impact and benefits off what you’ll do, not the laundry list of tasks. Focus on the fit between your team and the project at hand.
What you demonstrate: Banners flapping in the breeze — create the vision of what success looks like

Statement of Need

• Why the project is necessary
• Ideal place to show strategic knowledge of how the project fits into a bigger picture
• One to two pages

What you say: Lead with value — the impact and benefits off what you’ll do, not the laundry list of tasks. Focus on the fit between your team and the project at hand.
What you demonstrate: Banners flapping in the breeze — create the vision of what success looks like

Project Description / Statement of Work

• Nuts and bolts of how the project will be implemented and evaluated
• Resist the urge to go into deep technical detail
• Scoring (in a competitive bid) matters a great deal in this section - be sure all RFP elements regarding scope are answered
• Three to five pages, generally

What you say: What you’ll do, how you’ll do it — including schedule issues and nods to any external or client-induced constraints
What you demonstrate: You’ve got a plan, it’s cohesive and it has contingencies. The scope of work isn’t just about laying out how you’ll do the job — at the proposal stage, it’s about providing a level of emotional comfort (”These guys know what they’re doing!”). Remember: People buy for emotional reasons, then back it up with data to rationalize the decision.

Budget

• Financial description of the project plus explanatory notes
• One page (two if a particularly detailed or large budget is involved)

What you say: The minimum required to clearly explain your pricing and the value delivered. This is not the place for fine print and three pages of footnotes.
What you demonstrate: Value (which is not the same as price), low risk (through warranty, fixed pricing or other measures) and transparency (through streamlined pricing and billing practices).

Organization Information

• Organizational bio (one page, edited every single time to make it relevant to the project at hand)
• Senior team member bios, as needed and edited every single time for relevance, to demonstrate appropriate expertise

What you say: Here are the people you can expect to interact with, and they all have relevant expertise
What you demonstrate: Your team isn’t just good — it’s the only rational solution to their challenge

Conclusions

• Summary of the proposal’s main points
• Focus on value delivered, not specific tasks
• Generally just 1-4 paragraphs, certainly no more than a page

What you say: Focus on unique value propositions; ask for the work (it’s surprising how seldom proposals fail to explicitly ask for the work)
What you demonstrate: The yin to the executive summary’s yang — a chance to bring the process full-circle back to an emotional (albeit not too emotional) appeal

Do I follow it myself? Sometimes, but there are a couple of clear exceptions:

• With public-sector work, potential clients tell you (usually in mind-numbing detail) how you have to structure your proposal.
• For most private-sector work, I’ve developed an unusual format that works and has a high close rate — something I’m happy to share one-on-one but less eager to post on the wide-open web.

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