Page 114 - Writing Winning Business Proposals

Identifying, Selecting, and Developing Themes 105

training, motivation, organizational structure, communications, and control
will be significant.
Yet the breadth of these changes is only the first complicating factor. Next is
the exceptional magnitude of the change in terms of the number of plants
involved, the varieties of locations, countries, and cultures, and the depth of
change in your traditional manufacturing style.
In addition, the speed with which the integration will be implemented
leaves little opportunity for error. Furthermore, the introduction of the XYZ
Cost Concept provides an additional complication of significantly higher
product volumes to your company, which is traditionally accustomed to low-
volume production.

Finally, no precedent exists for such a complex change except perhaps that
which occurred in your own marketing organization.

What this passage has that so many proposals lack is the theme of this chapter,
which is themes:

The
Highlighted
Essential
Messages that
Express the character of my
Story

What Themes Are

Themes are the highlighted messages of your proposal because they are repeated
and gain force and emphasis through their repetition. They are essential messages
because they come from three essential elements of the selling process: my and
the other buyers’ hot buttons, our evaluation criteria, and your counters to your
competition. As one of the best consultants I know once said to me: “To sell con-
sulting services, your client needs to feel as if the two of you grew up in the same
house together”—i.e., that you shared the same history, the same story, and that
your proposal expresses the character of that story.
The writer of the RST proposal knew (and knew that I knew) that the effort
would be extraordinarily complex, would involve massive change in my orga-
nization, and would require a high level of rapport between the consultants
and my people as we all worked together to detect problems, resolve issues,