Page 121 - Writing Winning Business Proposals

112 Writing Winning Business Proposals

these trade-offs and ensure that we make informed and defensible decisions
about the resulting environmental and programmatic impacts.

The previous list wasn’t called evaluation criteria at all, but “Principles governing
strategic management of the program.” However, these principles were used in
evaluating the proposal, and the proposers certainly could have used themes such
as consistency and flexibility to increase the persuasiveness of their document.
Two final notes about evaluation criteria. First, as Figure 7.3 indicates, you should
try to weight the evaluation criteria even if they haven’t been weighted in an RFP.
As we’ll see below, you will be better able to select your themes if you indicate the
evaluation criterion’s degree of importance. Second, you should designate which
criteria are “knockout.” Sometimes called threshold criteria, knockout criteria are
those that you must meet or you will be eliminated from the competition. One
example of a knockout criterion could be “Must have an office in Kuala Lumpur.” If
you do, you’re in the running. If you don’t, you’re knocked out of the competition.

Counters to the Competition
Included in Cell 5 of the Psychologics Worksheet (Figure 7.4) are counters to the
competition, the selling points that allow you to differentiate yourself from the
known or likely competition’s approaches or expertise. If you are a small engi-
neering consulting firm bidding against a larger, more diverse competitor (for
example, a broad-line management consulting firm), you might try to claim that
your narrower focus and your size are strengths. That is, the project, you might
argue, involves an IT problem requiring a rather narrow IT solution, especially
by a consultancy whose relatively small client base allows for better, more client-
oriented service. Of course, the larger firm would argue quite differently.
Similarly, if you headed a team of in-house professionals proposing a particular
study and if management was thinking of soliciting outside bids for the same
study, you would probably need to argue that your team’s greater familiarity with
your own organization and its situation was highly advantageous and beneficial.
In identifying your competition, you should always consider potential in-house
competitors as well as the prospect’s other initiatives. The latter and your proposed
initiative are always competing for the allocation of the prospect’s scarce resources.
In generating counters to the competition, however, you must consider this as well:
Counters to the competition need to relate to the evaluation criteria. Assume that
yours is an international firm with 25 offices around the world and that the com-
petitor is a “single-shingle” outfit—one consultant, perhaps a university professor,
operating out of a home office. Your large firm with strategically placed offices offers
you little or no competitive advantage unless your size and location are meaningful for
the proposed project—that is, unless the evaluation criteria make them meaningful.