Page 195 - Writing Winning Business Proposals

186 Writing Winning Business Proposals

often include brief biographies as well as the roles and responsibilities of those
who will play a part in the project. These abilities are certainly part of the quali-
fications slot, even though they might not be in a section called “Qualifications.”
If you are a consultant, you have electronic files filled with descriptions of abili-
ties and capabilities: résumés of your professional staff; a record of the studies your
firm has done in various industries, in achieving various objectives; a history of the
firm itself and how it has grown and developed; and prepackaged statements about
the firm’s commitment to quality, effective implementation, and so on. All that boiler-
plate is important. And everyone else, including each of your competitors, has it too.
So you and they keep using it, especially in qualifications sections. I’ve read proposals
that didn’t once mention my organization’s name in the qualifications section because
that section contained nothing but generic fluff lifted whole cloth from an electronic
file. I’ve read other proposals that did contain the name of a firm, but not my own,
because the section was lifted whole cloth from another proposal. And I’ve even read
one document—you won’t believe this!—that contained place holders for where my
organization’s name should have gone, for example: <insert client’s name>. Computers
are wonderful things, but they’re not a remedy for laziness or carelessness or a substi-
tute for logical thinking about why you are, in fact, the best firm to meet my needs.
Persuasion occurs at the intersection of your abilities and your firm’s capabili-
ties with my needs. By that definition, a qualifications section that focuses only on
abilities and capabilities isn’t persuasive, or at least not as persuasive as it could be.
It must focus on those abilities and capabilities as they relate to my needs.
Many qualifications sections don’t address those needs because they are written
by someone who doesn’t know them, much less understand them. Consider, for
example, a typical situation that occurs at some large consulting firms. The firm
has four people working on a particular proposal, and they represent four levels in
the firm’s professional ranks. Though the terms differ from firm to firm, let’s call
them partner, principal, manager, and consultant.
Although the partner is the only one who has met with the potential client, she
will write little, if any, of the proposal. She will, however, review it, though her review
will focus primarily on staffing and costs, since she may get the proposal only 15
minutes before it has to go out the door. The principal will manage the proposal-
writing effort, composing some of the document’s parts and assigning others to the
manager. Partner, principal, and manager will have discussed the situation at the
prospect’s firm and the strategy for preparing the document. The consultant rarely,
if ever, writes proposals because he spends almost all his time doing research on the
projects themselves; he is not involved in selling work. He has neither met with the
potential client nor been apprised of the situation or the study’s objectives or possible
methodology. Can you guess who is assigned to write the qualifications section?
The consultant finds (he’s often instructed to find) several previous propos-
als written to similar clients, perhaps for similar studies. These proposals were