Page 234 - Writing Winning Business Proposals

Summary: The Proposal Development Process 225

that buyer’s general level of influence within his or her firm. Receptivity
refers to a buyer’s relative reception to your selling efforts to date.
◉ Evaluation criteria on which you believe you rate highly or that the buy-
ers weight heavily.
◉ Counters to the competition that provide you with an opportunity to
significantly counter competitors’ arguments or moves, remembering
that your competition can also include in-house individuals or other ini-
tiatives competing for the same limited resources.
C. Develop the themes on the Themes Development Worksheet.
5. Derive the project’s benefits from the following worksheets:
A. Baseline Logic Benefits (Logics Worksheet, Cell 6).
B. Buyers’ Benefits (Psychologics Worksheet, Cell 1).
C. Hot Button Benefits (Psychologics Worksheet, Cell 2).
D. Themes Development Benefits (Themes Development Worksheet, Benefits
column).
6. As you work, add red and green flags to your Logics and Psychologics
Worksheets: a red flag to indicate a weakness, vulnerability, or gap in
information; a green flag to indicate a strength.
7. Conduct a 40-minute Green Team Review (Chapter 8) to review your
strengths and weaknesses and to identify strategic actions to address them.
Conduct one or more Green Team Reviews before investing significant time
in proposal preparation. Take whatever actions you and your team believe
appropriate (and have the time and resources to implement) to eliminate red
flags and leverage green flags.
Proposal Preparation
8. Using the situation and objectives slots, write a background section (Chapter
9 and Figure 14.2) that includes:
A. A Story Component using information from the Logics Worksheet, Cells 1 and 2.
B. A Questions Component that identifies the key questions that must be answered
to eliminate the problem or capitalize on the opportunity. (Use the second
and lower rows of the logic tree for the methodology to generate some of these
questions; also use deliverables from the Logics Worksheet, Cell 5.)
C. A Closing Component that states the project’s objectives (Logics Worksheet,
Cells 3 and 4) and ends with briefly stated benefits (Logics Worksheet, Cell 6).
9. Write a methods section that, when necessary and appropriate (Chapter 10
and Figure 14.3):
A. At the section level, composes the section’s opening P-slot from the Situation
and Methods columns of the Themes Development Worksheet to provide a
rationale that explains why, out of a universe of possible approaches, you
will use this approach in this situation.