Page 36 - Writing Winning Business Proposals

Aligning the Baseline Logic 27

miss mine altogether. Start with me, your potential client, and remember this:
You don’t invent red flags; they exist. Red flags don’t express your weaknesses.
They signal an opportunity for resolving possible differences, so that, ideally, by
the time you write your proposal, your understanding matches mine, and my
team’s, and your team’s. Even if you can’t resolve a red flag by the time you need
to submit your proposal, you will at least recognize that it exists and make, not a
nondecision decision, but a strategic decision based on the flag’s existence.
What follows are crucial questions you need to ask yourself to help you fully
align the various elements in Figure 3.1. Below these questions are subsections
that discuss each question in some detail:

◉ Are the potential client’s strategic direction, triggering event, overriding prob-
lem, and effects/lack of benefits aligned?
◉ Are the overriding question(s), objective(s), and desired result(s) aligned?
◉ Is the overriding problem aligned with the overriding question(s)?
◉ Are the deliverables aligned with the desired result(s)?
◉ Are the deliverables and desired result(s) aligned with the benefits?
◉ Are the benefits aligned with the effects/lack of benefits?

Are the Potential Client’s Strategic Direction, Triggering
Event, Overriding Problem, and Effects/Lack of

Benefits Aligned? (Logics Worksheet, Cells 1 and 2)

Regarding the left side of Figure 3.1, the current situation, you need to under-
stand four vital elements and their alignments.

Strategic Direction

Why strategic direction? Because if you want to have a rich relationship with me,
as opposed to just a “one-off” engagement, you want to work on projects that will
help my firm achieve our strategic direction. In such projects, your fees will likely
be greater (because such projects are more valuable to me), and you will be work-
ing at higher levels of my organization, with the very people with whom you wish
to develop solid relationships. Accordingly, you want the overriding problem you
will address to align with our strategic direction. If it doesn’t, red flag it.

Triggering Event

As defined in the downloadable glossary, the triggering event is that event (in some
cases, events) that brought to our consciousness the existence of the overriding