Page 7 - Writing Winning Business Proposals

vi Preface

something much less tangible and rarely part of the evaluation criteria, whether
1
those criteria are written down or in the buyers’ heads. That something has to
do with relationships, with the buyers’ feeling that you are right, that you under-
stand, that you are compatible. So, yes, price is frequently a consideration, as is
expertise. But someone is always or can always be less costly, and the world is full
of experts. Price and expertise get you in the running, but they don’t ensure that
you’ll win.
The goal of this book is twofold:

1. Specifically, to get you the additional two to five points necessary to win
2. Generally, to increase your win rate, your hit rate

By how much? That’s impossible to say, of course, though some data suggest that
it might be considerable. The concepts in Writing Winning Business Proposals
(WWBP) are the same ones taught in a two-day program that has been offered to
organizations large and small in more than 25 countries on five continents over
the last 20 years. The largest organization tracked over one year the performance
of those who had taken the two-day program and those who hadn’t. Following
are the results. (See Figure P.1.)
When you calculate the number of proposals won by the number of proposals
submitted, the participants’ hit rate percentage (proposals won divided by pro-
posals submitted) was 30 points higher. More interesting is that when hit rate
was weighted using the monetary value of the proposals won compared to the
total value submitted, the hit rate percentage more than doubled, suggesting that
participants were able to sell higher-value work than those who had not taken the
program. As you read the contents of WWBP, you’ll clearly understand why.

Nonparticipants’ hit rate 41%

Participants’ hit rate, by
number of proposals 71%
Participants’ hit rate, by 83%
value of proposals

w
ed the t
o
ogram based on this book
’
s
training pr
-
da
y
omplet
.
1
P
FIGURE P.1 Those who completed the two-day training program based on this book’s
FIGURE

hose who c

T
concepts had more than double the hit rate of those who did not.
concepts had more than double the hit rate of those who did not.