When was the last time your team truly examined why you won—or lost—a proposal? Every submission your team makes, win or lose, contains a roadmap for doing better next time. Yet many organizations treat each proposal as a standalone event, moving quickly from one bid to the next without pausing to reflect on what worked, what didn't, and why. This is a costly mistake. A structured lessons learned program, built into every stage of the business development lifecycle, is one of the most powerful tools a company can use to sharpen its competitive edge. Conducting Lessons Learned Conducting lessons learned after each proposal submission is a critical part of the business development lifecycle. It helps companies understand where they are excelling and where they need to improve. To ensure the experience is fresh in everyone's mind, each member of the proposal team should document their impressions — both positive and negative — within the first week after submission. Sample questions to consider include: Was the proposal development schedule reasonable and realistic? Why or why not? Were there any bottlenecks or major issues? If so, what were they, and how could they be mitigated in the future? Did the team work well together? If not, how could team dynamics have been improved? How effective was communication among the team? What went well? What could have been improved? Did any unexpected problems occur during proposal development? If so, how could they be mitigated going forward? Did the team stay within its B&P budget? If not, what could have been done differently? What worked best during the capture and proposal effort? What areas require improvement? A practical way to gather and analyze this feedback is to send a survey to each team member using an automated tool, which makes it easier to collate and compare responses. After Action Report Once the results are in, the Proposal Manager should review the feedback and prepare an After Action Report that details lessons learned and recommended next steps. This report should be shared with the full proposal team to ensure that insights are carried forward into future efforts. Lessons Learned Session Additionally, after contract award is announced, the team should conduct a formal Lessons Learned Session to document and discuss observations, findings, and conclusions — win or lose. By understanding where the team encountered roadblocks, and where the customer found gaps in the response, the team can address those issues and strengthen both the process and the final product on future efforts. Equally important: identify what the team is doing well and make sure those practices are preserved and repeated. Analyzing Trends and Updating Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) Conducting lessons learned after each proposal is valuable, but the benefit compounds when you step back and look at the bigger picture. On an annual basis, review your After Action Reports and lessons learned debriefs as a body of work, and analyze them for recurring themes and patterns. As the year wraps up, whether you follow a corporate fiscal year or the calendar year, ask yourself: What challenges keep surfacing? Where does the team consistently perform well? Sharing these trends with your team creates a culture of transparency and accountability, and helps focus improvement efforts where they matter most. More importantly, translate those findings into action by updating your business development and proposal SOPs. If internal feedback shows the team is consistently scrambling during production, adjust your SOPs to launch the production process earlier. If customer debriefs repeatedly cite a lack of customer understanding, take a hard look at your capture process and strengthen your call plan execution. Continuously refining your processes in response to real data is one of the clearest paths to improved performance—and more wins. Final Thoughts Every organization in this industry wants to win more, and win rates are often cited as the headline measure of a business development organization's health. While they are a useful starting point, win rates alone don't tell the whole story. Too many variables influence any single outcome. What matters more is building the discipline to learn from every effort, regardless of the result. A consistent lessons learned program, paired with annual trend analysis and a willingness to update your processes, creates a feedback loop that makes your team sharper over time. The companies that win consistently aren't just the ones with the best writers or the biggest budgets, they're the ones that treat every proposal, win or lose, as an opportunity to get better.

Tight page limitations are continuing to be a challenge as contracting officers streamline their acquisition processes. When faced with tight page restrictions, we often find ourselves struggling with trimming five pages of material into two pages of allocated space. However, sometimes the content we are working with is so long because it is simply overly wordy. In this article, I present six tricks for eliminating waste. 1. Use Active Voice With active voice, the subject of the sentence comes first and performs the action in the sentence. Active voice is more straightforward and concise than passive voice. It typically results in shorter, sharper sentences. So not only does it take up less real estate, it flows better and is easier to understand. Passive: It was decided by the Program Manager to streamline the program. Active, Strong Verb: The Program Manager streamlined the program. 2. Eliminate Redundancies Remove redundancies that take up extra space and don’t add value. I present some examples below.

In the world of proposal development, there’s a persistent misconception that longer writing signals deeper thinking. Teams sometimes feel pressure to fill pages, add more qualifiers, or expand explanations in hopes that additional words will make their message more persuasive. However, the opposite is often true. Clear writing is powerful because it makes it easy for the reader to understand, evaluate, and remember your message. The goal should be clarity, not volume. The most effective writers know that concise, direct language carries more impact than dense paragraphs and complicated phrasing. In this article, we present seven practical tips to help you write more clearly and effectively. 1. Break Up Long Sentences and Paragraphs Long sentences are one of the most common causes of unclear writing. When a sentence stretches beyond 25–30 words, it is easy for readers to lose track of the main point. Instead of packing multiple ideas into a single sentence, break them into shorter, focused statements. Each sentence should communicate one main idea. Example Less clear: Our team will implement a comprehensive data management framework designed to enhance reporting capabilities while also improving accessibility for users across multiple departments. Clearer: Our team will implement a comprehensive data management framework. This approach improves reporting and makes data more accessible across departments. Shorter sentences reduce cognitive load and help readers absorb information quickly. Similarly, large blocks of text can overwhelm readers. Each paragraph should focus on a single idea or topic. If a paragraph begins to cover multiple points, consider splitting it. Shorter paragraphs make it easier for readers to scan and process information. 2. Avoid Nominalizations Nominalizations occur when verbs are turned into nouns, often ending in -tion, -ment, or -ance. While they are sometimes necessary, they can make writing more abstract and wordier. Whenever possible, convert nominalizations back into strong verbs. Example Wordy: The implementation of the solution will result in the improvement of operational efficiency. Clearer: Implementing the solution will improve operational efficiency. Strong verbs make writing more direct and easier to understand. 3. Choose Strong, Specific Verbs Weak verbs like make, do, provide, conduct, or perform typically require additional words to explain what is happening. Strong verbs communicate action more clearly and concisely. Example Weak: Our team will conduct an analysis of system performance. Stronger: Our team will analyze system performance. Replacing weak verb phrases with precise verbs makes writing sharper and more confident. 4. Remove Unnecessary Words Many phrases in proposal writing add length without adding meaning. Words like very, really, quite, and in order to clutter your sentences. Look for opportunities to tighten phrasing. Examples In order to → To Due to the fact that → Because At this point in time → Now The goal isn’t to eliminate detail, it’s to eliminate filler. 5. Use Active Voice When Possible Active voice makes it clear who is responsible for an action and typically produces shorter sentences. Passive voice can be useful in certain situations, but overuse can make writing vague and indirect. Example Passive: The report will be completed by the team next week. Active: The team will complete the report next week. Active voice improves clarity and accountability. 6. Use Lists When Appropriate When presenting multiple related items—steps, benefits, features, or requirements—lists can improve readability. Lists allow readers to quickly understand key points without digging through dense paragraphs. They also highlight structure and make complex information easier to follow. Final Thoughts When readers can quickly understand your message, they are far more likely to absorb your ideas and act on them. Remember: strong writing isn’t measured by how many words you use. It’s measured by how clearly those words communicate your message.

Everyone wants Artificial Intelligence (AI) to be the silver bullet that finally fixes the proposal process. Faster content, fewer late nights, no more staring at a blank page. And honestly? AI does help. But there's one thing it hasn't changed—and that most proposal professionals still don't want to hear: you still need color team reviews. Here's why that's still true, even in the age of AI. Procrastination doesn't care what tools you have According to the National Institutes of Health, up to 95% of adults procrastinate, and approximately 20–25% are chronic procrastinators. About 88% of the workforce procrastinates for at least one hour a day. AI makes content generation faster, but it doesn't make humans more disciplined. Writers will still wait until the last minute. They'll still generate a first draft and call it done. Established proposal methodologies—from APMP best practices to decades of hard-won industry experience—exist precisely to fight this tendency: daily stand-ups, interim deadlines, and structured reviews that force consistent progress rather than a last-minute scramble. The first draft is never the final draft — AI or not For decades, English teachers have required students to submit multiple drafts for exactly this reason. Writing is a process of thinking. Multiple iterations help writers clarify ideas, improve organization, and refine content based on feedback. AI can accelerate the drafting stage, but it can't replace the critical eye of a reviewer who understands your win strategy, knows the customer, and can spot a weak discriminator from across the room. Stakeholder surprises at submission are still catastrophic Here's what poor planning actually looks like in practice: you're ready to hit submit, and a key stakeholder wants something changed at the last minute. A seemingly small thing to them that requires hours of rework: checking cross-references, adjusting content across multiple volumes. Or worse, they reject the entire proposal and demand a full rewrite, with a deadline early the next day. AI doesn't prevent this. Only early, structured stakeholder engagement does. Color team reviews aren't just about catching bad writing. They're about building the buy-in you need before it's too late to act on it. The problems are old. The tools are new. The process still works AI has changed how fast we can produce a draft. It hasn't changed human nature, the need for iteration, or the cost of a stakeholder blindside at the finish line. These structured methodologies were built around enduring realities—and those realities haven't gone anywhere just because the drafting got faster. I get it: color team reviews suck. But proposals without them suck more.

In the current business environment, there is a lot of buzz out there promising how Artificial Intelligence (AI) can fix your proposal process. And maybe your proposal process is broken. But I’m willing to bet that if your proposal process is broken, the rest of your business development process is probably broken too. What do I mean? I mean that in a lot of cases, the reason proposal teams are scrambling is because: Bid decisions are delayed There are too many proposals in the pipeline to manage using the existing resources Teams are pursuing opportunities with low probabilities of win Solution development is happening after the request for proposal (RFP) release There’s a lack of opportunity, customer, and competitor information When your proposal teams start from a competitive disadvantage, it doesn’t really matter how good or bad the proposal process is. You’re setting your teams up for failure. Business Development Lifecycle Market Segmentation, Long-Term Positioning, and Opportunity Analysis (typically, 3+ months) Successful business development should begin much earlier than the proposal development phase. Market segmentation and long-term positioning are ongoing activities that should occur months before an opportunity hits the streets. Once an opportunity has been identified, leadership should decide on whether it’s worth the business’s time and money to further assess and qualify that opportunity (i.e., move forward to further assess the opportunity). During this time, teams should gather preliminary intelligence on the program and the customer. They should be meeting with the customer. Understanding the opportunity drivers. Educating the customer on the value the team could bring to the program. Once sufficient information is gathered about the opportunity, then the team can make an informed pursuit decision and assign a capture manager. Long-term planning and positioning provide corporate awareness of upcoming opportunities aligned with strategic goals. By targeting opportunities that meet strategic goals of the company, and identifying those opportunities early, you’ll have time to implement effective opportunity pursuit strategies. Capture Planning (typically, 3 to 12 months) During the capture phase, teams should build on the intelligence gathered during the long-term positioning phase. They continue to build customer relationships and gather additional opportunity and competitor information. The capture manager should develop the capture plan and win strategy, send out data calls, understand the competitive range, develop the pricing strategy, and develop the teaming strategy. The capture plan should be reviewed by leadership periodically to ensure sufficient capture progress is being made. Tough questions should be asked. Strong guidance on next steps should be issued, especially if the team is not on track. Also during this phase, we should see a Black Hat review, Blue Team review, and initial Executive Summary development. The capture phase culminates with a preliminary bid/no-bid decision and proposal managers are assigned. Building Meaningful Customer Relationships These early business development phases enable key players from your organization to not only gather information about the customer, but to build a meaningful relationship with the customer and understand their underlying concerns. By meeting regularly with the customer well in advance of the RFP, you and your team will have the time to establish strong working relationships. As these relationships grow, the team will begin to understand the customers’ concerns directly related to the program and determine what keeps them up at night. Teams can also develop solutions to meet the customers’ needs and vet those solutions with the customers prior to the RFP release. Gathering Customer and Competitive Information These early business development stages also provide your team with time to gather customer, opportunity, and competitive intelligence. This includes identifying who the key decision makers are with the customer, the drivers behind the solicitation, any issues they may be having on the current contract or other similar contracts, and which other companies might be interested in pursuing the opportunity. These phases provide a critical understanding of the potential strategies of the competition, who they might be teaming with, and what their strengths and weaknesses are. Armed with this information, you’ll be able to develop strategies to ghost the weaknesses and downplay the strengths of the competition. Responding to Requests for Information (RFIs) and Sources Sought When opportunities are identified and qualified early in the business development process, teams can participate in the Government’s research process. RFIs and Sources Sought are critical elements in the customer’s acquisition process, so when the customer takes the time to release these for opportunities you’re interested in, it’s critical that you take the time to respond. RFIs and Sources Sought are formal resources that the customer uses to understand the available contractors and the available solutions relevant to their upcoming procurement. These documents help the customer understand that you are interested in bidding and are an opportunity to continue educating the customer about your organization and solution. When you don’t target an opportunity until after the RFP release, you miss out on these communication and shaping points with the customer. Proposal Planning (typically, 1 to 6 months) During the proposal planning phase, the proposal manager will extract relevant information from the capture plan to develop the proposal management plan. The proposal manager and capture manager should work together to define and assign the required proposal resources. The proposal manager will work with the team to get a proposal site established, develop a notional outline and compliance matrix based on draft or straw-man RFPs, establish storyboard and drafting templates. The capture manager will continue to refine the pricing strategy during this time. When ready, the team will begin storyboarding and writing activities. It’s common to conduct the initial Pink Team review during the planning phase. Once the final RFP is released, the proposal planning phase is complete once the bid decision is validated. All this research, planning, and preparation serve to support a smoother and more successful proposal process once the final RFP is released. Proposal Development (typically, 1 to 3 months—and sometimes less) When we talk about “fixing” our proposal process, this is the phase that we are generally referring to: the time from RFP release through submission. Where we kickoff the proposal effort, have drafting and review cycles, finalize the document, and submit. We might even try to squeeze in some planning and solutioning activities into the mix, if those have not happened already. Reflecting on the recommended capture, positioning, solution development, and pre-RFP draft development activities that should take place for the most successful outcome, it’s no wonder that proposals that begin at the RFP drop—or worse—well after the RFP drop—are frequently unsuccessful. There simply isn’t enough time to develop a winning strategy and proposal in that short amount of time. Final Thoughts All this is to say, maybe your proposal process really is broken. But to truly fix it, I would be willing to bet you need to fix a lot of the process upstream. Building a relationship with your customer and understanding their underlying concerns takes time and discipline. Without solid customer relationships, you won’t have the opportunity to understand their programmatic concerns or determine what really keeps them up at night. Further, you won’t be able to develop solutions to meet their needs and vet those solutions prior to the RFP release. Once the RFP is released, it’s too late for effective opportunity shaping and solution vetting. It’s no wonder that pop-up or short-notice efforts typically have a much lower win rate than targeted and well-positioned opportunities. Proposals are won during the capture phase—and to build the necessary relationships, understand the competitive landscape, and mitigate potential issues—you need time, and you need a disciplined business development process. Fixing your proposal process won’t be enough.

In the competitive world of government and commercial contracting, winning more work is rarely just about writing better proposals. However, organizations often focus heavily on improving proposal quality while overlooking a critical upstream factor: whether they should be pursuing the opportunity at all. A thoughtful pursuit strategy helps teams focus their time, resources, and energy on opportunities that align with their strengths, relationships, and long-term business goals. By applying discipline to the pursuit process and using metrics such as win rates and capture rates to guide decisions, companies can better prioritize the opportunities that truly move the needle for the business. In this article, we’ll take a closer look at how understanding these metrics and applying a structured pursuit strategy can help organizations improve both their efficiency and their overall probability of win. Win Rate vs. Capture Rate Before we discuss the pursuit strategy in a bit more detail, I wanted to touch on win rats vs. capture rates. Win rates are calculated by taking total opportunities won and dividing by total opportunities pursued, while capture rates are the total dollars won by the total dollars pursued. Looking at both rates is important in understanding whether you have a healthy pursuit strategy. Sometimes looking at the numbers in extremes can help. For example, let’s say your team loses one large proposal worth $500M but wins three small proposals worth $10M each. In this instance, your win rate is fairly high (75%), but the impact to revenue is fairly low ($30M). In this example, you’ll see that the capture rate is actually quite low as well ($30M/$530M = 6%). Now let’s say your team wins that one large proposal worth $500M but loses the three small proposals worth $10M each. In this instance, your win rate is comparably lower (25%), but your capture rate is significantly higher ($500M won/$530M pursued = 94%). In this example, the $500M in wins does much more for the company’s overall business performance than the $30M in wins from the example with the higher win rate. You should aim to have a healthy balance between your win and capture rates. The team should be sure to consider the administrative costs that go into the smaller deals—on both the pursuit side and the execution side. Smaller dollar value proposals often require just as much effort to pursue as larger dollar value proposals—and require almost as much contractual documentation on the execution side. All that is not to say that your company should only go after large opportunities. For example, based on the size of and capabilities of your organization, it may simply be easier to win smaller opportunities. By pursuing opportunities that are in your company’s sweet spot, these multiple small opportunities may keep your win rates high and revenues steady. However, by slowly and strategically pursuing larger efforts, you may be able to expand into contracts that overall will require less administrative support on the pursuit and win side, as well as on the execution side. How to Use Win and Capture Rates to Better Inform Pursuit Strategies Capture and win rates are great starting points for assessing the health of a business development organization. For example, if you notice low win or capture rates, you can start to assess the reasons why you might now be winning. I recommend starting with the evaluation debriefs from the customer. If the debriefs cite problems with compliance, then it may be that the process is breaking down at the end, when the Proposal Manager takes the reins. However, if the debriefs cite problems with the solution or lack of customer understanding, it’s much more likely the problem starts much earlier than the RFP drop, during the business development and capture phases. Or there may even be a breakdown in the transfer of knowledge and information between the capture and proposal phases. Companies can also analyze which customers and services they seem to have higher success rates with and the reasons why this may be the case. For example, you’ll likely notice a higher success rate among opportunities where the team has better relationships with the customer, proven contract success with the customer, and/or proven contract success delivering a similar product or service. In those areas where you notice less success, perhaps you need to build stronger customer relationships, team to strengthen your position within the customer organization, and/or consider subcontracting in product/service areas where you are looking to expand. Assessing Potential Opportunities Armed with an understanding of your company’s strengths and weaknesses, you can begin to make better informed decisions when assessing potential opportunities. When assessing potential opportunities for a positive pursuit decision, it’s important to ask questions that determine whether the opportunity aligns with the overall company strategic goals, whether the opportunity meets individual business unit goals (if applicable), whether the company has the right capabilities to win and deliver the work, and whether the team has the necessary past performance to support a win. When vetting potential opportunities in the pipeline, teams may consider factors such as the win probability, whether there is adequate time to respond, whether the team has solid customer information, whether funding is available, and whether the opportunity falls within the targeted business market. Other considerations include how well the team can meet the anticipated requirements, whether the contract is worth the effort required to bid, and whether the team has the available resources to sufficiently support the proposal effort. The team may also consider the following guidance when making pursuit decisions: Similar Product/Service, Existing Customer Pursuit Indication: Strong Recommended Strategy: Because you know the product, market, and customer, you should focus on the competition and understanding their strengths, weaknesses, and likely strategies Similar Product/Service, New Customer Pursuit Indication: Some Caution Recommended Strategy: Because you don’t know the customer and market as well, you should first focus your efforts on learning the market and customer. You’ll want to establish your company in the market and build relationships with the customer before focusing on the competition. New Product/Service, Existing Customer Pursuit Indication: Caution Recommended Strategy: You’ll want to proceed with caution. First focus on filling capability gaps and making sure you have a solution that meets the needs of your customer. Then turn your attention to learning about the competition. New Product/Service, New Customer Pursuit Indication: Weak/Success Unlikely Recommended Strategy: You should drop this opportunity from the pipeline. If you decide to pursue this opportunity, it will require significant resources and will still likely have a very low probability of success. By spending energy on opportunities that fit the business goals and that have a higher chance of success, you’ll not only save time and money, you’ll improve the morale of your resources. In addition to lowering your overall win and capture rates, consistently pursuing opportunities with low probabilities of win is an ineffective use of resources, which can burn out your staff, lower morale, and result in increased capture and proposal staff turnover. Final Thoughts In this world of bids and proposals, we all certainly want to win more. But there are so many factors that impact a company’s probability of win, and a number of things throughout the opportunity lifecycle can impact a company’s chances of winning (both positively and negatively). However, one key thing that you can do to positively impact your chances of winning is to simply pursue the right opportunities. Select opportunities that make sense for your business strategy, where you have strong relationships or can build strong relationships before the Request for Proposal (RFP) drops, where you have demonstrated success delivering similar products or services. Select opportunities where you have sufficient time to address any gaps, weaknesses, or showstoppers. Remember, once the RFP is released, it’s very likely too late to mitigate any of these potential flaws in your approach, capabilities, or solution. It’s no wonder that pop-up or short-notice efforts typically have a much lower win rate than strategically targeted and well-positioned opportunities. This is all why starting the process early and applying a solid pursuit strategy really are so critical to improving your chances of winning and increasing your overall win and capture rates.

How Applying Rigor in Your Bid Decisions Will Improve Your Win Rate

Winning proposals rarely start when the solicitation is released—they start months earlier during capture. The capture phase is where teams gather intelligence about the customer, shape their solution, understand the competitive landscape, and begin developing the strategy that will ultimately drive the proposal. Yet despite its importance, capture planning is often rushed, loosely documented, or skipped altogether. When that happens, proposal teams are forced to start from scratch, relying on assumptions rather than informed strategy. Effective capture planning provides the foundation for a strong proposal response. By documenting customer insights, competitive intelligence, and early solution concepts, teams can enter the proposal phase with a clear understanding of what the customer needs, how the competition may approach the opportunity, and how their own team can differentiate itself. This article explores key components of effective capture planning—from documenting capture intelligence and executing a call plan to developing the Notional Winner Profile, assessing competition, and shaping a compelling win strategy—so proposal teams can move into the proposal phase with the clarity and insight needed to compete and win. Capture Planning One of the biggest downfalls I see with the capture process (other than skipping the capture phase completely) is a lack of capture documentation. Once the company decides to pursue a potential opportunity, the capture manager needs to be diligent in documenting the information learned and gained. Customer Relationship Management, or CRM tools, such as Deltek or SalesForce, are useful tools for this. But if your company isn’t to the point where they are using a CRM, your proposal infrastructure tool, whether it’s SharePoint or another tool—is a great way to document and share this information as well. The key here is that the information needs to be documented and distilled so that it’s useful for the proposal team when the solicitation or request for proposal (RFP) hits. An effective capture manager builds the approach and win themes around intelligence gathered and documented during the capture phase. But how often have you entered the proposal phase with an incomplete or nonexistent Capture Plan? The Capture Plan is a critical document for transferring knowledge of the customer, opportunity, and competition to the proposal team. I’ll use the analogy of baking a cake. If the ingredients you put into the batter are rotten, or you leave out a critical ingredient, what kind of cake will result? If the capture information feeding your proposal is similarly bad or incomplete, you can expect a comparable proposal product. Executing the Call Plan During the capture phase, the capture team should meet with the customer to dig into the key issues that surround their program and to better understand the drivers behind the solicitation. Through these discussions, the capture manager, potential program manager, and other potential key personnel should aim to have discussions that dig into what the customer wants and needs, what keeps them up at night, if they have any preferences or issues surrounding the upcoming solicitation, the problems they might be facing, and what their true goals really are. As part of these discussions, the team should aim to try to figure out who the key decision makers are, if they are aligned, or if there are conflicting opinions among the customer organization. If possible, the team should try to find out whether there are any constraints, standards, or other restrictions that might affect their decision. Other key questions the team should try to answer include whether there is funding allocated for the opportunity, whether the customer likes the team’s potential solution, and whether there are ways the company can shape the opportunity to make it difficult for other bidders to win. One way the team should approach answering these questions is through the Call Plan. The Call Plan documents the plan for communicating with the customer, who will meet with each customer point of contact, and what the desired outcomes are for each meeting. In executing the call plan, business development or capture personnel may talk directly to managers from the procuring organization, company program managers may talk to their customer program managers, company executives may talk with contacts at a high level within the customer organization, and/or candidate company key personnel may talk to their customer counterparts. Reaching the customer at these different levels brings an understanding of the customer from multiple levels and tiers and helps to identify any differences in opinions, any conflicting agendas or goals, and areas where the company is favored or less favored. Learning this early on gives the company time to further build relationships with champions and potentially start to sway any decision makers who may be on the fence. Below I provide an example of a call plan format. Table 1. Sample Call Plan Format

In federal business development, getting ahead of the opportunity is always the goal. Ideally, your team has identified potential procurements well before anything appears on SAM.gov, allowing time to shape requirements, engage with stakeholders, and gather valuable customer insight. But that’s not always possible. Sometimes the first sign you see of an opportunity is the release of a Request for Information (RFI). Whether it’s due to bandwidth, shifting priorities, or limited access, many teams are now finding themselves reacting to RFIs rather than shaping them. And with the recent surge in federal RFIs, it’s more important than ever to respond quickly—and strategically. So how can you stay competitive, even when you’re late to the game? One powerful shortcut: use artificial intelligence (AI) to analyze the customers’ issues and hot buttons so you can tailor your messaging with speed and precision. In this article, we’ll walk through how I used ChatGPT to extract insights from a real RFI, and how those insights could help shape a stronger, faster, more focused response—and then further be used to tailor questions for follow-up discussions with the customer. Use AI to Analyze Customer Issues and Hot Buttons I get it—you’re busy. You need to respond to five RFIs, you have two active proposals, and six active capture efforts. If this is the first you’re learning of an opportunity, you don’t always have time to read between the lines, figure out the customer issues, and then tailor your response to those concerns. Enter ChatGPT (or your AI tool of choice). To demonstrate the benefits of generative AI in this scenario, I found an RFI on SAM.gov, uploaded it to ChatGPT, and asked ChatGPT to summarize the customer hot buttons and issues (prompt: What are the key issues and hot buttons that concern this customer?). In just a few minutes, I had the following summary: 1. Proactive, Not Reactive, Customer Experience (CX) Current CX efforts (surveys, tickets) are reactive and lagging. They want a real-time, predictive, and automated understanding of customer experience — using data and synthetic monitoring rather than waiting for complaints. Hot button: “Don’t make the customer the sensor.” 2. Integration of Diverse Data Sources Data about customer interactions and system performance are siloed and fragmented. They seek unified, normalized, and accessible CX data, integrated across Information Technology Service Management (ITSM), Information Technology Operations Management (ITOM), operational data, sentiment, and synthetic tests. Hot button: Breaking down silos and enabling the CX Office to access and analyze all relevant data. 3. Automation & Orchestration Across Systems Current workflows are cumbersome and manual. Customer needs to streamline complex processes using Robotic Process Automation (RPA), Artificial Intelligence (AI)/Machine Learning (ML), workflow automation, and Infrastructure-as-Code. Hot button: Reduce human friction, eliminate redundant processes, and ensure automation doesn’t disrupt operations. 4. Minimizing Disruption During Implementation Implementing new technologies in a large, complex public-sector environment poses risks. Customer wants assurance that integration of CX tools with legacy systems (like ServiceNow) won’t disrupt service delivery. Hot button: Smooth, non-disruptive transitions and compatibility with existing platforms. 5. End-to-End CX Measurement They aim to measure CX comprehensively across all touchpoints, from first interaction to post-support, without relying only on subjective feedback. Hot button: Establish consistent, standardized CX metrics that align with actual user experience — not just Service Level Agreement (SLA) compliance. 6. Enhancing ITSM & Communication Communication with customers is currently perceived as reactive or fragmented. Customer wants proactive, clear, CX-focused communication via ITSM, that keeps customers informed and engaged. Hot button: Build trust and loyalty by being transparent and communicative. 7. Security & Compliance Handling and analyzing customer data raises security and privacy concerns. They need solutions that meet government security standards (e.g., FedRAMP, Federal Information Security Modernization Act [FISMA]), protect sensitive data, and include incident response and encryption. Hot button: Data must be secure, compliant, and responsibly managed. 8. Future-Ready, Innovative Technologies They are explicitly asking for innovative, emerging technologies and approaches to stay ahead of customer needs. Hot button: Demonstrate awareness of trends (like AIOps, synthetic users, Digital Experience Management (DXM), sentiment AI) and how they can be applied effectively. Summary of Priorities: Be proactive and predictive in measuring and improving CX. Break down data silos and deliver integrated insights. Automate intelligently without disrupting operations. Ensure seamless integration and minimize risk. Provide actionable, real-time metrics and monitoring. Communicate effectively and transparently. Keep data secure and comply with all applicable standards. Propose forward-thinking, innovative solutions that align with their vision. Now, if you’re in a time pinch, you may just have to take the AI issues and hot buttons at their word. Worst case, you’re tailoring your content to some issues that the customer doesn’t really care all that much about. But this was an exercise in demonstrating the benefits of using AI to support the RFI process—and so I did have time to validate these issues and hot buttons. And they all do align quite well with the sentiment expressed in the posted RFI document. Leverage the AI Analysis in Your RFI Response On to the next steps. The above prompt very quickly pulled out some key issues that this customer cares about. Then, as I am responding to the RFI questions, I can use these points to shape my response. To help with this process, I gave ChatGPT the following prompt: “draft some suggested messaging or positioning points.” Here’s how ChatGPT responded: 1. Proactive, Predictive CX "We eliminate the need for customers to act as sensors by delivering real-time, predictive insights into user experience. Our solution integrates synthetic monitoring, sentiment analysis, and operational data to proactively detect and address pain points before they impact users." Use terms they like: “moving beyond traditional surveys and tickets,” “proactive, real-time, predictive monitoring.” Highlight how you measure and act on experience without waiting for feedback. 2. Breaking Down Data Silos "We unify disparate CX and system performance data into an integrated platform, normalizing and enriching it for actionable insights. Our data strategy ensures the CX Office has comprehensive, timely access to the information they need." Emphasize your data integration and normalization capabilities. Mention ability to ingest from ITSM, ITOM, synthetic users, sentiment analysis, and operational metrics. 3. Intelligent Automation & Orchestration "We streamline complex workflows across departments using RPA, AI/ML, and Infrastructure-as-Code — reducing manual effort and enabling faster, more reliable service delivery." Stress reducing friction, freeing human resources, and speeding outcomes. Reassure that automation is controlled and aligned with their architecture. 4. Seamless Integration & Low-Risk Deployment "We specialize in deploying solutions within large, mission-critical environments without disrupting ongoing operations. Our phased implementation approach ensures compatibility with existing platforms such as ServiceNow, while maintaining continuous service delivery." Acknowledge their concern about disruption and frame your approach as deliberate, tested, and secure. 5. Actionable, End-to-End CX Measurement "We deliver standardized, real-time metrics aligned with user-perceived experience, not just SLA compliance. Our dashboards and KPIs (CX Index, NPS, CES, CSAT) enable actionable, end-to-end visibility into the customer journey." Highlight ability to measure experience comprehensively across all touchpoints. 6. Proactive, Transparent Communication "We enable proactive, CX-focused ITSM communication that keeps customers informed and engaged throughout their journey, enhancing trust and satisfaction." Show how your tools and processes improve customer perception of transparency and responsiveness. 7. Secure, Compliant, Responsible Data Management "We implement robust security measures aligned with federal standards, including FedRAMP, FISMA, and National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) guidance. Our approach ensures customer data is encrypted, access is tightly controlled, vulnerabilities are managed, and incidents are swiftly resolved." Emphasize commitment to security and compliance. 8. Innovative & Future-Ready "We bring emerging technologies such as AIOps, advanced analytics, and synthetic user testing to deliver a modern, resilient CX solution that anticipates customer needs and supports the mission well into the future." Position your solution as innovative but practical, aligned with their vision of a “CX Revolution.” Suggested Tagline or Closing Message “We partner with Customer to deliver proactive, data-driven, secure, and seamless customer experiences — ensuring mission success while setting a new standard for customer engagement.” What ChatGPT gave me was a very good starting point for language to use in my answers to the RFI questions. I find the actionable guidance on what to highlight in each answer particularly helpful, especially for a team in a time crunch. However, the key piece that is missing for each strategy is the “how”—and since I used the free version of ChatGPT, I am certainly not going to input that into the chat. Instead, I’ll focus my time on: Validating that the strategies are accurate for my solution and adjusting the language as necessary. For example, the seventh strategy calls out the following federal standards: "We implement robust security measures aligned with federal standards, including FedRAMP, FISMA, and NIST guidance. Our approach ensures customer data is encrypted, access is tightly controlled, vulnerabilities are managed, and incidents are swiftly resolved." Note that the RFI did not call out these specific standards (so ChatGPT has not listed them out for compliance). Rather, ChatGPT came up with these as they are common federal security standards/frameworks. However, my company might not be FedRAMP certified, or I might not be proposing a cloud solution, so I may need to remove this reference to FedRAMP and replace it with something more relevant to my solution, like Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI), NIST Cybersecurity Framework (CSF), Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI), or Risk Management Framework (RMF). My next step will be to answer the “how” for each messaging point. For example, we could add relevant solution tools to the following: “Using a custom suite of tools, including Dynatrace, Qualtrics XM Discover, and ServiceNow ITOM + ITSM, we eliminate the need for customers to act as sensors by delivering real-time, predictive insights into user experience. Our solution integrates synthetic monitoring, sentiment analysis, and operational data to proactively detect and address pain points before they impact users.” It’s important to keep in mind that if your competitors are using AI tools to facilitate the RFI response, their messaging may look much like yours. To avoid this pitfall, make sure you adjust the language to meet your company’s branding style guide and make it different enough from the competition that you won’t get tossed to the side for presenting the exact same response as someone else. Follow Up with the Customer to Schedule a Meeting to Understand their Pain Points Better Remember that the RFI response shouldn’t be the end of your interaction with the customer until the solicitation release. A week or so after you submit the RFI, follow up with the customer to express your interest in the opportunity and see if they are open to a meeting or call to better understand their pain points. Using the Hot Buttons, Generate Questions for the Discussion You already have a good idea of some of the customer’s pain points based on the RFI. You can now use these data points to generate some follow-up questions to tackle during the meeting or call. Again, you can use ChatGPT as a starting point. Here is the output from my prompt (prompt: “Using the issues and hot buttons, generate a list of questions to ask the customer during a follow up meeting”): Below is a list of targeted follow-up questions you can ask the customer in a meeting, structured around their key issues and hot buttons. These questions are designed to: Clarify their priorities and constraints Surface unspoken concerns Guide your solution design and messaging Position you as a thoughtful, mission-aligned partner Category 1: Proactive CX and Monitoring Goal: Understand their maturity and openness to predictive, sensorless monitoring. 1. How are you currently identifying negative service trends before customers report them? 2. What gaps do you see in your existing synthetic monitoring or experience scoring capabilities? 3. How important is predictive experience management versus reactive support in your long-term CX strategy? 4. Are there specific customer pain points you'd like to detect earlier using synthetic or passive monitoring techniques? Category 2: Data Integration and Silo Reduction Goal: Learn how open and feasible cross-departmental data sharing really is. 5. What are the current barriers to sharing customer experience-related data across your offices? 6. Which internal systems or tools must our solution integrate with (e.g., ServiceNow, Splunk, internal APIs)? 7. What level of data standardization or normalization do you currently have across monitoring and ITSM tools? 8. Do you have a central data lake or platform for CX-related metrics and telemetry? Category 3: Automation, Orchestration & Workflow Optimization Goal: Understand appetite for automation and where human bottlenecks exist. 9. Which business or IT processes are high-friction or still heavily manual that you’d like to automate first? 10. How do you see automation fitting into your Infrastructure-as-Code or CI/CD efforts? 11. What safeguards or controls would you require around AI/ML or RPA-driven actions? Category 4: Integration and Disruption Mitigation Goal: Get clarity on acceptable risk, legacy system constraints, and change appetite. 12. What types of disruptions have occurred during past tool implementations that we should be mindful of? 13. Are there legacy systems or compliance frameworks that restrict what we can integrate or replace? 14. Would you prefer a phased, modular deployment strategy or a full platform rollout? 15. How do you manage change adoption across geographically dispersed or matrixed teams? Category 5: Experience Metrics and Success Measurement Goal: Align on how they define and measure success. 16. What CX or UX metrics are most meaningful to your leadership today? 17. Are you looking to move toward real-time CX dashboards, or stick with periodic reporting? 18. How do you currently measure experience alignment with SLAs—and where do you see gaps? Category 6: Proactive Communication and ITSM Integration Goal: Understand how they communicate issues and how proactive they want to be. 19. What does “proactive communication” mean to your organization? Real-time updates? Predictive alerts? 20. How do you currently communicate outages or degraded experiences to users? 21. What experience do your teams have with ServiceNow’s experience modules or performance analytics? Category 7: Security and Compliance Requirements Goal: Confirm required frameworks, certifications, and audit expectations. 22. Which security standards are mandatory for any solution touching CX data (e.g., FedRAMP High, FISMA, DoD IL5)? 23. What are your expectations for data residency, encryption, and user access controls? 24. How would you like incident response and audit logging to be managed within CX toolsets? Category 8: Innovation and Future Vision Goal: Identify where they’re open to emerging tech or pilot programs. 25. Are you open to piloting newer technologies like AIOps, synthetic users, or LLM-based summarization for sentiment? 26. What does a “future-ready” CX program look like to you in 2–3 years? 27. How would you like to evolve beyond basic surveys and ticketing as your primary CX feedback channels? As you would with your RFI response content, you’ll want to review and revise the questions to eliminate any hallucinations or errors (e.g., citing an obsolete standard or a tool that may not be part of your solution set). You should also remove any questions that may be problematic (for example, question 25 is: “Are you open to piloting newer technologies like AIOps, synthetic users, or LLM-based summarization for sentiment?” If these technologies are not part of your anticipated solution, you should remove it). And finally, add additional questions that may help shape your proposed solution. For example, if you’re thinking about implementing some specific technologies, you might ask the customer about their experience with or impressions of those solution elements. Finally, we should also note that the above list is fairly extensive, so based on the amount of time you have secured for your discussion, you may need to prioritize questions or strategically choose questions based on the direction of the specific customer conversations. Have a Few Relevant Solution Talking Points Ready You should really go to the customer meeting ready to listen and learn! However, it’s helpful to have a few talking points ready as well. For example, as a follow-up to the customer’s response to question 21 (What experience do your teams have with ServiceNow’s experience modules or performance analytics?), you might share a brief proof point on the benefits your past customer saw after your company implemented ServiceNow’s experience modules, and how this potential future customer might realize similar benefits through its use.  Final Thoughts AI tools like ChatGPT can be incredibly effective accelerators during the RFI response processes, especially when time is short, teams are stretched thin, and the pressure to tailor messaging is high. In just a few prompts, I was able to extract the customer’s likely concerns, develop targeted messaging, and generate thoughtful questions to guide a follow-up conversation. But here’s the key: AI should be your assistant, not your author. The real value comes from combining the speed and structure of generative AI with your unique solution insights, past performance, and customer knowledge. That’s where differentiation happens. So, if you’re seeing a spike in RFIs—don’t just reuse boilerplate or generic AI content. Instead, use AI to quickly surface customer hot buttons, shape positioning, and brainstorm follow-up questions. Take time to validate, refine, and personalize that messaging for your unique solution. Follow up with the customer to deepen your understanding of their challenges and build a relationship beyond the RFI. And when possible, integrate customer voice into your response—through strategic questions, proof points, and relevant success stories. This balance of speed, strategy, and personalization is what keeps your team competitive. Now, go out there and turn those RFIs into future proposal wins!

How to Use Competitive Analysis to Identify Strengths, Weaknesses, and Differentiators

In the world of proposals, time is often tight, deadlines are fixed, and expectations are high. Successful teams know that thinking strategically before putting words on the page saves time, strengthens the response, and increases the win probability. That’s where solutioning comes in. Solutioning sets the stage for persuasive, compliant, and compelling proposals. It helps your team align around the “what” and “how” before trying to figure out how to word everything. What Is Solutioning? Solutioning is the process of designing your technical, management, or staffing approach in response to the customer’s requirements. It goes beyond checking boxes: it’s about understanding the customer’s mission, identifying their pain points, and crafting a tailored, value-added response. Solutioning is important because it: Ensures technical accuracy and feasibility. Your writers can’t sell a solution they don’t understand. Aligns your team. Solutioning sessions bring together subject matter experts, capture managers, and proposal professionals to define what you're offering. Increases win probability. A well-developed solution is more likely to score higher during evaluation, particularly when it’s aligned to the customer's goals and constraints. Best practices for solutioning include: Start early. Ideally, begin solution development during the capture phase—well before the RFP drops. Use the solicitation as your anchor. Once you have a draft or final RFP, map every requirement to a proposed approach. Facilitate with purpose. Use whiteboarding, virtual collaboration tools, or structured workshops to surface ideas, challenge assumptions, and define differentiators. Invite the right subject matter experts. Include relevant subject matter experts in your solutioning sessions so you can glean the right technical, management, or other strategic expertise and insights. Document decisions. Summarize the agreed-upon solution in clear, accessible language that can feed directly into storyboards and draft content. Use a Solutioning Template Using a solutioning template is helpful because it brings structure, clarity, and consistency to a process that can be otherwise chaotic or incomplete. A template ensures that every opportunity is evaluated in a consistent way—no matter who’s involved. Whether you're building a technical, management, or staffing solution, the template guides subject matter experts (SMEs) and proposal contributors to capture the right details: what’s being offered, how it works, and why it’s valuable. When used correctly, your solutioning sessions prompt cross-functional discussion among capture, proposal, technical, and operational leads. This alignment helps uncover gaps or inconsistencies early, avoid rework during writing, and build buy-in for the final solution. When everyone sees the same structured solution document, they're more likely to stay on the same page throughout the proposal. A good solutioning template doesn’t just ask what you're offering, it asks: Why it matters to the customer How it aligns with their mission What evidence you have to support your claims Where it sets you apart from competitors This customer-first mindset helps elevate your response beyond generic content. Following is a sample solutioning template you can customize for your proposals. It helps organize the team’s thinking around each requirement or objective and documents key elements of your offering, including benefits, risks, and differentiators. Opportunity/Project Name: Insert name and/or solicitation number Date of Session: Insert date Participants: List names and roles, e.g., Capture Manager, Technical SME, Proposal Manager, etc. Proposal Section: e.g., Technical, Management, Key Personnel, Past Performance, etc. 1. Customer Requirements

In a competitive proposal environment—especially in the government contracting space—every word matters. Proposal evaluators are not just reading for compliance, they’re reading for value, differentiation, and confidence in your ability to perform. That’s why developing clear, compelling win themes and section themes is essential to building a persuasive proposal that resonates with your customer. What Are Win Themes? Win themes are high-level, strategic messages that communicate why your company is the best choice for the contract. They highlight your value, differentiators, and customer benefits in ways that are aligned with the customer’s stated (and unstated) priorities. A strong win theme answers this core question: Why should the customer choose us instead of someone else? Effective win themes are: Customer-focused: Emphasize benefits to the customer, not just features of your solution. Differentiating: Set you apart from competitors with clear “only we” or “first to” statements. Credible: Supported by past performance, certifications, tools, or innovations. Memorable: Reinforced consistently throughout the proposal. Developing Win Themes During your solutioning exercises, you likely completed a table that looked something like this: 

In government and commercial contracting, proposal demands can ebb and flow—but high-pressure periods are inevitable. Whether driven by shifting priorities, overlapping deadlines, or a surge of new opportunities, teams are often asked to deliver at a rapid pace with limited resources. To navigate competing priorities without overwhelming your staff, it’s essential to have intentional strategies in place that protect both performance and team well-being. Review and Prioritize the Pipeline Weekly Pipeline reviews become even more critical during the proposal busy season because tough decisions may need to be made about which opportunities to pursue. Leadership should consider the various opportunities in the pipeline, the level of readiness of the team (i.e., how much capture has been done), and the resources available to support each opportunity. Sometimes pursuing an opportunity with a low win probability can take critical resources away from an opportunity with a higher win probability. Additionally, as part of the pipeline/milestone reviews, make sure you have a bid and proposal (B&P) budget set for each opportunity being actively pursued. You should spend less time, energy, and money on low value/low profit opportunities. You never want to spend more on responding to an opportunity than you will gain from winning—unless there is a very strategic reason to do so. Finally, if your proposal team doesn’t participate in the pipeline reviews with leadership, make sure to have separate calls to review the pipeline with the proposal team so that they understand which proposals are active, as well as which proposals are coming up on the horizon. Assign out proposal leads for each opportunity so team members can understand and plan for upcoming workloads (these can always be adjusted if solicitation release dates change). When making assignments, be sure to consider any vacation times team members may have scheduled. Leverage Templates and Boilerplate When Possible Having templates ready for your team to use will save so much time and energy. You’ll want the following tools ready to use and in a place that teams can easily locate: Proposal calendars Outline/compliance matrices Kickoff decks Color team decks Writing templates Street resumes Boilerplate for common sections (e.g., management, quality, past performance, etc.) Having these templates ready will enable your team to hit the ground running. Instead of reinventing the wheel each time or searching for an old resource as a starting point, your team can focus their time on entering information into the schedule and compliance matrix templates, adjusting the writing templates to meet the formatting requirements of the solicitation, and moving forward with the proposal process smoothly and efficiently. Keep Your Team Fueled on Long Days If your team is collocated, bring in snacks to keep your team fueled during long days (granola bars, peanut butter crackers, nuts, dried fruits—and a few sweet treats like Twizzlers or mini candy bars). When teams stay in the office late to meet a critical deadline, order in pizza or have sandwiches delivered. For remote teams that are working long hours to meet deadlines, consider sending electronic food delivery certificates (e.g., DoorDash or Grubhub) to keep the team fueled and morale high. Schedule Breaks and Downtime With multiple looming deadlines and an overwhelming workload, it can be so easy to try push through a long day without any breaks. However, it has been proven that this approach can negatively affect overall output. Taking breaks is critical for maintaining productivity. Short, regular breaks can help prevent burnout, improve focus, and boost overall performance by allowing brains to rest and recharge. But the right kinds of breaks matter. Studies show that scrolling on your phone or surfing the internet can overload your brain and leave you even more depleted. Better break choices include taking a walk, doing a small chore, meditating, or chatting with a friend or coworker. Have your team aim for a five-minute break for each twenty-five minutes of work. If this seems overwhelming, remember that even breaks as short as a minute—if they are effective breaks—can improve performance and productivity. Additionally, after your teams meet a proposal submission deadline, particularly if they have been working long hours, make sure to give them some time off if the schedule allows. This will allow your team members to recharge and come back ready to tackle the next project more effectively. Bring In Extra Resources if Necessary Sometimes you might not have sufficient resources to handle all the opportunities in your pipeline. If this is the case, you may need to work with leadership to see if the B&P budget allows for bringing in consultant resources. Consultant resources may come at a higher hourly rate than your full-time team members—but they can be brought in for a short time to help meet surge demands, and then you don’t pay for them anymore once they are done with their assigned task(s). This is also generally a better option than burning out your team and then having to recruit and onboard new employees once the burnt-out team members leave. Check In with Your Team Regularly, But Keep Meetings Short It’s critical to keep a pulse on how your team is doing when stress levels are high. Check in regularly with team members to see how they are doing and whether there are any issues/roadblocks keeping them from meeting any of their deadlines. Help provide them with additional resources, if necessary, or track down information they may have been waiting on from a subject matter expert or stakeholder. But don’t flood calendars with unnecessary meetings, or overly long meetings. Check-in calls can be great—but keep them to 15 minutes or shorter. Leverage email, chat, text, and quick calls where it makes sense. Final Thoughts Managing proposal workloads effectively requires more than simply working longer hours—it requires thoughtful planning and sustainable processes. By prioritizing opportunities strategically, leveraging templates and proven tools, supporting your team’s energy and morale, and building in space for recovery, you create an environment where people can consistently perform at a high level. A well-prepared, focused, and supported team will always outperform one that is stretched too thin. When you take care of your people and streamline your approach, you position your organization for stronger results and a healthier, more resilient proposal culture over the long term. 

In proposal development, the difference between a rushed response and a winning one often comes down to planning. One of the most effective planning tools is storyboarding—the process of transforming strategy and requirements into a clear, organized roadmap for writers. Storyboarding bridges the gap between big-picture strategy and detailed content. Instead of diving straight into writing, it forces teams to pause and address critical questions up front: What win themes should we emphasize? How do we differentiate ourselves from competitors? What proof points and evidence will make our claims credible? By answering these questions early, proposal teams ensure the final product reflects a deliberate strategy rather than a patchwork of boilerplate. This step is especially important in complex proposals where multiple authors contribute. Without storyboards, sections can easily become repetitive, inconsistent, or off message. With storyboards, however, teams gain a shared outline, unified messaging, and a structured plan that keeps writing focused, compliant, and persuasive. Storyboarding also accelerates the writing process by reducing blank-page paralysis, supporting early graphic planning, and revealing gaps in data or compliance before they derail schedules. In short, it gives teams the clarity and confidence needed to write stronger proposals. What Is Storyboarding? Storyboarding is the process of outlining the content and structure of your proposal sections before writing begins. Think of it as creating a blueprint: it shows the writer what to say, in what order, and with what supporting evidence. Storyboarding is important because: It keeps the writing aligned with the win strategy. Storyboards tie each section to evaluation criteria, customer hot buttons, and discriminators. It saves time. Writers work faster when they know what to write, and what not to. It improves consistency. When multiple authors contribute to a proposal, storyboards provide a shared vision that keeps the tone, content, and structure cohesive. Best practices for storyboarding include: Incorporate key messaging. Highlight your themes, benefits, and proof points in each section. Make them visual when possible. Use tables, diagrams, and callouts to plan graphics and reinforce major messages. Include RFP references. Tie each storyboard element to a specific section or instruction from the solicitation. Assign clear owners. Each storyboard should name a lead writer, contributors, and reviewers—along with target dates. Encourage teamwork and cross-reading. Storyboarding works best when it isn’t done in silos. Have multiple contributors work together to complete each storyboard. Then have the different section contributors cross-read the other storyboards to make sure there is consistency in the approaches. Storyboard Template Below is a sample storyboarding template that can be modified to align with your solutioning process. This format helps writers map out proposal content section-by-section, ensuring alignment with requirements, win themes, and the approved solution.  - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Winning proposals don’t just happen because the solution is strong—they happen because the proposal is structured to earn points. Too often, teams focus solely on what they want to say, rather than how evaluators will read, interpret, and ultimately score their response. If you want to increase your probability of win, you must first understand how proposals are evaluated and then write with that scoring process in mind. By aligning your content to evaluation criteria, highlighting clear strengths, and making it easy for evaluators to assign high ratings, you can transform a compliant submission into a high-scoring, competitive proposal. Understanding Proposal Evaluation Before we can really understand how to make proposals easier to score, we have to understand how proposals are being evaluated. The first thing to understand is that proposals are typically first reviewed for compliance with the requirements as outlined in the proposal instructions. Next, the proposals are scored based on the evaluation criteria. Customers frequently assign strengths, weaknesses, and deficiencies to back up their scores. To receive an “Exceptional” score, your strengths have to outweigh any weaknesses, and no major deficiencies can be present. When using this scoring method, a deficiency is typically defined as a material failure of a proposal to meet a customer requirement or a combination of significant weaknesses in a proposal that increases the risk of unsuccessful contract performance to an unacceptable level. A weakness is defined as a flaw in the proposal that increases the risk of unsuccessful contract performance. And significant strengths are defined as aspects of an offeror's proposal that have merit or that exceed specified performance or capability requirements in a way that will be advantageous to the customer during contract performance. In our proposals, we want to minimize any weaknesses and deficiencies and maximize our strengths and significant strengths. Organize Content So It’s Easy to Score Understanding that proposals are scored, it makes good sense that when we’re writing proposals, we need to present the information in a way that is easy for evaluators to score. Most evaluators do not volunteer for the job and do not particularly enjoy it. It takes time away from their regular job, so they want to get it over with as quickly as possible. Therefore, we should aim to make the evaluator’s job as easy as possible. To make your sections easy to score, structure your response to the proposal instructions and the evaluation criteria. Next map in other requirements, as required (e.g., elements of the statement of work). To facilitate evaluation, consider including relevant RFP references in your section heading titles; this helps evaluators understand the logic of your organization and map your responses back to their evaluation scoresheet. Use RFP Language When writing proposals, you should also strive to use the language in the RFP to make the evaluation easier. For example, if the RFP asks for a Program Manager, you should use the title, Program Manager, not Project Manager. You should also strive to use the customer’s terminology and lexicon in our proposal to gain the customer’s confidence. By knowing your customer and speaking their language, you demonstrate that we understand them, and you begin to establish trust. What’s more, your customer evaluators often do key word searches to find what’s important to them in your proposals. To support them in this endeavor, you should make sure all sections include key words from the instructions, evaluation criteria, and the statement of work. Theme Statements Another way to help evaluators to score you higher is to include theme statements or strength statements consistently throughout your response. Theme statements set the stage for the section and grab the evaluator’s attention because they address an issue that is important to them. The ideal theme statement not only presents a solution feature that addresses a customer hot button, it also articulates clear, quantified benefits. I recommend including a theme statement for every first-level section and second-level subsection and formatting those themes to stand out from the rest of the text. If you theme effectively, the theme statements will show up as identified strengths in the evaluation debrief from the customer. Callout Boxes Another way to arm evaluators with the ammunition they need to give you a high score is to use callout boxes to help your major proof points stand out. Be sure that your proof points not only highlight quantified metrics, but make sure to provide the “so what?” statement as well. For example, it’s not enough simply to state: “We have used our proven staffing process to staff programs with 3-, 7- and 14-day turnaround times, including the MNOP program, where we staffed 15 FTEs in two weeks.” Ask yourself, “So what? What does this mean for my customer?” This might prompt you to add, “Leveraging this staffing process, we provide Customer ABC with low-risk task order start-up and delivery for large, small, short-term, and long-term requirements.” Feature and Benefit Tables Feature and benefit tables are another great way to help evaluators find proposal strengths. Similar to theme statements, feature and benefit tables highlight major solution features—that ideally address customer hot buttons—and articulate clear, quantified benefits. Typically, customers want things cheaper, faster, and/or better, which we might express as low cost, low risk, high quality, efficient, and/or effective. Use feature and benefit tables in each major section introduction to highlight the key elements of your approach. This could be every first-level section for shorter proposals, but it may be extended to each second-level subsection for longer proposals. Articulate Benefits Throughout As touched on previously, benefits tell the customer why they should care about our solution or its features; they articulate the “so what?” But, it’s critical to remember that benefits should be things that the customer cares about. For example, if the customer doesn’t care whether the transition is completed in three weeks or six weeks, then expedited timeline is not a benefit to that customer. It’s also critical to remember that benefits should be highlighted throughout the proposal narrative. It’s not enough for benefits to show up in theme statements, callout boxes, and feature benefit tables—these benefits need to be articulated and reinforced throughout the proposal narrative as well. Make the Response About the Customer Another critical way to score higher is to make sure you are focusing on the customer. Two key signs that your proposal writing lacks customer perspective include: (1) the proposal mentions your company or team name more than the customer’s name; (2) the proposal is about your company’s offer instead of the solution and benefits the customer will receive. A great proposal is about the customer and the benefits they receive from the proposed solution. One of the easiest ways to make our proposal content more customer focused is to put them first—literally. Instead of saying, “Team ABC’s solution delivers a low-risk transition,” flip the construction and write, “Customer A receives a low-risk transition with our comprehensive transition approach.” The two sentences convey the same overall message, but by putting the customer first in the sentence, we shift the focus onto what the customer is receiving rather than what we are delivering. Another easy way to make your proposal content more customer focused is to use the customer’s name more frequently than your company or team name. To validate whether you are doing so, you can try this quick test: hit Ctrl-F and search for the number of times you mention your company and/or team name; then search for the number of times you mention the customer’s name. You should aim to mention the customer’s name more times than yours. If you find that you have mentioned the customer far less frequently, you should revise our text to focus more on the customer and the benefits they will receive by choosing your solution. Final Thoughts In this world of bids and proposals, we all certainly want to win more. However, there are so many factors that impact a company’s probability of win, and a number of things throughout the opportunity lifecycle can impact a company’s chances of winning (both positively and negatively). Although the capture phase has the greatest potential to positively impact your chances of winning, you can certainly take steps to help your proposals score higher during the proposal writing stage. These actions include organizing content so it’s easy to score; using RFP language, theme statements, callout boxes, and feature and benefits tables; articulating benefits throughout the response; and making the response about the customer. These critical components during the writing phase can go a long way in facilitating the evaluation process and increasing your overall score—and a higher score can easily translate to a higher probability of win! 

The use of generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools is becoming almost commonplace in our daily lives, much in the same way that we use cell phones and the internet without a second thought. And why not—it’s so easy to enter a prompt into ChatGPT and use the response to start an email, thank you letter, or social media post. So, it’s not surprising that the explosion of generative AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and others has sparked major interest—and debate—among those in the proposal community. AI promises so many benefits to our proposal process: it can save time and increase productivity, it can help brainstorm win themes and messaging, it can improve readability and clarity, and it can serve as a knowledge assistant. This can help reduce burnout on proposal teams since AI is saving the team time doing the “grunt work” so that proposal team members can focus on higher-value tasks. However, AI use does not come without potential risks, including confidentiality and data security risks. Inputting sensitive content—like solution content, past performance content, pricing, client names, etc.—into public AI tools can breach Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs) or contracts, expose proprietary or competitive information to third parties, or violate privacy regulations. Knowing the potential benefits, as well as the risks, you and your teams may be asking how you can responsibly use AI to draft sections, develop win themes, or tailor boilerplate content. And how can you do so without introducing AI generated errors? Let’s dig into it! How You Can Responsibly Use AI to Draft Sections, Develop Win Themes, or Tailor Boilerplate Content If used responsibly, you can use AI prompts to suggest creative ways to frame your team’s differentiators and benefits, help align your solution with the customer’s priorities and hot buttons, and provide alternative ways to express key messages to keep language compelling. You can also use AI to help rewrite dense, jargon-heavy technical text into clear, persuasive, customer-focused content. Here are some ways you can minimize risk while using AI to support proposal development: Set a policy and train your team Never input confidential or proprietary information into public AI tools Always treat AI output as a draft, never a final deliverable Set a policy and train your team Before you allow teams to start using AI to support proposal development, you should create a written guideline or policy. The policy should define when and how team members may use AI, which tools are approved, and how to mitigate risks while using AI. The policy should define clear boundaries for AI use, considering where it adds value and where it doesn’t. Remember, AI is good for things like: Drafting boilerplate content, like company overviews or standard capabilities statements (after it is fed with source materials) Generating ideas for win themes based on key differentiators and customer hot buttons you provide (note that capture still has to provide this information!) Helping tailor boilerplate to meet solicitation requirements Checking readability and suggesting stylistic improvements Summarizing content AI is not good for: Making compliance decisions: it may miss mandatory requirements Factual accuracy: it can invent or misstate facts Interpreting ambiguous solicitation language: human judgement is still needed for this! Once you set the guidelines, train your team! Make sure everyone knows and understands the guidance. Be sure to highlight the data privacy risks and concerns. For many companies, entering proprietary data into a public AI tool may be grounds for termination. Never input confidential or proprietary information into public AI tools Although we have already touched on this point, it really deserves some additional attention. But the bottom line is that you should never paste client-sensitive content, proprietary solution information, or internal pricing into tools like ChatGPT unless your company has a private, secure instance. Many public AI tools store user inputs and use them to further train their models. That means your sensitive information could remain on their servers indefinitely—and possibly reappear in responses to other users. Even with private, secure instances, some companies may be concerned with data breaches or cyber-attacks. If this is the case, consider developing a policy to redact or anonymize sensitive names and figures before asking AI to help tailor content, even in your private instance of the tool. Always treat AI output as a draft, never a final deliverable While I was at the APMP Bid and Proposal Conference in Nashville earlier this year, I heard a story about a team that was thrown out of competition because they used AI to write their proposal and then didn’t tailor it. The customer told them that another team submitted the exact same response. I am not sure I was able to hold back the level of shock that a team would submit content without adjusting it—but after hearing that story, this really needs to be said. For so many reasons, you should always review, revise, and tailor the content you receive from your AI tool. The best advice I have heard is to treat AI like a junior writer or assistant—its suggestions still need review, fact-checking, and editing by your experienced proposal team. Just like we have always done as part of our proposal best practices, have a human team member review all your content for compliance, accuracy, your specific proposal style guide, and tone—especially the content developed initially by AI. How Can You Avoid Introducing Errors or “Hallucinations” When Using AI? In the context of generative AI tools, a hallucination happens when the AI generates output that is factually incorrect or fabricated, but it still presents the information confidently, as though it were true. Examples of common AI hallucinations include: Inventing a certification your company doesn’t hold Citing a law, regulation, or standard that doesn’t exist Referencing past performance examples or customer names that aren’t real Providing made up statistics or figures Hallucinations happen because AI models don’t actually know or understand facts—they predict likely sequences of words based on patterns they’ve seen during training. When they can’t find the answer in the data they were trained on or in what you provided in your prompt, they sometimes simply generate something that sounds plausible. This is why, especially when teams are using AI, it is critical for proposal managers and Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) to actively stay involved throughout the process. Here are some steps you can follow to help avoid hallucinations and errors when using AI: Always start with a compliance matrix Get back to the basics: build your compliance matrix first and track every requirement explicitly. You can have AI generate a first cut, but then you need to go back and add in everything that the tool may have missed. Next, just as best practice has always told us to do, have a human peer review and validate the matrix. Then use the matrix as the source of truth, and verify that every section written, whether by AI or by a human, maps back to the correct requirement. Remember, AI can help you phrase responses, but it doesn’t reliably recognize all mandatory instructions, page limits, or formatting rules. Use AI as a support tool, not a decision-maker Remember that AI can draft, suggest, and rephrase, but it doesn’t understand the legal or contractual weight of a solicitation. We’ve mentioned this already, but always have a SME and/or compliance lead review every section of the response. Don’t throw out your best practice review cycles! Fact-check everything Again—another “old school” best practice that has become ever more important in the age of AI. Because AI is prone to hallucinations, it may confidently invent product specifications, certifications, client names, or achievements. To catch these errors, first make sure you provide the AI with accurate source material. Then as part of your review process, require the reviewers to check all the information, including data points, dates, names of agencies or organizations, and references to laws, standards, or regulations. Feed AI verified content: don’t let it guess Don’t ask AI open-ended questions, such as “What are the key benefits of our solution?” unless you also give it source content to work with. Instead, first give the tool your actual product or solution specifications, differentiators, and past performance examples and ask it to organize, rephrase, or summarize those into proposal language. Remember, only do this if you are using a paid/private version of the tool. Leverage secure, organization-approved AI tools If you are going to introduce AI tools into your proposal process, it’s best to use private or enterprise-grade AI systems that can be fine-tuned on your approved boilerplate and style guides. Public tools are trained on general data and will be less aligned with your standards—and they also pose serious confidentiality and data security risks if not used carefully. Final Thoughts As generative AI tools continue to evolve and become more embedded in our workflows, proposal teams have an opportunity to harness them responsibly and effectively to produce efficiencies in our winning proposal processes. By understanding both the benefits and the risks, and by establishing clear policies, training, and review processes, you can use AI to enhance productivity without compromising compliance, accuracy, or confidentiality. Ultimately, AI should serve as a supportive assistant, not a substitute for human judgment, expertise, and quality control. Remember: Always fact-check AI output against trusted sources Provide the AI tool with accurate, complete input material (don’t let it guess) Have SMEs review content for accuracy Don’t let AI generate sections from scratch without oversight With the right balance, AI can help your team work smarter, reduce burnout, and deliver stronger, more competitive proposals!

Managing a high volume of task order proposal responses requires a distinct skillset—one that differs in meaningful ways from the skills needed to lead large, strategic pursuits. While both environments rely on strong proposal fundamentals, the pace, structure, and operational demands of task order work introduce unique challenges. When organizations are responding to numerous task orders across multiple indefinite delivery indefinite quantity (IDIQ) vehicles and delivery areas—often within compressed timeframes—the ability to operate efficiently and systematically becomes essential. Organization, Planning, and Time Management Are Critical More than any other skill, managing concurrent proposal efforts requires exceptional organization. Each task order brings its own set of deadlines, outlines, review cycles, compliance checks, and submission requirements. These efforts often overlap, and additional requests may arrive with little advance notice. Teams must be prepared to juggle steady releases and shifting priorities without losing momentum. A well-designed status tracker becomes indispensable in this environment. Whether in spreadsheet form or integrated into a collaboration tool, a centralized tracker helps teams: Monitor deadlines and milestones Track assignment ownership Assess progress at a glance Identify resource bottlenecks Enable quick transitions if team members need to step in for one another The ability to visualize workload across all active efforts allows managers to anticipate pinch points—such as multiple submissions landing on the same day—and adjust internal schedules accordingly. Time management is equally important. Early distribution of templates and requirements gives contributors more time to gather information, validate assumptions, and identify content gaps. Quick initial setup reduces downstream pressure. Equally valuable is the ability to shift focus fluidly. In high-volume environments, progress rarely happens in a linear sequence. When one effort pauses while awaiting input, advancing another draft can keep overall momentum moving. At the same time, teams must remain ready to pivot back to priority items as soon as needed. This agility in workflow management is what allows teams to meet tight, overlapping deadlines consistently. Solid Reuse Content Is Your Best Friend While strategic proposals often emphasize highly tailored content, task order responses frequently benefit from well-maintained reuse material. Many task orders repeat substantial portions of the overarching statement of work. When this happens, having pre-populated templates and clearly structured boilerplate saves significant time. Effective reuse management includes: Pre-built task order templates aligned to recurring requirements Clearly marked sections that must be customized (e.g., program name, customer, location) Regularly updated past performance and resume libraries Easily searchable repositories Standardized sections maintained and refreshed over time A proposal library is only effective if it is accessible and usable by the entire team. When reuse knowledge resides with only one individual, that person becomes a bottleneck and a single point of failure. In high-tempo environments, shared access and training are essential. Structurally, many teams benefit from creating an overarching workspace for each IDIQ vehicle, with sub-workspaces for individual task orders. This approach keeps shared resources readily available while preserving organization at the task order level. An agile infrastructure reduces friction and accelerates response times—two critical factors when managing high proposal volume. You Can’t Always Rely on a Separate Desktop Publishing Function In strategic pursuits, document formatting and styling may be handled by a dedicated Desktop Publishing (DTP) specialist. However, in rapid-turn task order environments, that separation can introduce delays. When content arrives close to deadline—as it often does—the ability for the proposal lead to apply styles, adjust formatting to RFP requirements, and finalize the document directly can significantly reduce risk. Waiting to pass the document to another function can compress timelines even further and increase submission-day stress. For this reason, developing strong DTP capabilities is a valuable investment for professionals who support high-volume task order work. The more self-sufficient the proposal lead, the more streamlined and sustainable the response process becomes. Final Thoughts The fundamentals of proposal development remain consistent across pursuits: compliance, clarity, compelling messaging, and customer focus always matter. However, the operating environment of task order proposals demands heightened emphasis on: Rigorous organization and tracking Agile time and workflow management Strong, well-maintained reuse infrastructure Streamlined document finalization capabilities Without these elements in place, teams can quickly become overwhelmed by competing deadlines and compressed schedules. With them, organizations can respond efficiently, reduce stress, and maintain quality—even when juggling a high volume of concurrent task order responses.

According to a 2023 report by the Coalitions for Government Procurement, Fiscal Year 2023 marked the third consecutive year in which over 50 percent of United States (US) federal contract spending was obligated using indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity (IDIQ) contracts . The report shows inflation-adjusted IDIQ spending exceeding $426 billion in Fiscal Year 2023, which represents about 56% of all federal contract spending that year. With IDIQ contracts becoming more and more prevalent in the US federal government space, it’s critical that companies not only invest in the pursuit of IDIQ vehicles, but also establish a successful task order response machine. In this article, I’ll discuss how to do just that. First, I’ll quantify the Government’s task order spend to understand why having a successful task order process is so important. Next, I’ll review the steps necessary to establish a successful process, including establishing the infrastructure, conducting capture activities and using baseline resources, establishing and leveraging proposal management resources, generating and using boilerplate sections, and generating and using task order templates. I’ll review how to establish and execute the task order response process and conduct lessons learned and iterative process adjustments. Finally, I’ll conclude with some key takeaways. Quantifying the Government Spend First, let’s take a look at some numbers related to Government spending. According to that 2023 report by the Coalitions for Government Procurement, the US Federal Government spent more than $759 billion on contracts in Fiscal Year 2023, representing a five percent increase from the previous year. The Department of Defense (DoD) served as the largest source of contract spending, with over $470 billion in obligations, making up roughly 62 of all government contract spending. When it comes to the $426 billion spent on IDIQs, the DoD represented about 60 percent of that spending. Interestingly, the agencies that used IDIQ contracts the most were the Department of Treasury, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), with IDIQ spending accounting for more than 80 percent of their total contract spending. Why Are Multiple Award Contracts Appealing? Multiple award contracts are appealing to the Government because they create a smaller, down-selected pool of contractors from which to solicit work via task orders. For this same reason, winning these multiple award contracts are appealing to contractors. These vehicles reduce the number of possible competitors, which increases your odds of winning from the start. This down-selected pool also helps to pre-focus your competitive analysis activities. Why Is a Solid Task Order Response Process Important? Winning the IDIQ vehicle is just the first step. How often do we see companies spending good time and money on winning an IDIQ vehicle but then fall flat on the task order responses? This is why setting up a solid task order response process is so critical. But where do you start? First, you’ll need to set up a task order response infrastructure—establish the templates and tools necessary to respond. Next, you should establish a task order response process—document those predefined actions to take once a task order opportunity is identified. Once the process is documented, you’ll need to communicate the process to the team. Conducting training sessions can help ensure that key process elements are understood by all internal stakeholders and team members. Next, you’ll need to execute your task order process. Then after each task order response, you’ll want to conduct lessons learned and adjust your process as needed. 

In today’s environment, proposal development often involves hybrid or fully remote teams spread across different locations and time zones. While this enables teams to leverage the best qualified team members while minimizing travel costs and impacts on personal lives, it also introduces some key challenges. These include communication breakdowns, challenges coordinating across time zones, lack of visibility into progress, version control issues, and limited opportunities for real-time problem solving. Clear communication, efficient workflows, and team cohesion become even more critical when your contributors are not in the same room. To follow are some best practices to help proposal managers lead hybrid or remote proposal teams effectively.  Start With a Clear Proposal Management Plan Just as we do with a collocated team, before drafting begins, the proposal manager must take time to develop and circulate a clear and complete proposal management plan. The proposal management plan should include: A proposal schedule with all key solicitation milestones (questions due dates, intent to bid due dates, site visit dates, proposal due date) and internal deadlines (internal questions deadlines, pens down dates, color team review dates, etc.) Outline and compliance matrix Roles and responsibilities matrix Contact list Action items tracker Proposal style guide and wall of truth Proposal templates Relevant past proposals and boilerplate content The proposal manager should share the proposal management plan details during the kickoff meeting. This will ensure everyone is aligned on the objectives, expectations, and processes. Consider recording the meeting for those who cannot attend; then post the proposal management plan in a shared collaboration space. Use Collaboration Tools Remote proposal work depends on effective collaboration supported by various tools and technologies: Proposal workspace: It is critical to set up a workspace where you can share solicitation files, answers to questions, section drafts, win themes/other capture materials, the proposal management plan, graphics, source materials, and other proposal content. You’ll want to choose a tool that with access control and document version control capabilities, such as SharePoint. Communication tools: Messaging tools like Slack and Microsoft Teams enable teams to ask quick questions. These tools also typically have video calling capabilities, which can act like “popping into someone’s office.” Texting, email, and phone calls can be great to use as well. Consider including preferred communication methods in your proposal contact list. During the kickoff meeting, train your team on these tools. You should also set some norms and expectations, such as when to use email versus chat, expected response times, and expectations for enabling the video function (or not). You should also review the proposal workspace, how things are organized, how to edit files while maintaining version control (e.g., whether you are checking files out or using collaboration modes), and other proposal workspace best practices. Set Up a Regular Cadence for Communication In a hybrid or remote setting, poor communication can lead to assumptions and missed deadlines. To avoid this, the proposal manager should schedule daily stand-up calls (which should be quick, less than 30 minutes), weekly progress meetings/in-progress reviews, and color team reviews. To the extent practical, the proposal manager should schedule a time that works best for all time zones involved. Encourage honest, proactive updates on the stand-up calls: team members should flag risks or roadblocks early so that additional resources can be identified if necessary. As part of the roles and responsibilities matrix, clarify who to contact for specific issues (e.g., technology, graphics, compliance, formatting, subject matter expert support, etc.). Have the proposal manager or proposal coordinator send out a summary of actions email following each meeting. Final Thoughts Hybrid and remote proposal teams can deliver excellent results if managed thoughtfully. By providing structure, leveraging technology, maintaining open communication, and fostering a sense of teamwork, proposal managers can overcome geographic barriers and guide their teams to success. The key is to lead with empathy and clarity, ensuring every team member knows what to do, using which tools, and by which deadlines. With these best practices, you can turn the challenges of remote collaboration into a competitive advantage. Originally posted on Proposal Reflections .

 In the intense world of proposal development, the kickoff meeting sets the tone for everything that follows. It's a strategic opportunity to align the team, clarify goals, and establish early momentum. Kickoff meetings enable you to: Build shared understanding of the proposal scope, schedule, and objectives Clarify roles and responsibilities for all team members Define communication protocols and decision-making processes Surface early questions or risks Energize the team with a clear sense of direction and urgency When executed effectively, a kickoff meeting helps prevent missteps, minimizes rework, and provides the foundation for a cohesive, collaborative proposal effort. Plan Before You Launch A successful proposal effort starts well before the kickoff meeting. Thoughtful planning and preparation lay the groundwork for efficient execution, effective collaboration, and a high-quality, compliant submission. Before the team gathers to launch the proposal, the proposal manager should ensure that foundational tools, materials, and logistics are in place. This includes developing a comprehensive proposal management plan, setting up a centralized collaboration workspace, preparing writing templates, and crafting a structured kickoff meeting agenda and presentation. These upfront investments not only help align the team from day one, but also reduce confusion, minimize rework, and accelerate content development. With the right planning in place, your proposal team can start strong and maintain momentum through submission. Proposal Management Plan One of the most important planning tools is the proposal management plan. Before the kickoff meeting, the proposal manager must take time to develop a clear and complete proposal management plan. The proposal management plan should include: A proposal schedule with all key solicitation milestones (questions due dates, intent to bid due dates, site visit dates, proposal due date) and internal deadlines (internal questions deadlines, pens down dates, color team review dates, etc.) Vacation/time off schedule or tracker Outline and compliance matrix Roles and responsibilities matrix Contact list Action items tracker Proposal style guide and wall of truth Proposal templates Relevant past proposals and boilerplate content The proposal manager should walk through the proposal management plan details during the kickoff meeting. This will ensure everyone is aligned on the objectives, expectations, and processes. Consider recording the meeting for those who cannot attend; then post the proposal management plan in a shared collaboration space. Set Up a Collaboration Workspace So that the team can hit the ground running following the kickoff meeting, it is critical to set up a collaboration workspace before the proposal kickoff meeting. If you don’t already have a workspace that was established during the capture phase, you’ll need to set up a workspace where you can share solicitation files, answers to questions, section drafts, win themes/other capture materials, the proposal management plan, graphics, source materials, and other proposal content. You’ll want to choose a tool that with access control and document version control capabilities, such as SharePoint. Have Proposal Templates Ready It’s also helpful to have the proposal writing templates ready before the kickoff meeting. If the team hasn’t already conducted storyboarding exercises, you’ll want templates ready for those as well. When templates are prepared in advance, writers can start drafting immediately after the kickoff. This reduces downtime and helps maintain momentum, especially on tight proposal schedules where every day counts. Templates also define the structure, tone, and formatting of the response. This helps section leads and contributors understand what’s expected of them and reduces the likelihood of inconsistent or non-compliant content. Well-designed templates are built to match the solicitation’s requirements, including section headings, numbering, page limits, and formatting rules. This keeps the team aligned with compliance from the start and reduces rework later. Prepare a Thoughtful Kickoff Deck The kickoff meeting will set the tone for the remainder of the proposal, so it’s imperative to come to the meeting organized, prepared, and positive. The proposal kickoff deck should outline to the team why the proposal and future contract matter. Outline the customer’s mission, key drivers, and what a winning outcome looks like. This helps the team stay customer-focused and mission-aligned from day one. Other key components of the kickoff deck and agenda include: Team Overview. If applicable, introduce the team members and what value they bring to the team. Briefly highlight their relevant experience or expertise to reinforce confidence in the team’s ability to deliver. This not only builds credibility but also helps the team understand who to go to for specific needs or questions. For cross-functional or newly formed teams, this step is especially important in fostering collaboration and trust from the outset. Opportunity Overview. Provide additional details about the opportunity, any relevant capture summaries, and a high-level picture of the proposal requirements, including major sections and page limitations. It’s also helpful to walk through the key evaluation criteria and the relative weights of each major section. Win Themes Review. Walk through the win themes—the high-level value statements that articulate why your team is the best choice for the customer. These themes should be tightly aligned to the customer’s mission, priorities, and evaluation criteria. Use this time to explain how each theme ties back to your solution’s strengths and emphasize that they should be consistently integrated throughout all sections of the proposal. Reinforcing win themes early ensures the entire team is messaging in a unified, strategic voice from the beginning. Proposal Team Roles and Responsibilities. Review the proposal organization chart and clearly outline who is responsible for what. Walk through key roles such as the proposal manager, volume leads, writers, reviewers, and subject matter experts. This will ensure everyone understands their individual contributions and how they fit into the larger effort. Clarify expectations for task ownership, deadlines, and collaboration to prevent confusion and overlap. This step helps establish accountability, streamlines communication, and sets a strong foundation for coordinated execution throughout the proposal lifecycle. Ground Rules for Collaboration. It’s also important to discuss how the team is expected to communicate, the tools they should use, and the schedule of standups or status checks. Establish expectations for responsiveness, escalation, and document sharing (e.g., SharePoint, Google Drive, proposal management tools). Messaging tools like Slack and Microsoft Teams enable teams to ask quick questions. These tools also typically have video calling capabilities, which can act like “popping into someone’s office.” Texting, email, and phone calls can be great to use as well. Consider including preferred communication methods in your proposal contact list. During the kickoff meeting, train your team on these tools. You should also set some norms and expectations, such as when to use email versus chat, expected response times, and expectations for enabling the video function (or not). You should also review the proposal workspace, how things are organized, and how to edit files while maintaining version control. Proposal Schedule and Logistics. As part of the kickoff meeting, you should be sure to review the proposal schedule and highlight major milestones, including questions due dates, proposal review pens down, and site visits. You’ll also want to walk the team through general proposal logistics. Will there be a daily stand-up call? At what time? Who is expected to attend. What tools are being used for proposal collaboration and reviews? Is this an in-person effort, virtual, or hybrid? Especially if this is the first time you have worked with a particular team, it can also be helpful to walk through the general proposal process that you will follow—for example, what the team can expect from Pink Team, Red Team, Gold Team, and any other reviews. Ask team members to raise potential red flags early—whether it’s gaps in information, tight timelines, or competing priorities. Capture risks in a shared tracker and assign owners to monitor them. Close the meeting with immediate actions: What’s due in the next 24–48 hours? When is the next meeting? Who’s responsible for what? Leaving the team with clear direction facilitates forward progress. Kickoff Meeting Tips for Facilitators Facilitating a successful kickoff meeting is more than just walking through an agenda, it’s about creating the right environment for collaboration, alignment, and momentum. Your approach sets the tone and shapes the team’s experience. By being intentional in how you show up and structure the conversation, you can foster a productive dynamic that carries through the rest of the proposal effort. Keep these best practices in mind as you prepare to lead the team from the very first meeting: Start with energy: Your tone sets the vibe. Bring clarity, confidence, and positivity. Balance structure with flexibility: Keep the meeting focused but leave room for discussion and input. Encourage engagement: Ask questions, invite comments, and watch for non-verbal cues in virtual settings. Document and distribute: Capture meeting notes, action items, and decisions—then share them promptly. If your team is remote, consider turning cameras on to build connection. Final Thoughts The kickoff meeting is more than a starting point, it’s a strategic opportunity to align your team, establish shared goals, and create the conditions for a smooth, successful proposal effort. With thoughtful planning, clear communication, and the right tools in place, you can turn this first meeting into a launchpad for collaboration, accountability, and high-quality results. Remember, how you begin often determines how you finish. Invest the time and energy to make your kickoff count, and you’ll position your team to deliver a compelling, compliant, and competitive proposal. Originally posted at Proposal Reflections .

Submitting a winning proposal isn’t just about compliance and meeting requirements. It’s about convincing your customer that you understand their needs, challenges, and goals better than anyone else—and that your solution best will meet their requirements. Writing persuasive, customer-focused proposals is the key to standing out, building trust, and ultimately winning more business. Why Customer Focus Matters At the heart of every successful proposal is a deep understanding of the customer. When your proposal speaks directly to your customer’s pain points and priorities, it becomes much more than a compliance checklist, it becomes a tailored narrative that resonates. Customers want to know: Do you truly understand their problem? Can you deliver on your promises? How does your solution benefit them? Answering these questions with clarity and confidence builds credibility and moves evaluators closer to choosing you. The Pillars of a Persuasive Proposal By combining customer insight, clear messaging, and structured storytelling, you can transform your proposal from a bland, generic response into a compelling case for why you are the right choice. The following pillars provide a framework for building proposals that not only meet requirements but also resonate with your customer and inspire confidence in your ability to deliver. 1. Know Your Customer Before you start writing, invest time in research. Understand the customer’s mission, strategic objectives, operational challenges, and past procurements. This information should be present in the capture plan—but if it’s not, do some research on your own. Much of this information will be available through some internet searching. It’s also helpful to analyze feedback from previous proposals or contract performance evaluations (e.g., Contract Performance Assessment Reports) with the customer if you have them. Remember, the more you know about your customer, the better you can tailor your message. Where appropriate in your proposal, you’ll want to leverage this understanding to tap into their aspirations and challenges and create a connection. 2. Incorporate Clear Win Themes You’ll want to use your customer understanding to craft hard hitting win themes to incorporate into your proposal text. Win themes are concise, strategic statements that encapsulate why your offer is the best. They should: Reflect the customer’s top priorities Highlight your differentiators Be repeated consistently throughout the proposal to reinforce your value For example, a win theme might be: “Our proven technology reduces operational downtime by 30%, helping achieve uninterrupted service delivery.” You can read more about developing strong win themes and section themes here. 3. Focus on Benefits When crafting your proposal narrative, it’s critical to articulate why your solution benefits the customer. Instead of simply listing what your product or service does, explain how it benefits the customer. For example, instead of saying, “Our software has advanced analytics,” say, “Our advanced analytics enable your team to make faster, data-driven decisions that improve efficiency and reduce costs by 30%.” 4. Use Customer Language When you use the customer’s language, you eliminate barriers, highlight alignment, and make it easy for evaluators to see you as the right fit. Evaluators are busy and often under pressure. When they see familiar terms, acronyms, and job titles, they don’t have to pause to interpret your meaning. Mirroring the customer’s language also creates a sense of connection and trust. It reassures them that you speak their language and can integrate seamlessly into their operations. For these reasons, when writing your proposal, you should mirror the customer’s terminology and style found in the solicitation documents, website, handbooks, and communications. For example, if the solicitation calls out a Program Manager, you’ll want to call this position a Program Manager, not a Project Manager. This may seem like a small detail, but the customer will notice! Using the same terminology the customer uses—whether from the solicitation, their website, or internal publications—demonstrates that you understand their world. It signals that you’ve listened, done your homework, and are focused on their priorities, not just pushing your own agenda. This clear alignment makes your proposal easier to read, scan, and score. 5. Provide Proof Points You’ll also want to support your claims with evidence, such as case studies, metrics, past performance, testimonials, certifications, or pilot results. For example, after indicating that our advanced analytics enable the customer’s team to make faster, data-driven decisions that improve efficiency and reduce costs by 30%, we might include a proof statement of where we have achieved this success in the past: “For example, on XYZ contract, our advanced analytics enabled the customer to cut decision times in half and resulted in cost savings of $15M.” By adding proof statements as evidence and backing up our claims with facts and figures, we provide the necessary proof to validate our solution with the evaluator. Quantifying our substantiation points will make our content even more credible. Demonstrating past success reduces the perception of risk and helps the customer gain confidence in your capabilities, especially when you tie your capabilities back to positive outcomes for the customer. 6. Structure for Readability and Score-ability We also want to make sure our proposal is easy to read—and easy to score! Use headings, bullet points, and graphics structured in the order of the instructions/evaluation criteria to make your proposal easy to scan and evaluate. To make your sections easy to score, structure your response to the proposal instructions and the evaluation criteria. Next map in other requirements, as required. To facilitate evaluation, consider including relevant solicitation references in your section heading titles. Additionally, evaluators often do key word searches to find what’s important to them. Make sure all sections include key words from the instructions, evaluation criteria, and the statement of work/performance work statement. To make your proposal narrative even more evaluator-friendly, leverage feature and benefit tables and highlight proof points using callout boxes. 7. Be Clear and Concise Clarity is one of the most important qualities of a winning proposal. Evaluators often review dozens of submissions under tight deadlines, so complex wording, jargon, or filler language can slow them down—or worse, obscure your key messages. Every sentence should be easy to understand and tied directly to the customer’s priorities. Being concise doesn’t mean oversimplifying; it means distilling your ideas into their most impactful form. Replace long-winded explanations with direct statements and eliminate buzzwords that don’t add substance. For example, instead of saying, “Our innovative, cutting-edge, next-generation platform leverages advanced synergies to optimize mission outcomes,” you might write, “Our platform improves mission performance by reducing downtime by 50% and streamlining workflows.” Some tips for clear writing include: Use plain language: Write as though you’re explaining to a smart colleague outside your industry. Cut redundancy: If you’ve already made a point, don’t repeat it unless you’re reinforcing a win theme. Prioritize active voice: “We deliver results” is stronger and clearer than “Results are delivered by our team.” Use short sentences with strong verbs: Keep sentences focused and avoid unnecessary modifiers. Test readability: Read your proposal out loud to catch errors or awkward sounding sentences, and use the tools built into your word processing program to check sentence length and grade-level clarity. Concise, clear writing respects the evaluator’s time and ensures your strengths stand out without distraction. When every word adds value, your proposal communicates confidence, professionalism, and customer focus. Final Thoughts Writing persuasive, customer-focused proposals requires more than just subject matter knowledge, it requires empathy, strategy, and clarity. When you put the customer at the center of your message and communicate your value clearly and convincingly, your proposals become powerful tools for winning business and forging lasting partnerships.  Originally posted at Proposal Reflections .

When people think about what makes a winning proposal, the focus typically falls on the “critical Cs”: clear, compelling, compliant, customer-focused, concise, consistent, and credible. While these qualities are essential, one important factor is often deprioritized—visual appeal. A proposal may check every compliance box and present a strong technical solution, but if it is dense, cluttered, or hard to navigate, evaluators may not fully absorb its value. Visual appeal is not about adding decoration for decoration’s sake—it’s about making your proposal easier to read, understand, and remember. Strong design draws the evaluator in, highlights key information, and reinforces your core messages. It conveys professionalism, attention to detail, and care—qualities that influence how your company is perceived before a single page of content is even read. The reason you should want to present a professional looking proposal is the same reason you show up to an interview or customer meeting looking sharp and polished! Why Visual Appeal Matters A proposal is more than a compliance document; it’s a persuasive sales tool. Just like effective marketing materials, it needs to grab attention quickly, keep readers engaged, and make your message easy to absorb. Visual appeal accomplishes all of this while also signaling professionalism and credibility. Done well, it can shape evaluators’ perceptions before they even dive into the details of your solution. Key benefits of strong visual design include: Improved readability and comprehension. Dense walls of text can overwhelm or discourage evaluators. To overcome this problem, use visual elements such as charts, infographics, pictures, icons, and even white space to break up content and highlight what matters most. This makes complex information easier to digest and allows evaluators to see your value quickly. Enhanced differentiation. In a stack of proposals, appearance matters. A clean, well-branded, and thoughtfully designed document immediately conveys polish and care. It also reinforces your organization’s identity, setting you apart from competitors who submit text-heavy or generic-looking responses. Stronger storytelling. Visuals can illustrate your solution in ways that words alone cannot. Flowcharts simplify processes, timelines clarify schedules, and diagrams showcase technical approaches. These elements help tell a more persuasive story that appeals to both logical and visual learners. Greater engagement. Evaluators often face tight deadlines, and they frequently have many proposals to review. A visually engaging document captures attention and encourages readers to spend more time with your content. The consistent use of color, style, and structure also makes it easier for them to navigate and retain key messages. Investing in design communicates to the customer that you value quality and detail. A proposal that looks as strong as it reads signals that you will apply the same level of care and precision to delivering the contract itself. What’s more, visual appeal not only makes proposals more attractive, it makes them more effective. It’s a way to respect evaluators’ time, strengthen your story, and elevate your message above the competition. How to Integrate Visual Appeal into Your Process A visually appealing proposal doesn’t just look professional—it guides the reader’s eye, reinforces your message, and makes complex information easier to digest. Strong design supports substance, helping evaluators focus on what matters most. Here are best practices to keep in mind when integrating visual elements into your proposal process: Use templates and branding. Start with professionally designed templates that reflect your company’s identity. Aligning fonts, colors, and layout with your brand, as well as solicitation-specific formatting requirements, ensures consistency across all sections of the proposal. A polished, cohesive design signals attention to detail and builds credibility. Incorporate white space. Resist the temptation to pack every inch of the page with text or graphics. White space not only improves readability, but it also directs attention to your most important points. Think of it as giving the reader’s eyes a rest while highlighting your message. Use visuals strategically. Charts, diagrams, process flows, and images can simplify complex concepts and reinforce key points—but only when they’re relevant. A well-placed graphic can make evaluation criteria, pricing structures, or technical processes more digestible. Avoid adding visuals simply for decoration. Every image should have a clear purpose. Keep it simple. Clutter is the enemy of clarity. Overly busy graphics, multiple font styles, or inconsistent color schemes can distract and confuse readers. Stick to clean designs that support the content, ensuring that visuals amplify rather than overshadow your narrative. Integrating visual appeal is about balance. The goal isn’t to dazzle evaluators with flashy graphics, but to create a professional, reader-friendly document that underscores the strength of your proposal. When done well, visuals can transform a dense technical response into a clear, persuasive, and memorable presentation. Final Thoughts Visual appeal is a powerful tool that can elevate your proposals from ordinary to outstanding. By thoughtfully integrating design elements that improve readability, engagement, and storytelling, you increase your chances of making a lasting impression on evaluators and winning more business. Originally published on Proposal Reflections .

Writing is such a critical component of the proposal process. Because writing for proposals is different than most other writing, it is important to understand how to craft proposal narrative that will resonate and score well with the evaluators. Well-crafted proposals will highlight your message and make it easy for the evaluator to follow our proposal’s logic and main points. That’s why it’s so important to take the time to develop well-written, well-structured proposal responses tailored to the customer and the evaluators. To help highlight your key messages and make your writing easier to score, map RFP requirements into your headings; make key selling points stand out with theme statements, feature and benefit tables, and callout boxes; break up the text so it’s more digestible; substantiate all claims and quantify where possible; and focus on the customer. Map the RFP Requirements into Your Headings Compliance is the first thing evaluators will look for. To make compliance clear, structure your response to the proposal instructions and the evaluation criteria. Next map to other requirements, as required. For example, in technical sections, it may be necessary to map to certain Statement of Work (SOW) or Performance Work Statement (PWS). To facilitate the evaluation further, include relevant Request for Proposal (RFP) references in your section heading titles (e.g., 2.0 Staffing Approach [L.2, M.2, C.3.1]). This will make it easier for the evaluators to find the requirements they’re looking for on their scoresheet. Make Key Selling Points Stand Out Another key proposal writing best practice is to make your key selling points stand out using theme statements with unique text, call-out boxes that stand out, feature and benefit tables that highlight strengths, and action captions that highlight the key takeaways of associated graphics. This will help the evaluators visually locate the key strengths of your approach and the resulting benefits so that they can more easily transfer those items to their scoresheets. Theme Statements. Theme statements set the stage for the section and grab the evaluator’s attention because they address an issue that is important to the customer. The ideal theme statement not only presents a solution feature that addresses a customer hot button, it also articulates clear, quantified benefits. I recommend including a theme statement for every first-level section and second-level subsection and formatting those themes to stand out from the rest of the text. If you theme effectively, the theme statements will show up as identified strengths in the evaluation debrief from the customer. Feature Benefit Tables. Feature and benefit tables are another great way to help evaluators find proposal strengths. Similar to theme statements, feature and benefit tables highlight major solution features—which ideally address customer hot buttons—and articulate clear, quantified benefits. Typically, customers want things cheaper, faster, and/or better, which you might express as low cost, low risk, high quality, efficient, and/or effective. Use feature and benefit tables in each major section introduction to highlight the key elements of your approach. This could be every first-level section for shorter proposals but may be extended to each second-level subsection for longer proposals. Callout Boxes. Using callout boxes will help your major proof points stand out for the evaluators. To make proof points even more effective, make sure to provide the “so what?” statement. For example, it’s not enough simply to state: "We have used our proven staffing process to staff programs with 3-, 7- and 14-day turnaround times, including the MNOP program, where we staffed 15 FTEs in two weeks." Ask yourself, “So what? What does this mean for my customer?” This might prompt you to add: "Leveraging this staffing process, we provide Customer ABC with low-risk task order start-up and delivery for large, small, short-term, and long-term requirements." Action Captions. Action captions help the reader understand the meaning of the graphic and serve to sell the approach. They are another great way to highlight the strengths of your approach. Action captions should include a key feature and customer benefit that are highlighted in the graphic. Break Up Text with Graphics Graphics are key to effective proposal writing and consist of visuals such as: charts, drawings, maps, photographs, tables, and callout boxes. If used correctly, graphics are compelling, easy to understand, informative, and help to communicate your message faster and more clearly than words alone. Research shows that readers recall about 10 percent of what they read only, whereas they recall nearly 70 percent of what they both read and see. Graphics can help evaluators to easily read data, understand processes, and identify patterns or potential opportunities. Graphics also serve to visually break up the text and make the narrative more digestible for the evaluators. If used properly, graphics can help you to more effectively communicate information as well as save space since they typically also receive some font size relief. Substantiate All Claims and Quantify To further strengthen your message, you should also aim to substantiate all claims, quantifying where possible. Unsubstantiated claims negate the credibility of the proposal response. Instead using empty words such as “high,” “numerous,” and “highly reliable,” use quantified metrics instead. For example, rather than writing, “ABC consistently received high award fees,” you might write, “ABC consistently received award fee scores between 90 and 95 percent.” By adding proof statements as evidence and backing up your claims with facts and figures, you provide the necessary proof to validate our solution with the evaluator. Quantifying your substantiation points can make your content even more credible. However, take care not to be too specific: 20% will be perceived with more confidence than 22.4%, which may raise questions of validity. Focus on the Customer When we write proposals, we tend to tout our team and our solution. We tell the customer how great we are and describe the terrific solution we are delivering. However, this is not a customer-focused approach. Instead, proposals should be about how the customer’s needs are met by our solution and the benefits the customer receives. Bottom line: the focus should be on the customer, not us. Put Them First—Literally. One of the easiest ways to make your proposal content more customer focused is to put them first—literally. Instead of saying, “Team ABC’s solution delivers a low-risk transition,” flip the construction and write, “Customer A receives a low-risk transition with our comprehensive transition approach.” The two sentences convey the same overall message, but by putting the customer first in the sentence, you shift the focus onto what the customer is receiving rather than what you are delivering. Use Their Name More Than Yours. Another easy way to make your proposal content more customer focused is to use the customer’s name more frequently than your company or team name. Try this quick test. Hit Ctrl-F and search for the number of times you mention your company and/or team name. Then search for the number of times you mention the customer’s name. You should aim to mention the customer’s name more times than yours. If you find that you have mentioned the customer far less frequently, revise your text to focus more on the customer and the benefits they will receive by choosing your solution. Speak Their Language. Be sure to use the customer’s terminology and lexicon in your proposal to gain their confidence. By knowing your customer and speaking their language, you demonstrate that you understand them and begin to establish trust. What’s more, your customer evaluators often do key word searches to find what’s important to them in your proposal. Make sure all sections include key words from the instructions, evaluation criteria, and the SOW/PWS. Final Thoughts Poorly-written proposals can obscure your message and make it difficult for evaluators to follow your proposal’s logic and main points. If we’re sloppy and careless in our proposal presentation, the customer can only assume that you will be similarly careless and sloppy in your contract delivery. Following these proposal best practices can help you to present our ideas clearly and comprehensively, in a way that can be easily understood and scored by the evaluators. In addition to making your proposal easier to score, strong writing can contribute to your company’s credibility in the eyes of the evaluator—which can certainly help improve your chances of winning overall. Originally published at Proposal Reflections .

We’ve all heard them in conversation—those little verbal fillers that sneak into our speech when we need an extra second to think: umm, like, you know . In everyday dialogue, they may be harmless. In an oral proposal, they’re distracting. And in written proposals? They can be just as damaging. While most proposal teams train themselves to eliminate crutch words from presentations, far fewer realize those same habits show up on the page. In writing, crutch words don’t sound like hesitation—they read like vagueness. They dilute strong claims, obscure key differentiators, and weaken otherwise compelling content. Instead of reinforcing your value, they clutter it. In this article, we’ll explore the most common proposal writing crutch words—from imprecise qualifiers to unnecessary adverbs to tired clichés—and share practical strategies for eliminating them. The result? Clearer messaging, sharper positioning, and proposals that make it easier for evaluators to say yes. What They Are A crutch word is a word that becomes a filler in conversation or writing, or is used for emphasis, without adding any meaning. You could also call crutch words fluff, filler words, or weasel words. Many of us are familiar with crutch words in speech—those filler words that give us more time to think about our response or next point. Common crutch words we may use when we talk include: umm like er ah right and so anyway okay well like I was saying I guess you know. In oral proposals, we commonly practice our presentations and questions responses while minimizing these crutch words. This is because crutch words quickly become distracting to the evaluators and detract from our main points. But did you know that we tend to use crutch words in our proposal writing as well? You may have heard crutch words called by other names—fluff, filler words, or weasel words. However, these all refer to the same bad habit of cluttering and diluting our message. In this week’s blog, I’ll review some common proposal writing crutch words and present some strategies from removing these from your text. Avoid Words That Indicate Quantity But Lack Precision Some common crutch words we use in proposals are adjectives, adverbs, nouns, or verbs that indicate quantity or intensity but lack precision. We tend to use these words when we don’t have the exact information readily available, or because we want to add emphasis. However, using these words will only dilute your message, so you should try to avoid using them in your proposal text. Some examples of these common crutch words include: a lot many few several very really extremely nearly almost quite totally slightly Replace these weak crutch words with actual numbers, metrics, and measurements. For example, instead of: “Our solution saves the Government a lot of money,” specify how much the Government will save: “Our HVAC, lighting, and water system efficiencies reduce the Government’s annual energy costs by $500,000.” Avoid Unnecessary Adverbs, Which Can Obscure Your Points Rather Than Support Them Adverbs make up another category of common crutch words. An adverb is a word or phrase that modifies or qualifies an adjective, verb, another adverb, or a word group. The adverb typically expresses a relation of place, time, circumstance, manner, cause, degree, etc. In the professional writing world, adverbs are the hallmark of a lazy writer. What’s more, in proposals, certain adverbs can obscure a point rather than support it, so you should take care to eliminate these unnecessary and problematic adverbs from your proposal writing. Some examples are: truly honestly just almost basically actually definitely literally essentially absolutely seriously obviously certainly probably basically virtually Similar to imprecise words of magnitude, we tend to use adverbs to add emphasis to our writing. However, using these words can actually dilute, or worse, discredit your message. For example, using “truly” and “honestly” can come across as insincere, or can cause the evaluator to contemplate why you felt the need to emphasize your truthfulness or honestly in this case and not others. So as a rule, you should try to avoid using unnecessary adverbs in your proposal text. Avoid Clichés, Which Can Make Your Text Seem Trite A third category of common proposal crutch words are clichés. Clichés are overused words that have lost meaning and/or effectiveness. The word cliché stems from the French word for the sound of a printing plate, which prints the same thing over and over. Clichés tend to become crutch words for us in our proposal writing, yet they add little to no value, often come across as trite, and can even signal to evaluators that you haven’t put much thought into your narrative. Watch out for these words and try to eliminate or reduce your use of them in your proposal text. Examples include: best-in-class industry-leading right-size cutting edge world class raising the bar reinventing the wheel hard and fast last but not least thinking outside the box Similar to imprecise words and unnecessary adverbs, removing clichés from your proposals will declutter your writing and strengthen your overall message. Final Thoughts Proposal writing is certainly an art, and even the best writers find themselves falling into the trap of using crutch words. However, crutch words tend to lack precisi on, obscure the message, and can come across as trite and even lazy. By knowing your own crutch words, you can search for them in your writing and replace them with more precise and meaningful language. You can also keep a list of common crutch words that your team tends to use. Have your editors search for these crutch words during the editing process and revise the text to eliminate or reduce their use. Reducing or eliminating the use of common crutch words will strengthen the writing, making it clearer and more compelling to the evaluators. This will enable evaluators to focus on and find the content that addresses the evaluation criteria—and help them to score you higher. Revised from original article posted on Proposal Reflections .

Winning new business in today’s competitive market, whether in the commercial or government space, depends on the strength of your proposals. Even highly capable organizations lose out when their submissions are generic, unclear, or non-compliant. Proposals that read like a generic product or service description fail to stand out among competitors. Maybe you have cut and paste boilerplate content and simply changed the customer’s name. Maybe you have had AI generate your proposal content but failed to tailor it. Maybe you simply know nothing about the customer because the capture effort fell flat. Maybe this was a pop-up solicitation that leadership insisted on bidding. Maybe you just didn’t have enough time to produce something stronger. The good news? Most proposal failures stem from a handful of common mistakes that can be avoided with the right strategies. This article explores those pitfalls and provides practical guidance to help you write proposals that stand out, speak directly to the customers’ needs, and maximize your chances of success. Mistake 1: Incomplete Capture Plan and No Customer Understanding At the heart of every successful proposal is a deep understanding of the customer. When your proposal speaks directly to your customer’s pain points and priorities, it becomes a solution that resonates. Most often, this customer understanding will come from the person nurturing the relationship with the customer—the capture manager. However, sometimes, for one reason or another, we have a missing or incomplete capture plan—and nobody on our team can shed light on what keeps our customer up at night. If you find yourself in this situation, one powerful shortcut you can use is generative artificial intelligence (AI). You can use AI tools like ChatGPT to analyze the customer’s issues and hot buttons so you can tailor your messaging with speed and precision. Just upload the solicitation to the AI tool (as long as it isn’t marked confidential, CUI, or something similar), and then include a prompt like the following: “What are the key issues and hot buttons that concern this customer?” The tool will quickly and effectively pull out tangible hot buttons and issues present in the solicitation that you can write to in your response. You can take this a step further and have the AI tool draft some messaging or positioning points. Though these will be somewhat high-level, and may include solution elements you need to validate, they will be a good start, and you’ll get them quickly. After you get your list of messaging or positioning points, you’ll want to validate any solution elements with your team. Then, add necessary specifics to take them from generic to compelling. Here’s an example: ChatGPT may come up with the following messaging point: Our implementation methodology with rapid prototyping and continuous customer feedback reduces risk and accelerates delivery timelines. To take this from generic to compelling, you’ll want to add specifics and metrics: Our low-risk approach cuts delivery timelines in half with our proprietary Agile-based implementation methodology, which drives rapid prototyping and incorporates continuous customer feedback. Mistake 2: You’re Not Articulating Your Value Once you have a baseline customer understanding, you should take time to develop strong win themes—concise, compelling messages that explain why your offer is the best choice. Emphasize what makes your solution unique and how it directly benefits the customer. Win themes should: Reflect the customer’s top priorities Highlight your differentiators Be repeated consistently throughout the proposal to reinforce your value For example, a win theme might be: “Our proven technology reduces operational downtime by 30%, helping achieve uninterrupted service delivery.” Once developed, reinforce these themes consistently throughout the proposal. Mistake 3: Your Proposal is Full of Unsubstantiated Claims To go beyond the generic and cookie cutter, you’ll also want to support your claims with evidence, such as case studies, metrics, past performance, testimonials, certifications, or pilot results. For example, after indicating that our advanced analytics enable the customer’s team to make faster, data-driven decisions that improve efficiency and reduce costs by 30%, we might include a proof statement of where we have achieved this success in the past: “For example, on XYZ contract, our advanced analytics enabled the customer to cut decision times in half and resulted in cost savings of $15 million.” By adding proof statements as evidence and backing up our claims with facts and figures, we provide the necessary proof to substantiate our solution with the evaluator. Quantifying our proof points will make our content even more credible. Additionally, demonstrating past success reduces the perception of risk and helps the customer gain confidence in your capabilities, especially when you tie your capabilities back to positive outcomes for the customer. Mistake 4: Overloading with Jargon and Technical Terms Subject matter experts sometimes write proposals using internal jargon or overly technical language that evaluators may not understand. If this is the case, you’ll want to take time to rewrite their inputs in clear, concise, and customer-focused language. Ensure your proposal tells a story that resonates with both technical and non-technical readers. Remember, evaluators often review dozens of submissions under tight deadlines, so complex wording, jargon, or filler language can slow them down—or worse, obscure your key messages. Every sentence should be easy to understand and tied directly to the customer’s priorities. But being concise doesn’t mean oversimplifying. It means distilling your ideas into their most impactful form. Replace long-winded explanations with direct statements and eliminate buzzwords that don’t add substance. For example, instead of saying, “Our innovative, cutting-edge, next-generation platform leverages advanced synergies to optimize mission outcomes,” you might write, “Our platform improves mission performance by reducing downtime by 50% and streamlining workflows.” Some tips for clear writing include: Use plain language: Write as though you’re explaining to a smart colleague outside your industry. Cut redundancy: If you’ve already made a point, don’t repeat it unless you’re reinforcing a win theme. Prioritize active voice: “We deliver results” is stronger and clearer than “Results are delivered by our team.” Use short sentences with strong verbs: Keep sentences focused and avoid unnecessary modifiers. Test readability: Read your proposal out loud to catch errors or awkward sounding sentences, and use the tools built into your word processing program to check sentence length and grade-level clarity. Concise, clear writing respects the evaluator’s time and ensures your strengths stand out without distraction. When every word adds value, your proposal communicates confidence, professionalism, and customer focus. Mistake 5: Missing or Buried Compliance Elements Proposals that fail to meet mandatory requirements or submission formats risk rejection or disqualification regardless of content quality. To avoid this mistake, create a compliance matrix early in the process to track all requirements. Include compliance as a key focus during color team reviews and consider assigning a specific reviewer to cross-read for compliance. Create a proposal production checklist that includes major compliance elements, and verify page limits, font size, document format, attachments, and signatures before submitting. Make sure to submit the proposal following the exact method required (e.g., online portal, email, hand delivery, courier, etc.). Additionally, to help make sure that evaluators can find all the required information, we also want to make sure our proposal is easy to score. Structure your response to the proposal instructions and the evaluation criteria. Next map in other requirements, as required. To facilitate evaluation, consider including relevant solicitation references in your section heading titles. Additionally, evaluators often do key word searches to find what’s important to them. Make sure all sections include key words from the instructions, evaluation criteria, and the statement of work/performance work statement. To make your proposal narrative even more evaluator-friendly, leverage feature and benefit tables and highlight proof points using callout boxes. Final Thoughts Strong proposals are the result of planning, discipline, and a clear focus on the customer. By avoiding common mistakes like generic content, jargon, missing compliance elements, or weak themes, you can transform your proposal from a basic response into a persuasive, customer-centered solution. Every submission is an opportunity not just to compete, but to build credibility and strengthen relationships. Approach each one as a chance to prove your value—and win with confidence. Originally posted on the Proposal Reflections Blog

Active Voice: Because Evaluators Shouldn’t Have to Guess Who’s Doing What

Borrowed from the classic five love languages, these are the ways proposal professionals most often give and receive appreciation during the proposal pursuit.