From Strategy to Structure: The Role of Solutioning in High-Scoring Proposals

Ashley (Kayes) Floro, CPP APMP • March 4, 2026

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


Requirement RFP Reference Notes/Clarification
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2. Proposed Solution



Requirement Proposed Approach Tools/Technologies Staffing Approach Teaming Partners
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3. Key Features and Benefits


Customer Issue/Hot Button Feature or Capability Benefit to Customer Proof Point / Evidence Differentiator (Y/N)?
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4. Risks and Mitigations



Risk Impact Likelihood Mitigation Strategy
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5. Decision Points, Open Question, and Next Steps



Topic Owner Due Date Status
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Final Thoughts


A solutioning template isn’t just a form—it’s a thinking tool that helps teams move from reactive writing to proactive strategy. Solutioning ensures your team understands what you're offering, why it matters to the customer, and how it sets you apart from the competition. When used consistently, it’s a proven way to improve proposal quality, reduce risk, and increase win rates. 


By taking the time to solution before you write, you avoid costly missteps like misaligned messaging, inconsistent inputs, and last-minute rewrites. You also create space for better collaboration, stronger strategy, and clearer value propositions.


When supported by a structured template, the solutioning process becomes repeatable, efficient, and outcome-driven. It moves your team from reacting to RFPs to proactively designing responses that resonate with evaluators, improving proposal quality and increasing your overall probability of win.

From Submission to Success: How Lessons Learned Drive Better Proposals

By Ashley (Kayes) Floro, CPP APMP • March 30, 2026
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.

Six Strategies to Tackle Tight Page Limitations

By Ashley (Kayes) Floro, CPP APMP • March 25, 2026
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.
icons demonstrating how to write clearly

Write Clearly: Why “More” Isn’t Always Better

By Ashley (Kayes) Floro, CPP APMP • March 23, 2026
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.