Important Techniques to Utilize in your Proposal
Your main task in crafting a proposal is suggesting that your organization is the best possible option for the job. These techniques will help drive this point home.
Themes
Themes are statements of benefit, or in other terms, what you hope to communicate to the evaluator. They are undoubtedly one of the best ways to illustrate your ideas throughout your proposal. If employed properly, the reader will be able to quickly flip through the pages and be able to immediately understand what you are trying to communicate. Themes help you by minimizing the amount of the proposal that must be read, and allow you to drive home the most important portions of your writing. Often they are placed in boxes along the side of the proposal with special formatting to call attention to them. Discriminators
In laymen’s terms, a discriminator, or “unique selling point” is a type of theme that allows you to show how you differentiate from the competition, and why ultimately you are the best choice for the job. In order to differentiate yourself from the competition, you need to outline the benefits of choosing your company over theirs. Talk about how your particular organization is unique in offering benefits, and how you can fulfill their requirements better than the competition.
Summaries and Conclusions
Proper summaries and conclusions tell the evaluator exactly what you want them to take away from a particular section of your proposal. Utilize these to really emphasize the point you were making in the body of each particular section.
Ghosting
Similar to discriminators, ghosting is a technique that allows you to differentiate yourself from the competition, and prove that you are the best possible candidate for the position. They are different from discriminators because instead of listing why your organization would be beneficial over the competition, they instead allude to how utilizing a different company would be detrimental to their agency. It is a delicate thing to accomplish, but with thorough research on the competition, they can be incredibly effective.
Action Captions
An action caption should be included with all illustrations or exhibits to emphasize the key point of the piece you are presenting. Doing this ensures that they take note of what is most important.
Win Themes
These are the core of any proposal, and should be what your executive statement revolves around. Win themes can fall into numerous different categories, including: advantageous pricing, risk mitigation, proven track record, practical solutions and benefits, exceptionally qualified staff members/manager, exception experience of meeting the RFP requirements with proof. Work some of these into your executive statement, and then elaborate on those with themes unique to your company. It is important to note however that simply adding these into your proposal isn’t sufficient, you must be able to substantiate your claims.
