Why Your White Papers Don’t Work?
It’s not easy to write a white paper. And reading them can also be quite a challenge!
Unfortunately, many white papers are difficult to digest and come across as though slightly ‘nerdy-types’, locked in research labs, prepared them with very little consideration for their readers.
So, if you’re about to write your first white paper, here are a few golden rules to follow…
Plan Your Proposal And You Plan To Win
Proposal planning is essential to ensure that you have time to develop, write and produce a well though-out solution to the client’s requirement. Everyone who has written proposals regularly has occasionally wished that they had planned better, started earlier and various occasions stayed late trying to deal with an unsatisfactory and unfinished proposal.
Think of proposals as small projects – develop a plan. Think about all the relevant issues you must cover – how to meet…
Trying To Win New Business? Don’t Fall At The First Hurdle
Getting through pre-qualification is sometimes a difficult and tedious task. However, it is often a “necessary evil” in order to be considered for larger projects. Companies or individuals see this as a way of ensuring that any perspective consultants are both serious, professional and above all, qualified for the task at hand.
What is pre-qualification? Pre-Qualification us generally a series of test to ensure that suppliers meet a minimum set of standards. Quite frequent…
What’s My Competitor Doing?
You won’t win every piece of work you pitch for; it’s just not possible…and very time you lose a contract it’s going to a competitor. However, you can help prevent this from happening by analysing the competition.
Why analyse competition? How does this help? It allows you to understand why your competitor looked like a more appropriate fit for your perspective clients needs as well as what they are doing that you aren’t. To get contracts, you need to understand how you los…
Why Should They Choose You – Use Win Themes To Differentiate Your Proposal
Win themes are too often neglected in many proposals. Frequently, both new and established companies forget that any proposal should instil confidence in the potential buyer, highlight your competitive advantage and show exactly why you are best suited for the job. Written proposals with an effective win theme almost always ensure you, the provider, a winning contract.
What is a win theme? A win theme can be defined as a concept presented in your proposal that is designed …
Your Proposal Didn’t Win? Make Sure You Get Something From Losing
No matter how successful you are, eventually you will lose potential contracts. This is not always a bad thing – losing contracts can present you with opportunities to get closer to the client and get valuable feedback. It allows you to analyze what you did wrong, what was done right, and how you can improve your products, services…and proposals.
If you do lose a contract you should always ask for feedback and find out why you lost. Client’s are often happy to provide feed…
Get It In On Time – Proposal Production
Writing a proposal involves a lot more than just simply putting the words together…you have to make sure that your proposal document looks professional and that it gets to the client on time. You could have the best proposal in the world, but if it’s submitted after the deadline it is extremely likely that it won’t even be considered – especially in public sector procurement.
So what’s involved in producing a proposal? It’s just a question of printing it out and sending it…
Are You Going To Win? Constantly Qualify Your Opportunities
Constant qualification is the process of continuously evaluating all of your opportunities to check that you still want to and should be bidding. It is possible to get caught up in an opportunity that you are unlikely to win and that diverts valuable resources and time from other more suitable opportunities.
First off, you need to understand the importance of having a formal bid/no bid process.