TArticles tagged with: proposal strengths

Discriminating your offer: 5 steps to competitive edge

As we look back on 2015 and ahead to the challenges of 2016, it is clear you must find ways to discriminate your bid from the competition. Discriminating your offer is especially difficult for service providers (vs. product providers) as the playing field is fairly level and more bidders are competing for less work. Market competition is a battleground, and your goal should be to win the war…or at least the must-win battles that comprise your target revenues. This edition of the APMP-NCA Executive Summary eZine focuses on discriminating yourself from the competition. In my experience, five steps are key to gaining competitive edge. Understand your industry. First things first! In order to discriminate your bid, you must know who your competitors are. Amazingly, many companies have cut their competitive intelligence capabilities due to budget constraints. Reserve enough B&P dollars to at least research your industry and lines of business … Continue reading Discriminating your offer: 5 steps to competitive edge →

Improving the quality of proposal content with the APB Writing Model – Part 3

Getting your team on board with APB

In the last two posts, I introduced the APB writing methodology to improve the quality of your proposal content and help reticent writers on your team. In this post, I will wrap up the series by sharing some approaches to get your team on board and indoctrinate APB as the standard for all your proposals. How to get buy-in and commitment will vary depending on your context, but I’ve provided some general tips for implementation. I recommend introducing the APB writing concept to the broadest group of people involved in your proposals as possible. Your writers and SMEs need to understand how to do what you’re asking of them. Reviewers need to be aware of what you’re asking the writers to do so they can have informed reviews. As you cover the APB principles, your reviewers will understand how to review proposals like evaluators do as you expose them to … Continue reading Improving the quality of proposal content with the APB Writing Model – Part 3 →

Q&A – “APBs” of persuasive proposal writing for reluctant writers, enigmatic engineers, and circuitous SMEs

Lohfeld Business Winning Webinar

Writers are all too often overwhelmed or unprepared for their proposal writing tasks. Most of us understand the qualities our proposals need to exhibit to score outstanding, but when it comes time to write proposals, the path can get murky. This webinar explains Julia Quigley’s APB (Approach, Process, Benefits) method to writing proposals that simplifies writing tasks into a repeatable process, emphasizes strengths, and yields text that is easy for evaluators to read and score. As promised, here are Julia’s responses to questions we ran out of time to address during the webinar Q&A session. Q. You said we should reorganize requirements, but we’ve often been told that our response should follow the exact same order of the RFP. Which is correct? A. Both ideas are correct and only sound like they contradict one another. You should absolutely follow the order of the RFP; structure your bid in compliance with the … Continue reading Q&A – “APBs” of persuasive proposal writing for reluctant writers, enigmatic engineers, and circuitous SMEs →

“APBs” of persuasive proposal writing for reluctant writers, enigmatic engineers, and circuitous SMEs

Lohfeld Business Winning Webinar

In this webinar, Julia Quigley showed how you can accomplish your proposal writing objectives without the typical anxiety as she demonstrated her APB writing method. This proven process makes writing manageable and produces compliant, easy-to-evaluate text that highlights your company’s strengths. Click to register and watch Webinar Replay and download Webinar Slides If you missed Lisa Pafe’s recent whitepaper on strengths-based solutioning and what content evaluators are looking for in your proposals, catch up on Win Rates Double with 7 Quality Measures. This white paper gives you a clear picture of the info you need to include in your proposals, and Julia’s webinar shows you an anxiety-free method to easily convey that info so government evaluators can’t miss it. Click to download 7 Quality Measures Research Report Your presenter: Julia Quigley has worked on a variety of Federal Health IT task orders and large federal proposals. With a … Continue reading “APBs” of persuasive proposal writing for reluctant writers, enigmatic engineers, and circuitous SMEs →