Shipley Tips

  Customers want to see a team that has worked together successfully on prior, similar programs. Customers suspecting teaming incompatibilities turn elsewhere. The program manager will manage the winning team, so maximise your success by including them in teaming partner selection and contracting. Far too frequently, management decides to team, but the individuals involved do

…due to being relegated to a separate section of your proposal. Instead integrate relevant experience and past performance into the body of the proposal adjacent to your claims. Relevant experience applies to the organisation as a whole, the specific actions required, or the experience of the individuals contributing to the services proposed. Relevant experience is

…State your most important point first. Proposal evaluators read until satisfied, score the question, then look for the answer to the next question. Writers’ styles are influenced by the documents they read. So proposal writers with a technical background often model their writing on the scientific genre, where process is more important than results and

  To the extent that the person receiving the shipment has any influence on the selection of the winning bid, the Cover Letter presents another opportunity to sell your story and ‘why you’ arguments. Use your cover letter to open with a customer benefit statement, not a cliché or seller focused opener. Cite your key

  An early solution freeze leads to a superior proposal, with an adequate solution. A late solution freeze stresses the proposal team and often results in a poorly written proposal fraught with pricing inconsistencies. No one can clearly describe something that keeps changing. Inter-volume alignment is lost and contributors are repeatedly required to re-work their

  In complex sales, buyers purchase benefits, not features. They want to know whether the benefits generated by specific features of the seller’s solutions will address their issues and deliver the outcomes they seek.

  Value propositions establish the value basis for the business relationship. They describe how your solution will improve the customer’s business and how the improvement will be measured.  

  Most customers begin the buying process with a maximum/minimum price range and a minimum/maximum capability range. As their understanding of price-capability trade-offs matures, their price-capability window narrows. Your objective is to accurately define the boundaries of your version of the customer’s price-capability window – the Winning Price Window – through the pricing-to-win process. Iterative

  Decision gate reviews are about deciding whether to proceed, not on critiquing and refining our technical solution. The technical solution is only one facet of your complete offering. It might also include your management solution, pricing solution, past performance, quality assurance plan and transition plan. Suggest a separate review of the technical solution, and

  Use precise, powerful, descriptive verbs in your proposals Avoid wimpy verbs that obscure meaning, such as allow, allow for, permit, provide, perform and ensure. Many writers turn verbs into nouns, making the sentence more distant from the reader. Replacing adjectives with verbs also makes your statements more powerful.