Writing Business Bids and Proposals For Dummies. Cobb Neil

      Neil Cobb APMP Fellow

      Writing Business Bids & Proposals For Dummies®

      Writing Business Bids & Proposals For Dummies^®

      Published by: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, www.wiley.com

      This edition first published 2016

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      ISBN 978-1-119-17432-5 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-119-17433-2 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-119-17436-3 (ebk)

      Introduction

      This may come as a bit of a surprise to you, but some people write proposals for a living and enjoy it.

      We don’t mean people who have to write proposals to sell their products and services as an obligatory part of their roles as business owners, salespeople, and entrepreneurs. We mean people who write proposals as their profession – it’s their primary role. They delight in this intricate, detail-oriented, thought-provoking work. They toil for businesses big and small, and all they do all day (and all night at times) is write proposals. Some write proposals that are a handful of pages, while others write proposals with hundreds of pages in multiple volumes. Some write them pretty much on their own, while others coordinate the efforts of anywhere from a couple of specialists to hundreds on a single deal. They propose to every kind of business and government entity you can imagine, because most publicly owned or regulated enterprises buy goods and services through proposals.

      It may not matter to you personally, but proposal writing is a profession – a growing and increasingly important one. It’s an essential part of a broader group of business development professionals who plan and execute strategies for businesses to obtain new customers. Proposal writers have a professional organization – the Association of Proposal Management Professionals (APMP) – whose best practices are the foundation for this book. This group of more than 7,500 practitioners from around the world knows that proposal writing is a skill you can learn, practice, and master, and, ultimately, prove your mastery of through a professional certification process.

      Here’s what does matter to you: Writing Business Bids & Proposals For Dummies is your easiest and best ticket for finding out what these professional proposal writers know and for applying it to your own business. You have in your hands the collected knowledge and skills of the professional proposal writer – without having to be one.

About This Book

      This book is primarily for small- to medium-size business owners, first-time proposal writers in medium-size companies, or sales representatives who need to represent their companies in the best light possible. A written proposal, whether it’s delivered in print or digital format, is still one of the most common, personal, and effective ways to win business, even in this age of near-instant online communications, social media marketing, and live-action websites.

      Proposal writers have an old saying: “The best proposal won’t win the business outright, but a bad one will certainly lose it.” This means that a proposal doesn’t work in a vacuum. Developing a successful business is a complex and difficult process, with lots of interworking parts. You have to have useful and reliable products, dedicated people providing a dependable service, and innovative thinking that can solve unique problems. But even if you have the best products, the best people, and the best service record of anyone in your industry, if you can’t express those advantages clearly and persuasively in terms that truly mean something to your customers, your business will never be as successful as it can be.

      If you adopt the concepts, implement the processes, practice the techniques, and adapt the tools in this book to meet your unique needs, you’ll improve the way your business captures new customers and communicates with existing ones. This book can help you to

      ❯❯ Establish a process for finding and assessing business opportunities.

      ❯❯ Create repeatable plans for responding to opportunities.

      ❯❯ Understand your customer’s business and its needs.

      ❯❯ Assess your and your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses.

      ❯❯ Build and manage teams to develop compelling proposals.

      After you have a process and the required resources in place, this book can guide you to

      ❯❯ Structure your proposals in proven, effective ways.

      ❯❯ Write them in the clearest and most compelling terms.

      ❯❯ Design them for maximum readability and visual impression.

      ❯❯ Create practices for doing a better job each time.

      We also use a few conventions throughout the book to make finding what you need easier:

      ❯❯ If you see a word in italics, it means that the term has a unique meaning in the proposal world. We define it right there for you.

      ❯❯ If you see a sidebar, you can skip that information if you’re in a hurry. It’s there to provide background information or other supporting content.

Foolish Assumptions

      As we wrote this book, we assumed a few things about you, dear readers:

      ❯❯ You need to write a proposal, and sooner rather than later. You may be an inexperienced salesperson who inherited an account with a pressing