Proposal Strategy

A good win theme facilitates a decision-making process in the client’s mind. That decision might be to entrust you with a project that could define someone’s career. It might involve working side-by-side with your project manager for two years, or inviting your team into their office space for six months. Whatever the case, the client is making a high-stakes choice—and your job is to help them feel confident in it. This 10 step process helps you do it comprehensively and persuasively.

A good win theme facilitates a decision-making process in the client’s mind. That decision might be to entrust you with a project that could define their career. It might involve working side-by-side with your project manager for two years or inviting your team into their office space for six months. Whatever the case, the client is making a high-stakes choice and your job is to help them feel confident in it. This 10 step process helps you do it comprehensively and persuasively.

Rapid Fire Methodology Storyboarding brings proposal contributors together for a focused session in which, in just 2 to 3 hours, you’ll generate all the content needed to build a strong work plan — content that normally takes days or weeks to collect. You can also extend this exercise to storyboard your entire proposal. This video focuses on the work plan portion and uses recognized best practices for proposal strategy, while throwing in some helpful hints for running an effective storyboarding session. Look for related units on this exercise under the topic, Proposal Management.

Forms can fail especially in a go/no go decision because they become one more administrative step, another thing to do at a juncture when you’re stretched for time, and you will notice that they rarely surface insights that matter. That’s because they take you out of the instinctive centers of the brain and into the process centers. Process is important, but at this moment in a pursuit, not as important as good instincts. This video describes an alternative to forms and scoring.

After completing this prompt set, your team will be more familiar with the terms associated with win themes and Blue Team Reviews (impartial reviews for evaluating the strength of your win themes before committing them to writing in the proposal.) They will be more comfortable talking about client expectations and in particular, their emotions. They’ll be quicker with answers during win theme strategy sessions and will know what’s expected of them during a proposal development process.

Proposal writers usually learn by doing. This prompt set allows you to do just that, but lets you practice the skills here on Twennie without submitting any lack-lustre proposals to a real competition. If your team writes proposals now or in the future, assign this prompt set. This is a rapid-learning tool for a skill that relies a lot on trial and error. Learners get 20 chances to build and test skill, and it only takes minutes out of a day.

A good win theme facilitates a decision-making process in the client’s mind. That decision might be to entrust you with a project that could define their career. It might involve working side-by-side with your project manager for two years or inviting your team into their office space for six months. Whatever the case, the client is making a high-stakes choice and your job is to help them feel confident in it. This 10 step process helps you do it comprehensively and persuasively.

Rapid Fire Methodology Storyboarding brings proposal contributors together for a focused session in which, in less than 2 hours, you’ll generate all the content needed to build a strong work plan — content that normally takes days or weeks to collect. If you want, you can also extend this exercise to storyboard your entire proposal.

A Red Team Review Exercise is a structured session that helps technical and consulting teams perform a focused, impartial evaluation of a near-final proposal. The reviewers—called the Red Team—are individuals who did not contribute to the proposal and can assess it from the client’s perspective. The exercise includes six clear steps: recruiting reviewers, choosing a collaboration platform, distributing materials, preparing the proposal team, leading the review, and implementing the feedback.

Mural is a visual collaboration platform designed for quick idea capture. You can add sticky notes and comments, but Mural does not offer a way to export all your text automatically. To save your input outside the board, you will need to manually copy and paste. We recommend using Mural for brainstorming, and relying on Twennie's downloadable templates when you need structured, exportable files.

A storyboard is a medium for outlining and planning a proposal. During a collaborative online or in-person exercise, proposal writers review a list of scope items on the storyboard. To each item they add key issues, tasks, and deliverables until all scope items are addressed. The Pink Team is a group of professionals in your organization who were not present during the exercise. They review this storyboard for its competitive potential before the document is written. Their input can provide valuable insight before a lot of work is done, and can be managed using this form.

This template supports the Red Team Review exercise, a structured session that helps technical and consulting teams perform a focused, impartial evaluation of a near-final proposal. The reviewers—called the Red Team—are individuals who did not contribute to the proposal and can assess it from the client’s perspective. The exercise includes six clear steps: recruiting reviewers, choosing a collaboration platform, distributing materials, preparing the proposal team, leading the review, and implementing the feedback.