So you’ve done your marketing well and created the atmosphere that positions your business within your target market as one of the ‘go to’ candidates. You’ve expanded your footprint, identified target companies – and the people within them – and seen to it that they have a reasonable understanding of what you do, and your point of difference. By the time you’re making a submission for some ‘real’ paying work, all the precedent steps should have been ticked off. So now the rubber hits the road. Don’t fall at this hurdle. I’ve been on the receiving end of very many submissions and also the production end, writing, project managing or reviewing them. These are not golden rules, because every submission is different. But they might be helpful for you to think about in terms of your submission efforts.
Focus.
Too often, submissions aren’t written with what the client wants to know first and foremost in mind. Even when clients go to lengths to specify the criteria they want you to address, I’ve often seen this overlooked in favour of some long narratives that describe company history, charitable endeavours or any number of other irrelevant areas of content. Instead, you need to think carefully about what the client has asked for; or rely on your market intelligence to know intuitively what they’re looking for, and how they go about assessment. Don’t stray from this. Stay sharply focussed on thinking like your client and imagining yourself being judged on their criteria. You aren’t writing your brochure here, you’re answering their questions, explicit or implied. There’s a huge difference.
The copy/paste trap.
A nasty trap, more common when you find yourself pumping out a volume of proposals or submissions in a short space of time. You may be able to fill a page count quickly copying material from prior submissions and pasting it into this one, but it is no guarantee of being 100% “on message.” The worst example is when a submission goes out with some other company’s name still embedded in some copied narrative that’s been overlooked (mea culpa on occasion). Talk about a bad look. The copy/paste function is sometimes a necessary evil but use with extreme caution.
Less is more.
There’s no contest I know of which says the more pages you supply, the better. Some organisations specify page limits because they’re no doubt tired of reading through every piece of quasi-relevant collateral someone could think to include. If they include a page limit, stick to it. And no shrinking font sizes to get over the line either. Where limits aren’t imposed, do them the decency of getting to the point and staying on point. Any of you who have been on the receiving end of dozens of lengthy submissions will know that the long ones get looked at last, and grudgingly. This is not the best frame of mine for your assessors to be in when looking at your proposal.
The executive summary
The two operative words here are ‘executive’ and ‘summary.’ This does not mean a general introduction to you and your business. The reason you’re making this submission should be because your marketing and communication strategy has already done the backgrounding job for you, well before any formal submissions are called for. Ideally, if you’ve done this well, your target client should want you to succeed. So this is where you get to the point. This is your ‘prove it’ opportunity: the exec summary should summarise all the salient points of your submission; it should endorse your value adding proposition and be focussed entirely on what they want to know, not what you want to say. Get it all into a few dot points, on no more than two pages (one is best if you can). Imagine the executive who will only read the summary and form their opinion on this alone – that’s who you’re writing this for.
The price.
Many submissions are price contingent. So why force them to hunt through your entire submission to find the price on the last page? I must admit I took a bit of convincing on this myself from a senior construction executive but he was right: put the price in the first line of your exec summary and get over it. If you’re only being assessed on price, at least you’ve saved them digging around for it. If your price is higher than others, your exec summary and the balance of your submission will convince them you’re worth it, and all the marketing you’ve done beforehand will mean they’re predisposed to think that anyway. But if not, you’ve lost it either way – whether it’s on page one or buried at the back.
Your people
In reality, professional service firms are offering their professionals and their experience and little more. Be sure to profile the actual team you have in mind for this project. There’s little point listing all the senior people if all they’ll do is hand over to underlings – your clients know this (and fear it) already. They will want to see who you’re proposing and their value adding ability for their particular job. Once again, the copy/paste approach to CVs and profiles is a trap when it comes to personnel that’s best avoided. Why subject one of your strongest selling points to copy/paste?
Content is king
Content comes first. Beautifully presented submissions are worth nothing if the content is ill-thought. (I once received a beautifully presented award submission which arrived within a lovely small timber box, sufficiently large to contain the A4 binder within. I kept the box for some workshop bits and pieces at home so it was a complete waste of time as anything but a glamorous addition to the shed). The content doesn’t only need to focus on what the client wants, but it should also come from the best minds in your business. Spending time to get your thoughts on paper is the best investment you can make: you cannot outsource content nor compensate for the lack of it through frilly design or fancy packaging.
These are only thought starters. Every submission and every client is different but hopefully some simple observations like this will help you assess your approach to this most important of sales documents.
