Your proposal’s Executive Summary is its prime real estate.
As every successful pursuit leader knows, this key component of a bid, proposal or tender provides the opportunity to
communicate, upfront, that your organisation genuinely understands
your prospect’s requirements, and that it is uniquely positioned to
deliver successfully upon them.
Despite its importance, however, many bid teams consistently
make the same three fundamental flaws in these important
front-pieces. They:
- Communicate in such a way that the world revolves around
them, the supplier or service provider, rather than around the
prospective customer or client. - They fail to provide proof and substantiation that will ensure the
evaluation team believes what they say. - They take up valuable space with “filler”
copy.
Fundamental Flaw No. 1:
‘We, Our, Us’
Most Executive Summaries I see are
self-focused to some degree. Some to a
considerable degree.
I once evaluated a bid, the Executive
Summary of which featured the seller’s
name no less than 17 times in a short series
of introductory paragraphs.
You might laugh at that, but a large
percentage of Executive Summaries end
up with the seller’s or service provider’s
name (or “We”, “Our” and “Us”) at the
beginning of most paragraphs.
Other Executive Summaries start out talking about the client, but
only as a prelude to a monologue about their own capabilities and
credentials. . . often not taking the time to fully draw out the clientspecific, contract-specific, or project-specific relevance of these.
Fundamental Flaw No. 2:
Don’t Just Say It, Prove It
Many Executive Summaries rely on lofty but totally unsubstantiated
claims in an attempt to establish credibility and gain industry
positioning in the prospect’s mind.
Sometimes, these claims can be substantiated with solid
examples or evidence. Somehow, though, many bidders seem to
see such elaboration as unnecessary, expecting the prospect to
unquestioningly believe any statement the bidder cares to make.
That’s not giving bid evaluators and the other readers from
within the prospect organisation a lot of credit. They’re being paid
to question what they read. Empty statements claiming “best in
class”, “world’s best practice”, or “cutting-edge technology”, aren’t
very convincing if you don’t substantiate them.
Fundamental Flaw No. 3:
Fluffing It Out with Filler Copy
“We are excited by the opportunity to embark on this project with
XYZ Corporation, and we look forward to bringing unparalleled skill
and experience to drive your objectives forward.”
Or, how to spin 29 words out of nothing to fill space at the
beginning of an Executive Summary.
Do executives and bid teams really write this sort of filler
material in all-important pieces like the Executive Summary? Yes.
Despite a great jump in the skill level of
bid/proposal/tender professionals over
the past five or so years, many still do.
Worse still, experienced evaluators
know that when an Executive Summary
offers such little information value at the
beginning, it often hasn’t improved
much by the end.
If you’ve fallen into these patterns,
hiring a better writer won’t fix anything.
None of these are purely “copywriting”
issues.
The only way you’ll improve your
Executive Summaries is to improve the
way you go about formulating your
underpinning bid strategies.
It’s critical to fully appreciate that the
quality of content in a proposal or
presentation can never exceed the
quality of prior research into the customer or client organisation
and its business environment. Nor can it exceed the quality of the
strategy you produce from that research.
My recommendations:
• Consider the formulation of a well-researched, well-considered
and detailed bid strategy a non-negotiable part of your process
in any important pursuit. Start your research and your early
strategy workshops well in advance of the prospective client’s or
customer’s formal market call documentation.
• Document your bid strategy – not as a bundle of “mind map”
captures, but as a fully fleshed-out, diligently articulated content
and communications plan.
• Ensure your strategy document features a thorough backgrounder
on the client or customer organisation, its operating environment
and any history (including political) relevant to the procurement
in question.
• Where the bid is, for example, a large-scale response to a complex
Expression of Interest (EOI), Request for Tender (RFT) or Request
22 Municipal Engineering Australia – February / March 2014
Mistakes
for Proposal (RFP), and your documentation will be produced by
multiple contributing authors, produce supplementary writing
guides for each key section.
• Make sure the bid’s primary editor has both the bid strategy
document and the writing guides to hand as he or she reviews
each component section – and most especially, as he or she edits
the Executive Summary.
