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Your strategy is your overall approach to the issue of value. It's the broad message of value that you'd like each person who evaluates your proposal to walk away with. A win theme is a specific, tactical message that supports your overall strategy. Win themes provide you with an opportunity for substantiation and specificity. Win themes can provide cohesion to a proposal, unifying the message and lifting it from merely providing information in response to a request to a persuasive presentation of a business case.
A proposal should have one strategy. It doesn't have to be perfect, but if you've done your homework to uncover the customer's needs and values, it'll be effective. That strategy can then be supported and substantiated by several win themes. I would recommend selecting only two or three win themes to make the process easier to manage and to keep your proposal focused.
In developing win themes, you will want to identify which value strategies a particular theme can support, which differentiators link to it, and what evidence or substantiation you can marshal to prove it. Evidence might include:
Case studies
References
Testimonials
Third-party endorsements
Partnerships
Statistics and facts about your organization (such as number of employees, worldwide locations, and so forth)
Tools
Methodologies
Patents
Contracts
Publications and white papers
Unique expertise among your employees
Evidence becomes meaningful when it is clearly aligned to a specific theme. Otherwise, it runs the risk of just being background noise.
Here are some examples of win themes. These may not be appropriate for your business, but I hope they at least get you thinking about what kind of tactical messages you can develop to support the notion that the client gets superior value if they choose you.
Speed of delivery: We can deliver the right solution for you much faster than anyone else in the industry, so you begin to reap the benefits of that solution sooner.
Creativity and innovation: We are able to think creatively about what you really need and develop innovative approaches that exactly match your requirements, instead of trying to shove your requirements into predefined solutions.
Good corporate citizen: As a member of the community, we are committed to building it and collaborating with local government and citizens to improve the quality of life.
Outsourcing as a smart way to manage your business: We can help you eliminate or reduce fixed expenses, thus giving you more financial control.
Mission fulfillment: We understand your need to fulfill the charter of responsibilities inherent in your mission statement and can help you achieve success in that area.
Crossing the threshold into e-commerce: We can help you develop the tools, strategies, security policies, and enabling technologies that open up markets for you on the Web.
Public/private partnership: We can offer you greater value and lower net investment costs by providing a creative fee structure that includes a partnership between our firm and your agency.
In your proposal, you must support your win themes (and thus your overall strategy) by providing plenty of evidence to prove that what you claim is true. You will want to provide both top-level substantiation and incremental evidence.
Top-level substantiation consists of proof statements and factual evidence included specifically to make a point about your ability to deliver value. Areas of the proposal where you can tailor the content to support or substantiate a specific theme include:
Past performance reports
Case studies
Customer testimonials
Project summaries
Corporate capabilities
Company history
Management plan
Incremental evidence consists of spots where you can mention or reinforce your overall value strategy and the enabling win themes you have chosen with a phrase, a sentence, or a brief example. Look for opportunities to weave incremental evidence into your proposal in these areas:
Cover letter
Proposal title
Executive summary
Section summaries
Headings and subheadings
Product/service details
Resumes
Titles of figures and graphics
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