Chapter 10: Presenting a Winning Value Proposition

Overview

In The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith wrote,

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our necessities but of their advantages.

Not to put words in Adam's mouth, but what I think he's saying is unless you can offer your decision maker a compelling value proposition, winning is a game of chance. You must demonstrate that your solution offers the greatest rate of return to the client and his or her organization—an appeal to the so-called estimation heuristic or, in Adam Smith's terms, to the client's "own self-interest."

To be consistently successful at this, you need to approach the process of creating your value proposition in an organized, disciplined way. Your goal is to shift the focus away from cost and toward return, away from technical specs and toward operational impact, away from products and toward productivity.

That means you need to think strategically. In military terms, strategy is the grand plan by which commanders attempt to capitalize on their own strengths and exploit their enemy's weaknesses. Strategy is how you maximize your chance of winning in battle. The same basic concept applies to the competition you face in proposal writing.

What you must avoid are two mistakes that undercut the value of your strategic thinking: (1) choosing a strategy that reflects your own values and assumptions, and (2) choosing a strategy based on fear.

During an engagement with a global consulting firm, I had the opportunity to review dozens of proposals. Every proposal offered a value proposition based on the firm's "breadth of resources."

But the firm's own marketing team had undertaken a wide-ranging series of interviews with customers and prospects to find out what they valued. According to the marketing research, "breadth of resources" barely made the top ten. The proposals, it turned out, were reflecting what the partners valued. They were proud to be with an international corporation with decades of success. They assumed that customers would appreciate that, too.

The other mistake, basing a strategy on fear, usually results from a lack of competitive knowledge, anxiety that we are not likely to be successful in our efforts, or prior failures that have left us cynical.

Proposal writers who don't abandon their assumptions and their fears so they can think through the issue of strategy usually come up with no strategy at all. To avoid that kind of mistake, be specific. Choose a single, clearly focused strategy, then repeat it and support it throughout your proposal. Substantiate your claims with relevant, believable evidence. Link your examples, your references, your case studies, to a consistent value message so that it repeats and repeats through the proposal.

Major Mistakes in Offering a Value Proposition

What are the biggest mistakes people make instead of offering a true value proposition? Here are five killers:

1. Trying to be everything to everybody; taking a "shotgun" approach rather than focusing on a specific measure of value.

2. Making loud claims ("best of breed," "world class," "industry leading," "uniquely qualified," "unsurpassed," "100% customer satisfaction"), but failing to back them up with evidence or substance.

3. Offering a proposal that spends more time attacking a competitor than it does responding to the client's needs.

4. Writing a factual or technical description, explaining features of your solution without also indicating their value for the client.

5. Producing a "cost paranoia proposal," one that focuses exclusively on trying to prove that this solution is the cheapest, no matter what the numbers may look like.