Protecting Your Proprietary Interests

Before we look at the parts of a formal proposal, let's take a minute to consider an issue that worries a lot of people. How do you write a proposal that presents a creative solution and that may contain information that is confidential or proprietary to your business without having your solution and your proprietary content taken by an unethical client, shared with a competitor, or otherwise misused?

The first and most obvious answer is to know your client. If you have concerns about their ethics, maybe you should revisit the bid/no bid analysis one more time. If you still want to go after the business, but you're worried they might steal your ideas, you have a few options:

1. Limit the amount of specific technical detail you provide. If you can describe your solution in general terms without revealing exactly how you will execute it, you may prevent someone from deciding they can do it themselves. Similarly, if you provide aggregated pricing instead of line item, detailed pricing, you make it a little more difficult for somebody to use your proposal as a shopping list. The downside to this approach, of course, is that you also lose a little credibility because of the vagueness and you may lose an opportunity to differentiate your approach.

2. Seek a nondisclosure agreement and/or a letter of understanding before you submit. Ask the client to sign a nondisclosure agreement in which they acknowledge your ownership of the content in your proposal and agree not to share it with anyone outside the evaluation team without your written consent.

3. Mark your proposal "Proprietary" or "Business Confidential." Put these warnings on the pages of your proposal that actually contain proprietary content. Don't put them on every page, because if you mark content proprietary that is actually in the public domain or that belongs to the client, you invalidate your proprietary claim in general. You can also put a statement of proprietary rights up front in your proposal. I recommend putting it on a separate page, not trying to fold it into your cover letter, title page, or executive summary.

4. Copyright your proposal. To do that, simply put "Copyright <year> <Your Company Name>" on the title page or in the footer.

5. Submit at deadline. If you submit early, who knows what will happen to your proposal while the client waits for others to arrive?

6. Build your proposal on your differentiators, so that there's no way a customer can do it itself or give it to a competitor to do. This can be difficult if you don't have differentiators that are unique enough, but it's ultimately the best way.