Gary Everett

Many factors cause a proposal to win or lose.  The reason for losing can be that the prospective customer doesn’t know anything about your company or your people.  Here are the results of a survey of over 1,000 proposals to assess how wins were related to the circumstances of the bid:

  1. A blind bid to a new market area with no upfront client contact and with no prior knowledge of the competition. This means your proposal content will not discriminate your credentials from anyone else’s. You have about a 1 percentchance to win with this approach.
  2. A blind bid to a new customer where you are a known, good performer in the larger agency but not this particular department for this bid (e.g., Navy, FAA, DLA). Your win rate will be about ten percentwith this approach.
  3. A bid where you have performed good front-end work for a new market area. You have met and presented to the customer decision makers several times. You will have a win rate of around 20 percent.
  4. A bid after good front-end work in a market where you have good customer contract performance.  Your win rate will be from 35 to 50 percent.
  5. A bid following good front-end work on a re-compete as the incumbent to the current client who is a fan of your company, people, and work. You should win around 75 percentof these bids.

Meeting and presenting your company credentials will convince prospective customers you are interested in their work and mission and have improvements to offer. This helps build expectation they will be successful working with your company. Do your upfront marketing and homework, and you will increase your win rate substantially.