Improve Your Proposals: First, Deconstruct the RFP

The proposal writing process starts with the Bid/No Bid decision. Ideally, a yes decision will be based on what you know about the customer from sales efforts carried out well before the Request for Proposal (RFP) is published. Immediately following the bid decision, you should deconstruct the RFP. This process involves extracting pertinent information from the Request for Proposal and placing the information in the proposal outline. The purpose of RFP deconstruction is to separate the wheat from the chaff and ensure that the proposal:
  • Responds to each and every RFP work requirement and evaluation criteria (nothing is missed no matter how small)
  • Reflects the weighting of the evaluation criteria
  • Is compliant with all RFP instructions
The goal of a careful RFP deconstruction is to move everything that is important from the voluminous RFP (frequently 100 - 150 pages) into the proposal outline so it can be written to or acted on. The time consuming process of repeatedly searching the RFP can be eliminated if the RFP is carefully deconstructed by an experienced proposal manager.

Deconstructing the RFP should be followed by placing Selling Points (sometimes called Win Themes) in the appropriate places in the proposal outline so that the proposal will reflect customer concerns and hot buttons. Selling Points should be developed during the pre-RFP sales process. We say it again and again but it can't be emphasized too much. Winning proposals are customer centric and this requires that they be tightly integrated with the pre-RFP sales process. The age old axiom in federal sales "Don't write it if you haven't sold it" is becoming truer each year as competition in the federal market becomes more intense.

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