Why are proposal page limitations becoming more and more prevalent in federal Requests for Proposals (RFPs)? Proposal evaluators find their task either distasteful or mildly painful. They view proposal reading in about the same light as most proposal writers view their task. Proposal writing is not much fun for anyone.

Evaluators want the facts, and just the facts. Proposal evaluators love proposals that are:

• Devoid of gobbledygook (broad qualifications, unsubstantiated puffery and claims, and pages and pages of procedural information, etc)
• Concise and easy to read
• Easy to reject (put in the you-have-got-to-be-kidding pile)

Proposals that fall in the Must Read pile present:

• A solution that jumps out of the pages of the Executive Summary and the technical chapter
• Precisely as many resumes as requested in the RFP with statements of staffing commitments and finely tuned to show the relevance of personnel skills and qualifications to the RFP work statement
• Precisely as many corporate project descriptions as requested in the RFP and finely tuned to show relevance to the RFP work statement

Most aspects of proposal writing are procedural and should be automated. What can't be automated is the creativity required to write a solution that jumps out of the proposal pages. This requires talent and customer knowledge. This is what wins.