How to Develop & Use Win Themes in Your Proposal Response
One of my favorite places to shop is Anthroplogie. If you’re not familiar, it’s a women’s clothing and accessories store, and they also sell home goods. I’m not even a big shopper, but the experience I have even just entering the store is well…joyous. The music is always low but noticeable, the displays are colorful and organized, and the scent from the candles is always just enough to not be overwhelming. And, these things are why I keep coming back and actually want to go to the store and buy something instead of online.
The overall ambiance is why I choose to shop at Anthropologie. It meets all the things I like to experience when shopping. In other words, it addresses my pain points of unorganized stores and drab displays with bad lighting. And, that is what a win theme does for your proposal response. It unifies your message and states why the cusomer should choose you for the contract. A good win theme statement highlights the features of your solution, the benefit to the client, and proven value it can bring. When developing your win themes, make them concise one liners and have no more than three to avoid confusing messaging.
Win theme statement are how you set yourself apart from the competition and highlight what you do best. These shouldn’t be marketing slogans that are used as part of your branding, but rather a way to communicate why choose you.
WHEN & WHY DEVELOP WIN THEMES
Develop your win themes after you have reviewed and understand the RFP requirements but before you start writing your response. In order to create effective win themes that are not just general marketing statements about your business, you need to actually know what the customers challenges are so you can address them directly. It’s also important to research your competitors so you can know what they may offer.
The first step in developing win themes is to identify the customers pain points. Pain points are the challenges and issues they want you to fix. It’s best to know the customer’s pain points before the RFP is released. Ideally, you would have attended some events to better understand the organization, how they are moving forward, and what they need help with. If not, then you have to try to pull pain points from the RFP and brainstorm win themes that will solve that problem.
As you read trough the RFP pull out all the high-level requirements you think are pain points and write them down. Most of this information will be in Section C: Statement of Work. Secondary places to search for pain points are:
1.) Section M: Evaluation Criteria which shows what’s most important to the customer and will likely be related to the problems they want to solve with thie contract, and
2) Industry Day presentations that will sometimes be included with the RFP and discusses the organizations goals and upcoming RFPs. It’s a great way to get insight into the organization and its challenges before responding to an RFP.
Next, think about how your business/approach will solve the customers challenges. Do you have a specific software, a unique process, or qualified experts that can achieve the wanted result? This is where the meat of win theme development takes place. If you’re having trouble brainstorming, ask you clients why they work with you, check testimonials, or ask your employees why they like working at the company. You’ll definitely get some good information that way. This is the time to go wild and take in all the info you may (or may not) use in your win theme.
The final step is to fine tune the info you collected into concise one sentence statements. Develop a statement for each high level pain point (remember, there shouln’t be more than three). Each win theme statement should include the pain point, the feature of your solution, and the benefit to the client.
HOW TO USE WIN THEMES IN YOUR RESPONSE
Win themes should be stated several times throughout your response. The best way to do this is to pick a format for your win theme statements and place them in the beginning of the sections they address. A callout box or bolding are typically good ways to bring attention to important information like win themes. Do this during the outlining phase of proposal development so when you start writing its already set. Some sections may highlight one win theme while others may highlight two oe even all three. It really just depends on the requirements and the outline of your response.
Win themes are a good way to start the proposal writing process to really hone in on your messaging and get your team on the same page, even if you are a team of one. In addition to win themes, you should also think about differentiators which are statements only your business can claim. But, more on that coming soon.