Are your clients trying to commoditize you? Their tender process is intended to do just that. By driving compliance on every possible item with long, complex proposals, they attempt to make you exactly the same as your competition. Then they can simply look to the lower right-hand side of the spreadsheet and choose a winner based on price.

So are you the low price provider? If that’s not your game, you need to find a way to stand out in a commodity crowd, which means selling value in every proposal response. 

Many mistake the proposal tender process as information gathering by clients, because hey, they asked for lots and lots of information. Don’t be fooled. This is a decision-making process, and therefore proposals are SALES documents. Proposals aren’t merely meant to inform, educate, or increase awareness of your great ideas. 

Proposals must persuade. They must influence. They must SELL. 

Corporate Storytelling can help. You must create a perception in the client’s mind. You must tell the story in a way that creates bias: that you are best suited to deliver the client objectives with your solution, your team, your technology, and your services. Corporate Storyteller’s make the proposal response all about the client, and not about their solution. 

What exactly should you do to stand out??

Reduce the inherent complexity in your response with an effective message strategy that elevates your differentiators and clearly proves you can provide the outcomes desired. Include a unique perspective on delivering this particular project’s success, instead of compiling volumes of boilerplate on how you typically execute projects.  Create a multi-sensory evaluation experience, instead of killing them with densely-worded tomes.  Create urgency and provide compelling evidence that is relevant and believable, instead of expecting the client to trust you because you’ve “done this before.” 

At Articulus, we have a proven process to ensure every proposal response involves a crystal clear, differentiating, compelling message, delivered with impact so that you can win more business. 

Join us for a free webinar on Corporate Storytelling for Proposals, on July 1, 2020. Register here: Proposals Workshop.. (See image to the right)

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Cheryl Chartier is a Corporate Storyteller at Articulus. She helps teams prepare compelling, memorable communications that win the business. She’s an expert on Proposals, Executive Summaries, and winning Client Presentations. Creating Corporate Storytellers and coaching teams to, “Get to the Point,” is her passion.

©2020 Articulus, LLC