PROPOSAL RED TEAM

Writing customer facing proposals is difficult. It is a time consuming and resource hungry exercise. Our customers regularly complain that their teams are not natural writers. One customer, suffering issues with their written proposals, stated that their poor quality output resulted in them often “clutching defeat from the jaws of victory” having been marked down by their customers after previously positive progress in their bid efforts.

Too often written proposals are completed by bid teams who do not have a view of the end to end sales campaign, are showing levels of fatigue and therefore make mistakes or who are not close enough to the sale to understand the win themes. Frequently the written submission does not make your proposition come alive for the customer, is disjointed and inconsistent, and fails to differentiate your business from the competition. Through our research with customers, we know they often feel that the logos on supplier proposals could be interchanged with no real impact.

Our virtual Proposal RED (Read, Evaluate, Decide) Team activity provides you and your bid team with an independent (and potentially scored) view of your proposal. Best practice dictates that every proposal goes through a RED Team process prior to submission to the customer.

DEEP ASSESSMENT

Our RED Team evaluators check the completeness of individual responses against the customer’s questions and requirements and asses each of the following:

Does each of your written responses fully answer the question?
Are your sales messages, value proposition and win themes evident and clear?
Are your differentiators and unique selling points clear? Is there evidence of your benefit statements and are they mapped to the customer stakeholders?
Where you have an incumbent relationship, is there evidential knowledge of the customer? Are existing issues mitigated in the proposal? Is innovation demonstrated beyond the current contract? Are the benefits of the current commercial arrangement clearly articulated?
Are there errors due to version control issues or reuse of boilerplate/existing text?
If the customer has publicised their evaluation criteria, do the responses score maximum points?
Is your proposal compelling as to ‘why you’?
Is the response written using the customer’s language?

COMPREHENSIVE BENEFITS

Engaging Digital Distance specialists in your Proposal RED Team activity, ensures you:

Quickly gain an independent view of the quality of your response
Obtain clear direction on how you can improve your written response
Capture a prompt reaction that is as close to the customer’s likely reaction as possible, hence mitigating potential risks with the final submission
Provide a great basis for progressing further with the customer opportunity

OUR APPROACH

Digital Distance specialists have reviewed and contributed to many winning proposals, in both the private and public sector, and are well versed in the complexities of sourcing frameworks, executive summary writing and proposal storyboarding. Working closely with your team, we apply this expertise utilising a secure digital medium of your choice. This agile approach ensures we can work effectively with input from across your bid team regardless of their location and time zone.

Digital Distance is ready and able to engage quickly, providing a scalable and virtual Proposal RED Team service based on the complexity and timeliness of your bid. The length and frequency of the Proposal RED Team session varies according to the complexity of the response document, therefore please contact us early in the sales cycle for a free consultation and to discuss your specific requirements. We will be happy to provide a competitive quote for this game-changing digital service.

Proposal Storyboarding

Distance Selling for Sales Support