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The Strategic Value of Marketing in Proposals

One of the primary roles of marketing specialists in most firms is writing proposals. So why suggest this as an area where marketers can add value? Because there's much room for improvement.

The average proposal win rate in our industry is about 40%. Few of the firms I've worked with come close to approaching even that level of success. Is 40% acceptable? Many technical consulting and design firm managers seem to think so. I disagree. There are firms that win 60-70% of their proposals. When I served as corporate proposal manager for The RETEC Group, we enjoyed a win rate of 75% on the proposals I worked on over a six-year period, totaling over $300 million in contract value. Proposal consultants routinely boast win rates of over 80%.

So there's certainly no excuse for accepting proposal win rates of 10-30% as many firms do. Consider that proposals typically constitute the single largest expense in the marketing budget. It's not uncommon to see costs exceed $10,000 for a single proposal, especially with the proliferation of design-build proposals. There appears to be plenty of incentive for improving proposal success.

So why do we do so poorly on proposals? I see the following key factors:

• The sales effort in advance of the proposal is usually inadequate. We don't do a good enough job positioning our firms for the win, nor do we gather enough information to support a strong proposal.

• Most firms are not selective enough. They prefer to play the odds rather than target a select number of proposal opportunities and give them their best effort.

• There is little process or discipline in proposal preparation. Proposals are often something we put off until the last minute. Efforts by marketing staff to establish a process or define schedules are frequently disregarded by their colleagues.

• The content of most proposals is weak. This arises from a number of factors, such as having inadequate information, failing to focus on client needs, giving too little time to proposal preparation, and the poor writing skills that are common in our industry.

Marketers can clearly demonstrate their value in this area, but they need help. Firm managers need to give priority to proposals, recognizing the vital role they play in getting new business, the considerable costs involved, and our low success rate. Marketing specialists, on the other hand, need to develop their skill and knowledge in preparing winning proposals. Speaking from experience, there's no better way to gain credibility with your technical coworkers than to demonstrate success. A few keys:

Position your firm for success before the RFP is released. I'm convinced that what you do before the RFP is more important than what you do afterwards. Marketing specialists often have little control over the sales process; that's where company management needs to step in and make this a priority. But certainly, marketers should guide, equip, and support those involved in sales to the fullest extent. It feeds their success.

Be selective. Don't invest limited time and money in writing proposals where you don't have a good chance of winning. Don't like your chances on enough proposals? Go back to the first point. I recommend using the "bid-no bid matrix" included in the Consultant's Toolbox on this site to help make proposal decisions.

Carefully plan both the content and preparation process. In my experience, your chances of winning are substantially reduced when there's little to no planning. As a proposal manager, if I couldn't get my technical colleagues to commit to the preparation schedule I could usually get by if we all sat down and carefully planned what it would take to win. 

Target a few key messages. Most proposals I've reviewed have been lacking in this area. Keep in mind that decisions are typically made on the basis of 2-3 main points. Don't let the selection criteria in the RFP mislead you. It's important to respond to them, but you need to define what factors are most critical (again going back to point one). It's also true that the key decision factors are sometimes nowhere to be found in the written selection criteria. Once you've identified your key messages, present them in a way that they can't be overlooked, weaving them throughout your proposal.

Focus on the client, not your firm. This is critically important, yet routinely ignored, advice. Put yourself in the client's position. What would you be looking for in the successful proposal? It's usually not your capabilities, experience, or project team. It's how well you understand the client's problem and what you're going to do about it. It's seeing the project through the client's eyes.

This extremely brief summary is hardly an adequate explanation of how to write winning proposals. Please refer to the "Articles" page for more information on this subject.

The Strategic Value of Marketing in Recruiting

As reactive as firms in our business tend to be regarding business development, we're probably worse in the area of recruiting. Technical managers are notoriously reluctant to make new hires until it's absolutely necessary. Then it's often too late to find the best possible person to fill that position because project deadlines are bearing down on them. Not surprisingly, the person hired often turns out to be less than hoped for.

To make matters worse, few firms in our business have a proficient recruiting and hiring process. Some firms are still discovering the human resources function! HR managers are often viewed as little more than administrative positions. Indeed, HR professionals probably lag behind their marketing cohorts in terms of respect and being viewed as a strategic asset.

This is a potentially crippling oversight. Human resources is emerging as one of the most important competitive issues in our business. While the debate rages about whether there is a looming shortage of technical professionals, it's clear that we must give greater priority to creating attractive workplaces, responding to changing employee priorities, and recruiting from an increasingly competitive pool of candidates. 

Marketing can, and should, help. Why? Because the process of attracting clients and employees is quite similar. In fact, many marketing resources should target both audiences. Take the company website, for example. PSMJ data indicate that only 5% of hits to the average A/E firm website are clients. But 43% are prospective employees and headhunters. Competitors, which I would also place in the pool of potential employees, represent another 27%. That would seem to dictate an employee-oriented website that also has appeal for the few clients who might visit.

There are clearly other opportunities for merging marketing with recruiting, as well as supporting other HR-related activities. These include:

Help the HR department develop effective recruiting strategies. Positioning and selling the firm is what marketing does best, and is obviously transferable to attracting new employees.

Develop a company brand that appeals to clients and employees alike. I hinted at this earlier. The best brands attract both groups.

Communicate corporate values and vision to both external and internal audiences. Are your values and vision important to clients and prospective employees? You bet. It's part of revealing the soul of your firm, which is a strong selling point to both clients and candidates.

Support professional development activities. Provide training and resources to help your coworkers improve their skills in selling, client relationships, communication, proposal writing, listening, etc.

Both marketing and human resources offer high potential (yet often underappreciated) strategic value to your firm. One of the best ways to maximize that value is to have the two groups working effectively together where their responsibilities and skills overlap.

How Marketers Can Increase Their Value

We've looked at five areas where marketing can add value. But what about marketing specialists, many of whom feel undervalued and perhaps constrained in fully utilizing their skills? What can they do to increase their value to their respective firms? Let me suggest the following:

Learn everything you can about our business, and about business in general. Perhaps the biggest obstacle that most marketers face is a limited understanding of the business in which they labor. If they want to be viewed as a strategic asset, they need to know the business. I recommend reading extensively, asking lots of questions of their technical colleagues, sitting in on strategy meetings, getting involved in professional associations—whatever it takes to build your business expertise. Look outside our profession as well, because we can learn a lot from other industries.

Develop your strategic thinking and problem solving skills. The best marketing people I've known were skilled strategists and problem solvers. Even though they lacked technical expertise, they played an important role in defining corporate and even project strategy, because technical projects are always conducted in the context of nontechnical drivers. This "outsider's perspective" can be extremely valuable. Marketers are often also very good at synthesis, the ability to see the big picture and fit all the pieces of a problem or solution together. This can be the perfect complement to your technical coworkers' analytical strengths, which apply a different approach to problem solving.

Impact the content of the message, not just the presentation. Marketers often depend on their technically-minded colleagues to give them the core content for their proposals, brochures, and other marketing materials. The marketer is then relegated to the role of editing and graphic layout. But the strategic value of the marketing specialist increases when he or she significantly impacts the content. This is when I really began to excel as a proposal writer, when I could could reinterpret, reframe, revise, and challenge what my colleagues had written. Why is this important? Because marketers are usually better communicators, and bring a different strategic perspective, as noted earlier. It obviously requires experience, but the marketer at any stage of his or her career can start working in this direction.

Earn the right to say no. Many in marketing roles have little more say over their work assignments than administrative staff. This is probably necessary early in your career. But eventually you have to be able to have some say over what you work on and how you go about it. The reason this is important is because you are the marketing expert—at least, that's what you need to be. Marketing will not be the strategic asset it could be as long as architects, engineers, and scientists are dictating how it's done. That's not their expertise. But because it's their business, you have to earn the right to fully exercise your expertise. It will come when your colleagues see that your ideas and strategies work.

Develop your own client relationships. The power brokers in our profession have client relationships. Whether you're in a sales role or not, you need to try to develop at least a few such relationships of your own. That brings legitimacy to your role as a client advocate, which you need to become as an effective marketer. Your success depends on how well you understand client needs, buying influences, business trends, service expectations, etc. You can read about this stuff or learn from your coworkers, but there's no substitute for getting it straight from the client's mouth. Seek out ways to meet and get to know clients—even if they're not your firm's clients.

Above all, demonstrate that your ideas work! I mentioned this earlier, but it bears repeating. A marketer in our business generally has to work harder to gain respect and make a strategic contribution than his or her technical colleagues. This requires that you are diligent in increasing your knowledge, developing your skills, and learning and applying best practices. Don't expect your firm to recognize your true value until you make it abundantly clear.

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