Proposal Development: How to Respond & Win the Bid (Psi Successful Business Library)

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Summary: Disappointing,... Only for Techies.
Review: Really disappointed. We purchased this book for use within our Big Five consulting team. For some reason, we never really used it. When I left to work for a smaller strategy consulting firm, I soon found out why. The book is geared exclusively for software and IT proposals. It is so specific that very little transfers to other uses. Also -- and this is a big negative as far as I'm concerned -- there is very little discussion on the importance of stressing client benefits over product attributes. In fact, the book spends most of its time discussing how to communicate product specifications and implementation processes. Understand, buyers purchase your products and services because they benefit the buyer. Not because they are thrilled with your "gee-whiz" and "whiz-bang" product attributes. They want to know how much will this service save me? how much more profit will I earn? Your proposal is a marketing tool. It must clearly underscore the benefits your customer will derive from the purchase of your product or service over other alternatives. However, you never would have known of the importance of writing the proposal from the client's view after having read this disappointing book.

Rating:
Summary: A note from the author...
Review: The purpose of this book is to provide you with a practical guide to writing and organizing sales proposals - with emphasis on "practical". Instead of discussing salesmanship 101, sales theories, and proposal war stories, this book focuses on developing the materials and a process for writing winning proposals.

This book is useful not only as a writing guide, but as a proposal resource to show management how professional proposals are resourced, managed, and written. These ideas and others are explored in this new edition.