Knowing what an executive summary is

The executive summary is a concise, informational sales document-in-a-document. Its job is to convince your customer’s highest-ranking decision maker that your offer is superior to that of your competitors.

The executive summary is normally a stand-alone section at the front of every proposal. If you’re responding to an RFP and the customer’s instructions don’t allow for an executive summary, you can include the same content you would include in the executive summary as part of your cover letter or introduction. You can’t afford to leave it out.

A compelling executive summary is good for evaluators, too. It helps them capture and digest the main messages in your proposal, which in turn improves your chances of winning.

Knowing what an executive summary isn’t

Despite its name, an executive summary isn’t a

• Road map to guide readers to what follows, although you can allude to the structure and thoroughness of your proposal
• Synopsis of your proposal’s main points, although you can highlight key aspects of your solution
• Retelling of your proposal, although it does achieve (in the language and brevity that executives appreciate) the same convincing argument that your proposal does

The executive summary isn’t a traditional “summary” because you write it first, not last. It’s your utmost expression of your bidding strategy, so it provides excellent guidance to the proposal team as they write the rest of the proposal (or even you, if you write alone). Write it before the kickoff meeting and review it early with management, before your contributors head down different paths.

Focusing your message on your customer

Your executive summary focuses on your customer, not you. It sells your solution to your reader by demonstrating that you

• Grasp and can echo your customer’s vision and business issues
• Have aligned your own vision with that of your customer
• Understand the customer’s stated and unstated needs
• Have a solution that satisfies those needs
• Offer better financial and operational value than any competitor can
• Are the most qualified of all those angling to win the business

Focus on your customer throughout. Borrow your customer’s words and echo them in your descriptions of its vision, its issues, and its needs. Scour your customer’s website for expressions of its value and mission and apply them liberally.

Use your customer’s name often — much more often than you use yours (a three-to-one ratio or a little better is about right). Address your customer directly, using the second person pronoun (you). Write as if you’re talking directly to the decision maker. Express how you

• Understand the customer’s motivation when considering a proposal
• Recognize and appreciate the customer’s hot buttons (those compelling reasons to buy, explained in Chapter 2, with more in Chapter 3)
• Have ensured that the solution satisfies each hot button
• Grasp that what truly matters are business benefits, not the features that enable them

Building a compelling summary

Keep your executive summaries brief. Some proposal pundits say they should be 10 percent of the page count of your proposal, but we’ve rarely seen an effective one be more than two to three pages. If you can’t sell your idea to an executive in that amount of space, you’re in trouble. Respect your executive reader’s time: Get to, and stick to, the point.

If your RFP provides instructions for your executive summary, follow them. If not, here’s the most effective approach:

1. Grab your customer’s attention.

   Here are some options for connecting with a customer and showing that you understand its vision, its objectives for success, and the challenges it faces:

   • Tell a true story that demonstrates the issues the customer faces.
   • Quote a business leader’s expression of the organization’s vision.
   • Cite a big number — a revenue target or potential liability — that demonstrates your understanding of industry issues.
   • Provide a “look into the future” regarding the value your solution can bring within the context of the customer’s business.
   • State your win theme and your “killer” discriminator — that thing you do that no one else can.

2. Explain how you clearly understand your customer’s needs or problems.

   Use a bulleted list to make each hot-button need visible (for more on hot buttons, refer to Chapter 2). Prioritize each need or problem one by one from the customer’s perspective, using your customer’s words. Describe them in terms of the business pains they cause. For example:

   • Do they make employees less productive?
   • Do they anger customers?
   • Do they allow revenue to slip away?
   • Do they cause unnecessary expense?
   • Do they harm the customer’s reputation?

   If you’re the incumbent, indicate that you see how needs have changed since you started on the job and that your insider knowledge gives you the edge to solving them. If you’re the challenger, plant a seed that the old ways of handling these needs won’t suffice and that new perspectives are crucial.

3. Describe your solution and how it solves each hot-button need.

   This may be the most difficult part of the summary to write because you have to distill your solution into a very small space. A bulleted list is appropriate here, too. Here’s how to create one:

   • Align your solution’s features to each of the customer’s needs, one by one, in the same order presented in Step 2. Stick to the major ones and only those that address the specific need directly.
   • For each solution, state your solution’s benefits, followed by brief proof points to substantiate your claims.
   • Be sure to indicate how the solution takes away the business pain you identified in Step 2. Consider showing how the future looks after your solution is in place.
   • Express why each of these solution elements trumps the competition.

4. Clearly express your key discriminator.

   This is the most important thing you do better than your competition. Point out this discriminator so your customer knows why it should choose you over your competitors, especially the incumbent (if it’s not you).

   For more on key discriminators, turn to Chapter 6.

5. Ask for the business.

   Indicate that you’re ready to act. Be as bold with this statement as the situation allows. At the very least, confirm your understanding of the next step in your client’s decision-making cycle. At most, you can ask for a meeting to discuss your solution or even finalize the deal.

For a model demonstrating this executive summary structure, see our template at the link we provide in the appendix.

Creating a good impression

Executive summaries may be all that decision makers ever read of your proposal. They are often the only pages a busy evaluator reads in detail before skimming through the other parts of your proposal. If you fail to show value in the executive summary, evaluators may jump to the price page and summarily dismiss the rest.

Your executive summary is like the finishing on a new house: If the molding fits snugly and the cabinets are perfectly painted, a buyer will likely think that the framework, roofing, and plumbing are equally fine. If your executive summary is professional and persuasive, reviewers will assume that the same is true of your solution and support. Make a good impression by

• Avoiding excessive boilerplate: Make sure every executive summary you write is unique to the opportunity. Solutions, client requirements, and competitors differ from one opportunity to the next. If you overuse boilerplate or “recycle” content from a prior proposal, your customers may think that you haven’t thought carefully about their particular situation and needs.

• Making the summary visual: Include graphics to add emotional appeal and use a professional layout that makes the key points easy to see. Use them to reinforce your win themes and your discriminators (we address these elements from a number of perspectives in Chapters 2, 3, 6, and 7).

  In these images (and your words for that matter), avoid excessive technical detail. Focus on benefits and clear discriminators. Illustrate the payback on your solution. If your financial story is positive, include “big-number” or summary pricing and savings.

The executive summary, the cover, the transmittal letter, and the packaging are the most visible parts of your proposal. Each makes a strong contribution to the customer’s first impression of your offer, so your message and visuals must be consistent and compelling. For more techniques for creating visually appealing and persuasive proposals, see Chapter 11.

Setting up the scenario

You need to convince your customer that you understand the circumstances that have prompted your proposal. Don’t just recount the list of complaints that your customer shared with you. Although you want to describe the situation, using the customer’s actual words (see the next section “Expressing the problem and the pain”), you should also do the following:

• Express empathy. Say more than “we understand.” Instead, recap the customer’s vision and the obstacles to achieving that vision, and acknowledge the difficulty that led the customer to solicit your help.
• Mix in a bit of emotion. This is the argument element called pathos (refer to Chapter 2). A great way to bring some emotional appeal into your current situation is to talk about the specific pain the problem causes the customer.
• Add insight to what the customer already knows. You know the customer’s problems (refer to Chapter 3), so share your insights about them here. If you’re afraid that you’ll tip your hand and the customer may share your insights with the incumbent or a competitor, point to the issue and indicate that you’ve solved this kind of issue before.
• Indicate that you’ll customize your approach. Imply that the customer’s problem is unique, even if you’ve solved similar ones a thousand times before (don’t solve it yet; that’s for the next section of your proposal, which describes the solution you recommend — see the next section, “Expressing the problem and the pain”). This establishes a foundation for your persuasive arguments to follow.

Expressing the problem and the pain

Highlighting your customer’s needs and problems is a crucial part of your proposal, because you use them to prep the customer for your solution (which we discuss in the upcoming section “Writing the Solution for a Proactive Proposal”). Make the need or problem statements vivid and as meaningful to your customer as possible. Put them in a bulleted list, and structure your list as follows:

• Use verbal labels. Start each item with a label that concisely describes the need. Write them grammatically parallel — that is, write them as nouns or noun phrases, or maybe verb phrases that describe actions that the customer associates with the need. Just write them all the same way.
• State the cause. Follow each label with a brief statement of what you see as the root cause of the need or problem.
• Point out the pain. Complete the bullet point entry by describing the business pain resulting from the need or problem. Blatantly appeal to the reader’s emotions. Describe the pain in physical terms. Does the problem cause employees to work endless overtime, visibly dampening morale? Does the problem put quotas in jeopardy, reducing employees’ compensation and the business’s bottom line? Be as graphic as you can.
• Prioritize the list. Align your customer’s hot buttons (the customer’s most compelling reasons to act) with your list of needs, and prioritize them to match the importance your customer places on them. (Refer to Chapter 2 for more on hot buttons.)

Readers remember the first items and last items in a list better than those that fall in between. Follow this concept to order your list of needs and problems. And don’t forget to limit your list to a maximum of seven items.

Illustrating the customer’s environment

The best way to show that you understand your customer’s environment is to draw a picture that depicts what you know. Although most proposal writers fall back on describing the situation with words, measures, and specifications, pictures can be more effective. Here’s why:

• They show that you’ve taken extra care to understand the situation. Drawing or even photographing the customer’s current environment shows that you’ve put in extra effort to get to the bottom of the customer’s problem.
• They reduce the amount of content you have to write. The old adage is right: Pictures do convey more than words. And in proposals, they reduce the amount of detail you have to describe. You still need to write a caption and add references to the images in the text, but you can drastically cut down your verbiage by using images.

Illustrations are so important that we look at them in more detail, including how you can use them in every part of your proposal, in Chapter 11.

Describing problems in the customer’s own language

Proposals are all about your readers and their problems, so every word you write in this section needs to apply to your customer alone. A great technique for letting your readers know that you understand their point of view is to echo the very words they use to describe their problems. Nothing says “I get what you said” better than using the exact terms that your customer uses to describe work through scenarios and operational, technical, and managerial problems.

You can set up this echo of your customer’s words by referring to your visits with the customer’s executives and support staff. For example: “In our January 4th meeting, COO Mike Anders said that ‘an outage of mere minutes would cripple our operations for days.’”

If you have established a close relationship with your customer, you can also use the exact words your customer uses when talking about operational woes. (If your relationship is more formal, beware of sounding too familiar.) If your customer uses colloquialisms or colorful local expressions (anything short of profanity is fair game), use those words and phrases in this section. Call attention to them by using italics or quotes.

Responding to an RFP’s questions

What’s the best way to answer the direct questions in your customer’s RFP? Clearly, directly, and succinctly. Easier said than done.

You want every response to

• Express that you comply with the requirement
• Explain how you comply and why your way is the best way
• Answer your customer’s questions
• Address your customer’s hot buttons and echo your win themes

To help you craft these winning responses, we provide a four-part RFP question-response model for all proposal writers to follow on every deal. Table 9-1 shows the response elements and defines the content that goes in each.

Follow this model consistently to ensure that your RFP responses really respond, selling your strategy at every level of your response and helping evaluators quickly assess your compliance and responsiveness. To aid you, we supply a link for you to access a template in the appendix and explain how to use it in Chapter 13.

Answering the questions plainly

Some proposal writers weave and bob like a prize fighter. You read their responses to what seem like simple enough questions (okay, they’re hard questions but simply stated) and marvel at the evasive tactics. They hedge. They dodge. They redirect to something they find more comfortable to talk about. And they never answer the question. And what does that do? It either disqualifies them for being nonresponsive or prolongs the RFP process by requiring a clarifying stage after all the proposals are submitted.

You must answer your customers’ questions. You may as well do it the first time they ask. If not, you’ll have to answer them later on paper or in person. Or you never will, because you’ll go away empty-handed.

As a proposal writer, you’ll run across colleagues who refuse to answer questions to your satisfaction. They may be salespeople who know a dark secret about how your company failed to support a customer at a crucial time. They may be engineers who see a fatal flaw in your solution. They may be arrogant vendor partners who think they’re too special to answer what they deem is a question beneath them. This is when you have to relentlessly pursue a satisfactory response — even if the response won’t help your chances of succeeding. No one wins if you can’t meet a requirement yet somehow imply that you can.

Linking your answers and win themes

In the earlier section “Responding to an RFP’s questions,” our RFP response model described two places where you can link win themes with your individual responses to your customer’s questions. Every answer affords you an opportunity to reinforce your win themes, but don’t limit your win themes to your answers. You can’t really overdo this, so look for every opportunity to repeat appropriate win themes wherever you can, such as the following:

• Volume, section, and subsection introductions: Since RFPs usually group questions under categories, address how all the responses in the section support your win themes (provided that the RFP allows you to do this).
• Graphics that depict your solution components: You can illustrate your win themes within images you include to support your answers. See Chapter 11 for ways to do this.
• Captions that support your graphics: These captions echo a win theme as you express the action depicted in your image (see Chapter 11).

Developing a structure that’s easy to understand

The questions you need to answer as you’re writing the solution for your customer are actually pretty simple. Of course, every answer prompts a new question, so you need to think about your particular customer’s needs as you flesh out your solution description. And, for that matter, every main and follow-up question includes an unstated question — “Is what you say true?” For every claim you make as you answer your customer’s questions, you need to provide proof that your claim is valid.

If your solution is complex (composed of multiple products and services, or extensive support processes), you will probably have to answer the main questions (and provide proof statements) multiple times. Your need to fully explain that each solution building block is supported by this approach’s inherently modular, question-based structure.

To explain a solution fully, you need to answer four key questions (and a number of follow-ups) from your customer’s point of view:

• What is it? Define your solution and the products and services that will deliver it. Although you can define your solution a number of ways, a classical definition works well because it places your solution into a class or category of similar solutions and then differentiates yours from everyone else’s, as you see in this example:

  • SureGuard 2.0 is a wireless security system that lets you secure your business from intruders while monitoring and controlling your system from any wireless phone or tablet.

  Anticipate follow-up questions like these:

  • How is it different from what we have or what you used to offer?
  • How is it better than what we have or an alternative?
  • How is it especially appropriate?
  • What discriminating benefit does it provide?

  As an example:

  • Unlike previous versions, SureGuard 2.0 allows you to view your premises in real-time through webcam feeds while capturing the recordings for later playback. No longer do you have to be on premises to activate or deactivate your system — all functions are available through your iOS or Android device. It’s especially valuable for enterprises like yours that hold large sums of money after normal hours of operation.
• How does it work? Describe — better still, describe and show — the way your solution will work in the customer’s environment. Use one of a variety of schematic, conceptual, or metaphoric graphics to illustrate the inner workings of the solution. If you illustrated the customer’s current situation, use a similarly styled illustration to show the same scene after you’ve implemented your solution. Answer follow-up questions such as
  • How does it “fix” the problem?
  • What are its functional components?
  • How do these components work with existing workflows and infrastructure?
  • What technology supports the solution?

• What will it do for me? Identify and describe the benefits the customer will realize. Now is the time to link individual, specific customer needs with the individual features your solution uses to bring the benefits that will help your customer achieve its business goals. As you craft your benefit statements, anticipate follow-up questions like the following:

  • How does that aspect of your solution deliver this particular benefit?
  • What immediate benefits may we receive?
  • What long-term benefits can we expect?
  • How will this solution anticipate future needs?

  In Chapter 7, we present a lot of information about features and benefits: What they are (features are the what of your solution; benefits are the so-what), how they relate, how to tell the difference between them, and how benefits are central to your proposal argument. Earlier in this chapter, in the section “Describing the Customer’s Situation,” we indicate that you need to create a parallel structure between the problems and needs you describe in the current situation and the features and benefits that solve them in your solution. And now we add the element of proofs: providing supporting evidence that your solution will do what you claim.

  One way you can pull all these interrelated elements together as you answer the “What will it do for me?” question is to present them in a table. Figure 9-1 shows the formula for displaying Need-Pain-Feature-Benefit-Discriminator-Proof statements in an easy-to-scan table.

  Formatting options abound when you’re assembling your Need-Pain-Feature-Benefit-Discriminator-Proof statements. If your statements are relatively simple, you can use the table format from Figure 9-1. If you have complex needs, multiple pains, extensive advantages, comprehensive benefits, and significant proofs, you may need to create short subheadings to introduce each and treat them thoroughly. Usually, you can create a bulleted list and align each statement with the needs you list in the current situation section. You don’t have to repeat the need, but if your proposal is longer than a few pages, it’s good to remind the reader of the issue that prompted the solution element.

• How will you implement it? Spell out who does what and when. Explain in detail your method for getting the solution up and working for the customer. Use project management tools like a Gantt chart to illustrate how the project will go (we talk about Gantt charts and tracking progress in Chapter 8). Name and justify the key personnel who will deliver each solution component. Anticipate these follow-up questions:

  • How will you do the work?
  • Who will provide and maintain the service?
  • Why did you choose these people to work on our problem?
  • Why is your method better than the competition?
  • What will happen next?

  For many businesses, the “How will you implement it?” response is a major section, chapter, or even volume of a proposal, known as the methodology or scope of work. As with the cost question, it’s all a matter of degree: The more intricate and expensive your solution, the more detail you should supply.

Creating a vision of the outcomes you’ll provide

The solution section of your proposal is all about getting the customer to believe in your version of its vision. You have to align your solution to match the customer’s vision, and should your solution not align with this vision, you must provide sufficient evidence as to why altering its vision may be advantageous.

Once again, the best way to confirm this alignment is by illustrating it. Graphics powerfully demonstrate that you “get” your customer’s vision and that your vision aligns. The graphics in your solution section influence the following:

• Credibility: People equate visual design with professionalism.
• Receptivity: Readers tend to absorb the main points faster when viewing images versus text.
• Stickiness: Readers recall information more readily when it’s presented through or with images.
• Responsiveness: Images trigger emotional responses better than words and, as a result, are more persuasive.

Creating a comprehensive visual strategy that reinforces and enhances your textual messages is a wonderful way to ensure that your readers stick with your solution story and your story sticks in their minds. Recall that “before-and-after” images influence people to start life-changing diets and workout regimens. Use the same approach to show what needs to be changed and how it will change after you deliver your solution. Seeing truly is believing (even if it’s not real yet).

Graphics and illustrations in proposals are a must. See Chapter 11 for more insights into how to make your proposals more visual.

Demonstrating products or services delivers more tangible proof than mere words, so multimedia simulations of processes and products are more persuasive still. There’s no excuse — other than strict customer RFP requirements — for not leveraging modern video, animation, and simulation technologies as “inserts” into multimedia proposals.

Expressing the value of your solution

Customers scrutinize your pricing section more than any other. That’s no deep insight, we know. Every decision ultimately boils down to money. But a proposal writer’s job is to present the price within the context of value. To do this, you have to

• Clearly state value propositions that encapsulate the benefits, discriminators, and win themes you’ve stated elsewhere in the proposal (refer to Chapter 6 and the next section for more on the relationship between win themes and value propositions and Chapter 7 for more on benefits).
• Illustrate the difference between cost and value by providing graphs and pictograms to help highlight your value and show the return that a price will yield.
• Provide only the level of pricing detail your customer needs to decide in your favor (or they won’t see the forest for the trees).

We explore these three key elements of pricing in the following sections.

Using graphics to clearly show value

A graphic can help persuade your customer that the value you claim truly exists. Using a graph or chart to show the return on investment (ROI) or the payback period on your project is a great way to cement the idea of value. It succinctly reinforces your value proposition and sets the context for the price your customer will pay. Figure 9-2 provides an example that shows how quickly a customer can recoup its investment.

Graphics, tables, and even thematic pictograms can make dry, complicated monetary issues more understandable, more vivid, and more compelling. And all help you get the message across without your customer getting lost in the details at the wrong time (in the middle of your argument).

For more information about persuading with graphics and other visuals, see Chapter 11.

Quantifying your claims with data

The pricing section can be an argument-clincher by showing that you can do what you say and that you have the facts and the rationale to back up your claims. Your facts not only validate what you’re claiming and lend credibility to your organization, but they also provide you and your customer with the details necessary to make informed decisions about your price. And even though price is market-driven, the facts help you build a story that creates confidence in your solution.

You can justify and build your case for your costs by demonstrating that you’ve done the work before at a certain cost. This is where what proposal people call “past performance” comes into play (you find more about this in the next section). Nothing is more compelling than data showing how you’ve already performed the work the customer wants done. You may have completed entire projects similar to what your customer needs, so you can fully substantiate your price with verifiable, historical data.

Although past performance examples are strong evidence that you can meet the customer’s requirements, don’t forget that most customers still think that their situation (and therefore your solution) is unique. Always indicate the customized aspects of your past performance to assure your customer that your solutions are not “off-the-shelf.”

Documenting your team’s know-how

Have we mentioned that proposal writing is mainly answering a lot of questions? Here’s another one: “Why us?” That is, why should your customer choose you over all other vendors? One great answer is, “our people.” Although many companies say their people are their greatest asset, a proposal writer has to prove it. And if you can, you can win.

Depending on the type of business you’re in and the scope of work in the projects your people perform, you may want to create professional résumés for individuals on your team that highlight their skills, experience, education, and accomplishments. If your company works on major projects, you may need résumés as extensive as, if not more than, traditional job résumés. These may include content categories like Experience, Education (especially technical), Certifications, Awards and Recognition, and Professional Memberships. You need to tailor these résumés for the specific proposal you’re writing. Tailor them by rearranging the content to highlight recent projects that match the size, scope, and solution of the current opportunity. You can also include client commendations and even prior work for the customer, if pertinent.

If your proposals are less formal or less complex, you can avoid the full-blown résumé by creating short paragraphs that highlight the knowledge, skills, and experience of your key team members.

As an example:

David Michaels is the senior project manager we have assigned to direct your project. David has been our most highly sought-after project manager for the past 12 years. He is certified as a Project Management Professional and a licensed electrical engineer. David successfully led the Regional Airport facility upgrade, a project of similar scope and intricacy to yours.

Consider thumbnail photographs of these employees to further personalize your team.

Choosing relevant past-performance examples

The other question customers ask about your qualifications is, “Who else have you done this for?” You want to respond with relevant experience. Relevant experience is simply comparing how you’ve performed on previous jobs that match the goals, size, scope, and complexity of the new opportunity.

When it comes to past performance, evaluators have different perspectives. So you have to anticipate the question behind the question. If your evaluators are technical experts, they’ll want to know about how you applied your technical abilities and skills on prior projects. They’ll also be interested in the technical innovations that you brought to the project. If your evaluators are cost experts, they’ll want to hear about how your costs tracked against estimates and if you incurred any penalties for performance.

In general, make sure you answer the evaluators’ basic question: “Did you do what the contract required?”

What goes into your past performance descriptions? Use this list as a starting point (but remember: If you’re responding to an RFP, make sure you add any past-performance requirements to the list that you find when you shred the RFP):

• Customer name
• Project or contract name
• Dates of the project and term of contract
• Customer project lead and contact information
• Customer’s industry
• Project description (nature of the work performed, number of sites, amount of equipment, types of services)

Some customers may place greater importance on past performance than others. But no matter what the setting, clear descriptions of past performance can help build confidence in your solution and ability to perform. Always present your past-performance descriptions in an attractive, easy-to-understand way, using graphics and proof points as appropriate.

Many RFPs ask for references, and may insist on speaking directly with any companies that you list. Keep an archive of selected customers and customer contacts and ask for permission to use them as references. Help prepare them by supplying a list of questions they can expect to hear, such as “How well did the bidder work with your managers?” and “Did the bidder adhere to its implementation schedule?”