I’ve dedicated a separate section of Principle 4 to the executive summary, because it’s the most important part of your proposal. It’s the only part that everyone buy-side reads. It may be the only part that some decision-makers read, especially the most senior ones. I’ve known a CEO vote for a supplier based on the executive summary alone.

WHAT’S A PROPOSAL EXECUTIVE SUMMARY FOR?

To answer the client’s question ‘What’s In It For Me?’ (‘WIIFM?’).

Your exec summary should capture the major benefits the client gets when they appoint you, ideally in the three minutes a busy chief exec will give you to persuade them to vote for you. It’s not about what you’re going to do so much as what the client gets.

‘Executive summary’ is a bit of a misnomer: it’s not so much a summary of your whole proposal as the business case for appointing you. The exec summary has no other purpose in life than to sell your proposal. It captures the essence of your value proposition and primes the reader for the detail contained in the body of the document.

In fact, it’s so important that if the tender documentation doesn’t explicitly ask for an executive summary (often the case in public sector tenders), you must create one. Find an appropriate place in your response to summarize the benefits to the buyer of appointing you. Open questions along the lines of ‘Please describe the value that your organization can add to the contract’, ‘Outline your overall approach to delivering this contract’, or ‘What do you believe sets you apart from the other bidders?’ are begging to be addressed in this way.

WHAT’S A PROPOSAL EXECUTIVE SUMMARY NOT FOR?

Anything else. The exec summary is not there to:

• Introduce your bid: do that in the covering letter

• Tell the client how delighted or proud you are to be bidding: they’re not interested in your state of mind or how you feel about the bid, so avoid grovelling phrases like ‘Thank you for the opportunity to bid…’

• Describe in detail how you plan to do the job: the client might just pass that ‘blueprint’ to their mate to do it cheaper.

WHAT SHOULD A PROPOSAL EXECUTIVE

SUMMARY INCLUDE?

Break it down into four distinct elements that reflect the body of the document, but with the emphasis firmly not on what you’re going to do, but on what the client gets:

1. A brief re-statement of the client’s objectives. This should be noncontroversial stuff confirmed in your pre-submission meetings: you want the client nodding here.

2. Your proposed solution in outline, including your approach, team, benefits and price (your ‘value proposition’):

• show how you’ll help deliver the client’s objectives

• make the link between your solution and those objectives explicit

• list the major benefits of your solution, in terms of cost, quality and/or time

• link the price explicitly to the benefits that the client will get when they appoint you

3. Why you are the right person, team or organization to do the job. You have the best people with the right approach/tools and the most relevant experience. You’re ‘a safe pair of hands’. This is about delivering the three Cs: conviction, credentials and credibility.

4. Next steps. Show the client that you’ve thought about the first critical weeks of the engagement and that you’re ready to go.

HOW SHOULD YOU WRITE A PROPOSAL

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY?

Make it short, simple, punchy and readable. Whatever the topic, an executive summary should score at least 45% readability on the Flesch Reading Ease (FRE) score. Imagine a busy CEO in an elevator with a couple of minutes between floors to ‘get’ your proposal. Make it easy for them. Pitch your messages at a level they can relate to, i.e. strategic outcomes like ROI, value for money, performance value, organizational goals.

Write more about the client than you. If you must talk about a feature of your product or service, always relate it back to how the client benefits. ‘What that means for you is...’ will get their attention. When we talk about ourselves, buyers switch off in (nano)seconds.

Of course, it’s not just a question of creating a shopping list of benefits. Match them to each of the five buyer roles we discussed in Principle 2, or categorize them meaningfully under headings like ‘organizational/strategic’, ‘financial/commercial’, ‘functional/operational’, ‘technical’. You need to make it easy for each evaluator to find the benefits that will most resonate with them.

When writing the benefits, make them specific, concrete and definite. Wherever possible, quantify them. A 12% growth in profits over 18 months is more compelling than A significant growth in profits because it’s more precise. Specific benefits give the decision-makers the hard evidence they seek to justify their decision to select you.

Also, consider varying the format and page grid of the executive summary from the body of the document. If you use a single column for the body text, use double columns in the exec summary, or a different typeface. Your goal should be to create an executive summary that can stand on its own, so the CEO or CFO could tear it out of the proposal and read it on the train home… and it would still make sense.

Use graphics. A bar chart, image, graph or photo that supports a key point can be persuasive. Most bids are starved of graphics. Combining numbered lists, bullets and WiT (Words in Tables) works well in an executive summary, as I hope you can see in the re-worked example below.

Here are ‘before and after’ examples of a proposal executive summary that I worked on with a client (XYZ plc is the name of the buying organization; ABC Ltd, an energy consultancy, is the bidder and my client):

CRITIQUE OF THIS ORIGINAL VERSION

On the plus side, as you can see from the readability stats above, at 477 words it’s short and the ASL (Average Sentence Length) of 17.2 words falls inside the accepted range. But that’s about it.

On the minus side, 11% of the sentences are in the passive voice and it only gets an FRE (Flesch Reading Ease) score of 33.9%. This is not good enough for an executive summary, which should be eminently readable and score at least 45% FRE.

Bigger problems by far are the total lack of structure and buried benefits. Without any sub-headings or signposts, the summary is a string of short, loosely connected paragraphs with no contrast, differentiation or visual interest. This makes it hard for the reader to discern the logic of the argument and find the information they want.

In terms of benefits, I’ve identified six, plus three features, but the benefits are lost in the text, forcing you to read the entire summary to uncover them. They need to be clear and explicit and jump off the page for the reader.

Here’s the final version that the client and I developed together:

[ REWORKED EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ]

XYZ plc (‘You’/’Your’) independently buys electricity, gas and water (‘utilities’) for its 50 sites across Ireland and the UK. You have estimated that your total utility spend is £10 million a year. An internal review has concluded that you could be managing this process better and saving up to £750,000 per year.

OUR UNDERSTANDING OF YOUR NEEDS

Based on your RFP and discussions with Steve M and Debbie Y, we understand that you seek:

1. An end-to-end process that improves your approach to buying utilities and managing invoice administration.

2. Cost certainty and effective risk management in your energy purchasing strategy.

3. To identify overcharging errors and cost-saving opportunities through state-of-the-art invoice validation software and techniques.

HOW WE PROPOSE TO MEET YOUR NEEDS

We recommend you outsource your entire energy purchasing and invoice administration to ABC Ltd. We would deliver this to you in four ways:

1. Using our Bureau Service will improve how you manage your invoices, saving your business money and your people time. We specifically recommend you use our Bureau Services to:

Create and maintain your own site database

Collect, process and validate your utility invoices

Stamp and ‘journal’ your utility invoices for payment

Handle any pay and recover opportunities to save you money

You will get protection from overcharging. We use our proprietary software (‘ICMAS’) to process and validate your invoices, allowing us to pick up any amended small print that could compromise you. We process up to 30,000 invoices a month and keep up-to-date with suppliers’ invoicing procedures, alerting you to material changes in their terms and conditions.

Our research (see Appendix D) of 11 corporate customers suggests you could be paying 10% more than you should, due to inaccurate invoices. In 2011, we validated our customers’ invoices and saved them a total of £2.5m.

2. You will get expert advice from Tim Y, your own dedicated energy trader, on the most appropriate energy purchasing strategy. Your need for cost certainty and risk management will drive the agenda of every meeting with Tim.

3. In the UK, you will be able to buy and sell from the market at opportune moments through the flexible energy purchasing strategy that we recommend for you, using our ‘Lock/Unlock’ product. Based on your consumption figures for 2011, we calculate that, had you used this product with us, you could have saved up to 0.53p per K/Wh.

4. In Ireland, you will get cost certainty through the fixed, traditional energy purchasing strategy that we recommend for you. Once the Irish energy market has settled down, we can use more bespoke products, such as the ‘Day/Month Ahead’, for you. Appendix A explains in more detail how this works.

OUR PROPOSED FEES

A full fee structure is in Section 5.0. To deliver the benefits you have told us you seek – cost certainty, effective risk management, major cost-savings, generous deals negotiated for you, protection from overcharging, early warning of pitfalls and risky offers, an efficient energy purchasing strategy and the reassurance that you are in safe, expert hands – we propose charging you the following fees:

1. Energy procurement for UK and Ireland for year 1: £65,000

+ VAT per annum

2. Bureau Service for electricity, gas and water purchasing: £300

+ VAT per meter in year 1; £250 + VAT per meter in year 2.

WHY ABC LTD?

What you get	How and why you get it
Comfort, reassurance, peace of mind	Our Energy Trading team is one of only two in the UK to hold Financial Services Authority (FSA) accreditation. You get the comfort of dealing with an inspected, accredited organization keen to maintain its high standards and strong reputation in the market.
The best deals in the market	Our 15-strong Energy Trading team – some of whom you have met – has over 100 years’ combined experience in buying gas and electricity. This team has the knowledge and experience to spot and deliver market opportunities early for you. They can also give you early warning of pitfalls and risky offers. Managing over £800m worth of energy gives us clout in the marketplace, allowing us to negotiate generous deals for you.
Better prices	We created the Wholesale Power Purchasing approach (see Appendix A) in 2003 to help clients like you get better prices on the ‘open’ market.
Large annual savings	Our ICMAS software can process over 100,000 invoices a month. B y staying on top of suppliers’ billing procedures and the tiniest changes to their small print, we can validate a large number of invoices and protect you from overcharging. On average we save our customers £5,000 a year.

PROPOSED NEXT STEPS

We will address your European activity in a separate proposal at your request. We’re ready to start work immediately. Assuming this is acceptable to you, John D will contact you within the next five working days to discuss this proposal further, answer any questions you may have and schedule your first meeting with Tim Y.

CRITIQUE OF THIS FINAL VERSION

As you can see, it’s totally different from the original version and much more powerful because:

the opening paragraph grabs the reader’s attention by describing their chief needs and a major cost-saving opportunity

the client benefits are numbered, explicit and in some cases quantified

the structure is clear and simple

‘you’ and ‘your’ feature more prominently

there are no sentences in the passive voice

the language is simpler, e.g. ‘buy’ instead of ‘purchase’

WHEN SHOULD WE WRITE THE EXECUTIVE SUMMARY?

Some people like to write it last, so they know what’s in the proposal to summarize. But if you run out of time and rush it, it’ll read like an afterthought. You might prefer to write it first, to force yourself to think through why the client should select you, then use the rest of the proposal to support it. In practice, however, it’s hard to complete the executive summary before you’ve written the rest of the proposal, as the act of writing the content helps you develop and refine your ideas and arguments.

My recommendation (and my experience) is to build your exec summary as you go. As you assemble the body of the proposal, note the strongest arguments for selecting you, usually the client benefits. When the time comes to write the summary, they’ll be clearer in your head and faster to draft.

HOW LONG SHOULD IT BE?

Personal view here, but no longer than three pages. Any more than that and it becomes just another section in the document. Remember: you’re summarizing, not expanding on or building an argument.

WINNER TAKES ALL BOTTOM LINE:

Even in good times, winning bids and tenders is ferociously competitive, with decisions often made on marginal differences between bidders. In the current climate, winning is even tougher, especially if the client’s decision is based solely on your written response. Fronting your bid with a clear, concise, compelling and benefits-laden executive summary is a great way of widening the gap between you and the competition.

[ FOOD FOR THOUGHT ]

Score your latest executive summary out of 10, where 1 = you strongly disagree with the following statements and 10 = you strongly agree:

	Score out of 10
The structure of my exec summary is logical, clear, explicit
The client benefits are clear, explicit and quantified
There is abundant use of ‘you’, ‘your’ and the client’s name
The summary is readable (10 points for an FRE of 60%+, 5 points for 45%+ and 1 point for < 45%)
TOTAL

If you scored 40, well done. If you scored 30-39, good, but you could do better. If you scored less than 30, please re-read this chapter or consider attending one of my workshops on executive summaries (http://bit.ly/VNXttS).