#2: Persuasion, Writing and Design Techniques for Winning Proposals
#002 – In this episode, I cover proposal content, specifically how to take your proposal content from boring to compelling. I share techniques around persuasion, writing, and how to infuse creativity into your proposals.
Five things you'll learn in this episode:
1. Persuasive Proposals – Proposal content should position your firm to win – It’s a sales document. It needs to persuade the reader that your firm is the best firm for the project. The reasons to select your firm should be crystal clear and obvious to the reader with enough information to allow the decision-makers to back up their decision.
2. Ways to Differentiate Your Firm – There are different ways you can differentiate your firm. Those include what you offer, how you design, create or deliver it, what you offer that better aligns with your client’s goals, and what the client will get that they don’t get from your competitors.
3. Proposal Audience – Before you start writing a proposal, it’s important to understand some key things about your audience. I break those key things down in the episode.
4. Compelling Writing – Now that you know the proposal is a sales document and needs to be persuasive, let’s dive into the specifics of how to develop your content, specifically your writing. We discuss how to use features and benefits to make your proposal writing more persuasive and client-centric.
5. Infusing Creativity – As proposal managers, we sometimes get stuck when it comes to infusing creativity into proposals. Often, we are limited by our own firm brand guidelines and the client’s requirements. We can get into a creative rut, especially when we are constantly working under tight deadlines and often working on multiple proposals at once. I share five ways to infuse creativity into your proposals to make them more compelling.
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2 thoughts on “Persuasion, Writing, and Design Techniques for Winning Proposals”
Awesome podcast as usual, Lindsay. One slight change-up/idea on captions – instead of naming the project and what it does – how about naming the project and telling the reader how it’s relevant (what it means) to their project. I think captions are a little gold mine. Clients (like most of us) don’t read as thoroughly as they used too, but we all read captions. Make it valuable!
I love it! Great minds think alike!
I call is the scan test. Make your proposal pages scannable. I teach this concept inside The Proposal Pro Course.
~Lindsay