Win themes are too often neglected in many proposals. Frequently, both new and established companies forget that any proposal should instil confidence in the potential buyer, highlight your competitive advantage and show exactly why you are best suited for the job. Written proposals with an effective win theme almost always ensure you, the provider, a winning contract.

What is a win theme? A win theme can be defined as a concept presented in your proposal that is designed to persuade the buyer of your unique suitability to deliver the project. Find a single aspect that marks you as uniquely suited for a given project and present this to the buyer.

Creating compelling reasons to buy is why you land contracts. This is even more important if you are conducting business primarily over the Internet. Face to face interactions naturally work much better when it comes to creating lasting relationships. Online, you need to work harder to make yourself stand out. Distinguish yourself from competitors in every way possible.

Merely listing your qualifications won’t get you far. It won’t hurt, but you will need to do much more than this to consistently win jobs. Don’t fall into the trap of believing that your experience alone will speak for what you can do - when a proposal is tailored specifically to a contract and shows exactly how and why you will meet the customer’s needs, you will be much more likely to gain his business.

Defining win strategies and how they relate to you is not an easy task. They frequently vary considerably from proposal to proposal. Pick the competitive advantages you have that are important to the client. Emphasize your value. Competitive advantages are those experiences you offer that are obviously superior to what your competitor offers. Are you more experienced? More creative? More in touch with the direct issues a project applies to? Find whatever aspect distinguishes you from the herd and focus on how this feature can improve the end product for the client.

Use a tool such as the Learn to Write Proposals Bid Capture Plan to help you define you proposal win themes and strategy

Focus on developing distinct win themes that will ensure that, at the very least, you are always strongly considered for any given contract. Businesses hire the company or individual they feel will deliver the best results. Granted, price is often a strong concern, but more important is the ability to instil confidence in those who consider hiring you. Play to your strengths and emphasize your distinct value to the client. No one can advise you exactly on how to do this, but knowing your strengths allows you to easily understand how you can fulfil a contract.

You must always emphasize your value to the client. Hundreds of businesses are vying for the same opportunities. Guarantee your success by offering something specific. The Bid Capture Plan helps you define the factors that help present to the client the perception that you are unique amongst potential suppliers in being able to win this contract.

You won’t win every piece of work you pitch for; it’s just not possible…and very time you lose a contract it’s going to a competitor. However, you can help prevent this from happening by analysing the competition.

Why analyse competition? How does this help? It allows you to understand why your competitor looked like a more appropriate fit for your perspective clients needs as well as what they are doing that you aren’t. To get contracts, you need to understand how you lose them.

You need to evaluate their strengths and weaknesses. How are they better than you? Do they have more experience? Do they have existing relationships with the client? Figure exactly out their strengths and then do two things.

Firstly, figure out how to turn their strength into a weakness - find a way to twist a positive aspect into a negative one. For example, are they an older company with more experience? Then emphasize that you are more creative, free-thinking and adaptive.

How are they planning to beat you and other competitors? Ghost their strengths in your proposal and try and downplay their importance to the client, instead emphasising the importance of your unique selling points. Where your competitor is weak emphasise what you can do in those areas. Make sure you explain how you excel above what is normally expected.

The internet makes doing competitor research remarkably easy. You can browse a corporate website or, if using an outsourcing site, you may be able to view previous contract history. If they do any type of advertising, weather offline or on, you can review and research the marketing information they use. It’s not hard to find out something about how they position themselves, any legitimate business will do some sort of self promotion that you can find. This knowledge is invaluable to helping you grow and achieve better contracts.

With the Learn to Write Proposals (.learntowriteproposals.co.uk) Bid Management Toolkit you will find the Competitor Evaluation Matrix to help perform and document your competitive analysis as part of your bid preparation.

Another great idea is to get feedback from previous opportunities you have lost. Quite often, companies will be more than happy to discuss why you ultimately lost out. These opportunities are one of the best ways to understand what the bidder liked in the winners bid and the weaknesses in yours.