Elements of a Win Theme
Proposals need to be compliant. They also need to be compelling. But even if your proposal has both, it may not capture the attention of an evaluator if it is missing a win theme. A win theme is a 15-second elevator sales pitch that synthesizes key elements of your compliant and compelling proposal. It allows the evaluator to quickly determine the crux of your proposal. A win theme is not the only thing that wins a proposal, but it immediately brings into clear view the essence of what awaits in your compelling and compliant proposal, which is a great start towards winning the proposal.
But What’s in a Win Theme?
Win themes are sometimes misunderstood. Some think that a win theme is a simplistic statement that your company is incredible or that your proposal meets and exceeds the requirements in the government’s solicitation document. Some think that win themes are marketing jargon that make bold yet unspecified claims—the kind of claims that are designed to attract attention on a marketing pamphlet but are not designed to convey substantive information. If you think of a win theme as a sales pitch, these are not very convincing sales pitches. A win theme needs to resonate with a customer, which means that it needs to speak, in detail, to what a customer really needs—both in their solicitation’s documented requirements and beyond their solicitation’s documented requirements. But a win theme needs to not only acknowledge the customer side—it also needs to highlight your side. A win theme identifies a customer’s wants but also how you as the respondent are going to meet those wants and how capable you are in being able to do so.
Pain Points, Needs, and Desires. A win theme needs to speak to the requirements in the solicitation as a starting point. But a win theme needs to go beyond the solicitation because, quite simply, the proposal response needs to go beyond the solicitation. The customer may have pain points, needs, and desires that are not documented in the solicitation. While speaking to the documented requirements is an absolute necessity, creating a proposal response—and subsequently a win theme—that speaks to those undocumented pain points, needs, and desires can give you an edge beyond the competition.
This is where good capture management comes in. Good capture management creates client intelligence—intelligence about what the customer really wants beyond the documented requirements in their solicitation. Good capture management identifies the customer’s pain points, their undocumented needs, and their desires relating to the pending contract. These three elements should be folded into the win theme to acknowledge the customer’s side of this potential contract.
Features and Benefits. But what about your side of the potential contract—how will you as the contractor address, satisfy, and even exceed the customer’s pain points, needs, and desires? The answer lies in the features and benefits of your approach or solution. The answer also lies in something called proof points. Features and benefits of your approach/solution highlight the specific elements that will allow you as a contractor to achieve the services or products that the customer wants. Benefits in particular are important because they tie directly into the quantitative and qualitative outcomes of the services/products that the customer is seeking. A feature does not resonate with a customer unless it provides a benefit to a customer. Benefits often resonate more with customers than features alone—some proposal experts even recommend listing benefits before features because of this.
Differentiators and Discriminators. When considering features and benefits and which ones might resonate, it’s good to highlight which of your features and benefits not only resonate with the customer but which ones set you apart from the bidding competition. Features and benefits that not only resonate but are unique are often called discriminators. (Features and benefits that are unique but don’t necessarily resonate with the customer are often called differentiators—it’s better to highlight discriminators than differentiators.)
Proof Points. You should certainly highlight features of your solutions and, better yet, benefits of your features that are unique and that resonate with the customer. But providing proof of your capabilities to achieve those unique and desirable benefits (by way of your features) should be fortified with proof—you need to prove what you claim you can do. There are a variety of proof points that you can provide to convince the customer of your capabilities. If you’re developing a proposal in response to a federal government solicitation, one proof point you can provide is a CPARS quote. CPARS (Contractor Performance Assessment Reporting System) is a web-based system that contains the annual documented performance assessments of federal government contractors. These assessments include elements such as ratings (for example, exceptional or very good), comments, and recommendations. In particular, you can add a CPARS rating into your win theme.
Adding CPARS elements such as comments and recommendations from a successful assessment elsewhere into your proposal such as a callout box can help to assure a potential government customer that your claims about the features and benefits of your approach/solution are real.
Another proof point can be a metric—a self-identified quantifiable measurement of your performance, especially one that relates to an outcome within a previous contract. It’s beneficial to insert a succinct metric into your win theme. Identify a measurable outcome of your process or your product/service from a previous contract. Service level agreements (SLAs) are a popular metric to identify. Include a metric that is impressive but that also is relevant to the proposal and that resonates with your customer.
For more in-depth references to metrics elsewhere within your proposal such as a callout box, it’s beneficial to provide a metric within context such as a past performance. Emphasize how the metric addressed a customer pain point or achieved a customer’s needs or desires. Better yet, if you can combine all of that with the identify of a key personnel member that you’re including in your proposal, the customer will know that the person who achieved that impressive, relevant metric will be working on the future contract.
Win Theme Formula. There are a lot of elements and nuances to a successful win theme. To help remember the composition of a win theme, think of the following formula:
Win Theme = Customer’s Pain Points + Customer’s Needs {Documented and Undocumented} + Customer’s Desires + Discriminating Benefits of Proposer’s Approach + Features of Proposer’s Approach/Solution + Proof Points {CPARS Ratings and Metrics}