Four Executive Summary Mistakes That Hurt Your Chances of Winning Proposals
Posted: Thursday, February 04, 2010
by Olessia Smotrova-Taylor
OST Global Solutions, Inc.
Much is written on the subject of Executive Summaries, but over the years, these pesky proposal introductions don't seem to get much better. I have seen a few good ones, but most were in dire need of improvement. Make sure to avoid four common errors so that your Executive Summaries help your proposals rather than actually hurting your chances of winning.
We've all seen plenty of bad Executive Summaries - the kind that make you fall asleep. They start with "We are pleased to submit..." and then go into long descriptions of the company. They are full of "fluffy" words such as "world class" and "premier." You can't help but believe that your customer hates reading all this gobbledygook just as much as you do, so why waste your time writing it? If the customer doesn't required an executive summary, why should you include it?
While it is true that Executive Summaries usually are not required, and are not scored, they are an extremely important part of any proposal. A well-written Executive Summary is a crucial marketing and sales piece. It impresses the Source Selection Authority and members of the Source Selection Evaluation Board with your expertise, professionalism, and comprehensiveness of your offer, as well as your understanding of them and their needs. It convinces them that your proposal is worth their careful reading versus just getting through the document.
A rigid page count limitation or a restrictive response structure is never a good reason not to write an Executive Summary. Even with five-page task order responses, you can include a short summary that covers the gist of your offer and the key benefits to the customer. You could include a great summary as an introduction to each major section, or even include it in a cover letter or email accompanying your proposal.
Contracting officers often share your executive summary with the evaluators even if it isn't required - that is, if it's actually good. If it is typically poor, it remains in the contracting officer's file.
Mistake #2: Getting a late start on the Executive Summary
Many companies treat their Executive Summaries as an afterthought, or start way too late in the process. They hold the mistaken belief that the Executive Summary should be written at the very end, after the proposal is basically done. When this happens, there are simply not enough review cycles to perfect this key part of the proposal.
Many still debate when to write an Executive Summary-first or last? Typical proposal writing courses encourage you to write the Executive Summary first. Then there are the rebels who say, "But the Executive Summary cannot be written first because we don't know what we're writing about; we're still developing and iterating the approach."Their reasoning goes something like this: toward the end of the proposal we will know the topic and all the Win Themes a lot better than we do when we're just starting out. So we should postpone the writing until the proposal is almost done.
The problem with starting the Executive Summary at the end is that it doesn't allow for sufficient review cycles to sharpen and hone the arguments, and to make this very important part of the document shine-and sing! There is no chance to polish and refine the details. This is a sure-fire recipe for creating an unprofessional document full of bloopers or even basic grammar and spelling errors that create a bad first impression. In addition, you lose a great opportunity to focus and guide your proposal team, which is one of the key purposes of an Executive Summary.
Mistake #3: Failing to speak to your customer's needs
One of the most common mistakes is to talk about your company and your team's capabilities, and how great you are at the beginning, continuing throughout, and at the end...and in the process, forgetting to even mention the customer, their needs, and their requirements.
My favorite blunder in this category is summarizing a company's entire history, philosophy, and values in the Executive Summary. This is a trap that small businesses especially seem to fall into.
It's important to remember that while your track record and your history are exciting to you, they're not all that exciting for the customer. All they really want to know is what you plan to do for them! What you want to stress are the benefits that are important to the customer in response to their hot buttons, what keeps them awake at nights worrying, what gives meaning to their work and their lives, and what they've told you they need in their RFP.
All your win themes, salient points of the approach, and experience credentials need to relate directly to what the customer has told you they care about the most. Your executive summary has to answer the questions:
WHY are you bidding?
WHAT's in it for the customer?
Mistake #4: Wandering aimlessly without a clear structure
Most executive summaries don't have a clear structure. They start with a dry bureaucratic opening, wander aimlessly, and close with a whimper. They leave evaluators cold. Other industries, such as sales and advertising, have figured out long ago that there should be a SPECIFIC ORDER in which to present a convincing argument to make a sale. Otherwise, why would there be a billion-dollar industry that makes you whip out a credit card when you see an infomercial or an online product sales page - without as much as a live sales person persuading you to buy?
The Executive Summary is first and foremost a sales document. It is not really a "summary." It is a very purposeful persuasion piece that is meant to convince, cajole, sway, and lead the evaluator to the only logical decision regarding their procurement EURo to choose you!
You have to structure your summary in a formulaic way to make a powerful argument. It is not random. The formula for ordering executive summaries I recommend in my workbook Executive Summary Secrets is composed of six parts:
The hook that gets your customer interested
The overall value proposition that relates your win theme to the hook
The introductions for you and your team
The body - the actual overview of your offer (which could be presented in different ways depending on the type of proposal)
The roadmap showing your proposal structure
The call to action
When you organize your executive summary in this manner, your very structure makes your document more convincing, in addition to the points you make within the confines of this structure.
Olessia Smotrova-Taylor is president of OST Global Solutions, Inc. ( http://www.ostglobalsolutions.com ), a consulting and training company that helps businesses grow by winning government contracts. She is also the author of Executive Summary Secrets, a brand new self-study course on how to write high-impact executive summaries. You can find it at http://www.ostglobalsolutions.com/execsumsecrets-embed.htm .
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